Founded By: | _ _______
Guardian Of Time | __ N.I.A. _ ___ ___ Are you on any WAN? are
Judge Dredd | ____ ___ ___ ___ ___ you on Bitnet, Internet
------------------+ _____ ___ ___ ___ ___ Compuserve, MCI Mail,
Ø / ___ ___ ___ ___ ___________ Sprintmail, Applelink,
+---------+ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___________ Easynet, MilNet,
| 26OCT90 | ___ ______ ___ ___ ___ FidoNet, et al.?
| File 60 | ___ _____ ___ ___ ___ If so please drop us a
+---------+ ____ _ __ ___ line at
___ _ ___ elisem@nuchat.sccsi.com
Other World BBS __
Text Only _ Network Information Access
Ignorance, There's No Excuse.
Network Thought Machine [2]
Guardian Of Time And The Net
NIA---NIA---NIA---NIA---NIA---NIA---NIA
Early Apple Phreaking Days
Those that don't know, I was busted, back in 1980, and I will explain in this
file, what lead up to me being busted, what happened, how I got out of it.
1980, I got my first computer which was an Apple //e for a Xmas Present, and
I immediately started out in the world of Apple Phreaking. Thanks to a friend
of mine (The Mad Cracker (409) (BTW, How is Nuclear School? hehehe)), we began
our trail, meeting up w/ a person by the name of Joe Nowak from Michigan.
Joe was the person that taught both of us, who where just young pups at that
time, what Phreaking was, gave us the rules to follow, how to phreak, how to
hack, how to crack, everything.
I created my first handle, which was The Rammaster, as you can tell, I quickly
changed it to my present one. My friend, dreamt up the handle of The Mad
Cracker (even though at the time, he NEVER cracked anything that later
changed). We had our handles and we where ready for the Apple Pirate World.
Apple Pirates at that time, where the cream of the crop w/ Jack The Ripper,
Taran King running The Metal Shop AE, in Houston there was Wizzardry, Sub
Station Charlie, and the infamous Mines Of Moria (w/ the Tele Trials!), and
the 414 Group (busted for breaking into a Hospital Computer and altering
vital records), Phrack was just a dream to be made, and the ever so popular
Apple Cat Modems and running 10 megs with Ascii Express Professional.
Just for a side note, those of you who don't know what AE (Ascii Express) was,
it made all of us IBM people look bad for having Ratio's, for AE was LEECH and
LEECH it was, you would dial into an AE line, get the prompt, and then you
would have the capability (if your access was allowed), to d/l everything in
whatever disk drives or harddrives where set up. Meaning you could call and
d/l all of the latest game and never worry about Ratio's for the ratio was
set up something like 1 u/l for every 1000 d/ls or mostly they never had any
ratio's on there at all. As the year progressed, many AE lines became part
of BBS's (GBBS) as a door, and only the "Elite" or "Pirate Access" users would
have access to it. By 1982 most of the AE lines had gone away and left where
phrases like "running AE off of my 2 double sided double density 5 1/4 inch
disk drives". Those people where generally considered lame. Comparison would
be like calling up an Em/2 board running off of an IBM w/ 2 3 1/2 inch drives
and having PART of the latest game in the Xfer Section.
Those days people had massive parties, brought their Apples over and just did
MASSIVE coppying, for their copy protection was crude, and well with
Locksmith 5.0 you could crack just about everything under the sun. Pirating
was in, and phreaking was in, for there was not even a thought of ESS, or of
Operation Sundevil. Black Boxing was just being figured out, by the telco
company, and they figured out a way of "listening" for the device, but hey, w/
our trusty Apple Cat modems we just didn't send a pure 2600 htz tone and that
solved that problem, but then the Telco company got wise to that.
Well as years progressed, the phone company started getting their act together
there was rumors flying in and out of every major BBS that people where starting
to be arrested. The term 'BUSTED' came into play, which meant, being caught
by either the Feds, or by the Telco Company, while you where phreaking off of
their system. Also ESS was just starting to be testing in rural areas...
Soon BBS's started to go "private", the term "elite" no longer meant someone
w/ a special talent, or an infamous computer handle (Count Zero, Jack The
Ripper), the term started to apply to BBS's. The BBS initself, became "elite".
About the same time this was happening, BBS INFOFORMS came up, testing ones
ability. The idea at the time was to get onto said Elite BBS, you just passed
a simple test. Fill out this Questionaire and if you answered the questions
accurately then there was a chance you could get onto this Elite BBS. Problem
w/ that was shortly aftwards, Acronym Lists started floating around. Funny how
someone w/ absolutely no knowledge on a given subject, could pass the toughest
questionaire w/out blinking an eye.
How To Phreak files started to pop up everywhere, people where pumping out text
files left and right. Many people tested these files out w/out every thinking
of what they where doing, and again many people where caught by the phone co,
for being stupid.
As 1988 passed, the "Old Group" as most of us are now called, have either
pulled out or went into hiding. Many of the later 80's people are still
around, probably laughing at this file now (hehehehe, I am), and well it is
a shame, but what have we to look for?
Todays phreakers/hackers are uneducated people. I don't mean to sound like I
know what I'm doing b/c I don't either. I pulled out in 1983 and haven't
phreaked since. But as I scan BBS hacking/phreak bases I see the exact same
thing that was started back in 1983. The home computer was priced just right,
so just about every middle class person could afford one. People went out
bought one, bought a modem, and just started away at BBSing coming across those
dreaded Bad BBS's or those "Underground BBS's". People don't read the old text
files anymore, there where many ground rules laid down by many text file
magazines (Phrack, Lod, etc) you did a certain thing and not this, and the
reason why you don't do it THIS way is b/c you will get busted, yet people don't
read the warning label that says danger anymore why?
I was busted, as I mentioned earlier, but what happened? Nothing special, I got
this registered letter in the mail, which contained about 5 pages worth of BBS
numbers, I checked against my own records (I kept detailed records of what code
what service, what time and what BBS I called), narrowed down a 10,000.00$ bill
down to around 2500$. I don't remember the exact figures but it was around
those mentioned. If I refused to pay the bill, I would then appear in Galveston
County's local District Court. I mailed in a letter stating that I had made
only certain calls, attatched a sheet that contained all my codes used, numbers
dialed (fax machines where still in testing...), and they returned my letter
accepting the offfer I proposed to them.
Remember todays carders, phreakers, and hackers, are reckless, uncaring for
the system they aquire, the service they use, or the cards they card off of.
People are not what they used to be, times have changed, and they have changed
for the worse (my opinion), if we do not start re-educating people about what
to do and what not to do, and making sure that people do not abuse our knowledge
then Operation Sundevil will be a fairly common word etched in our minds.
People that card, don't be so damned stupid, carding to your house? Jesus, what
moron would do that? Someone w/ a modem and pc. Someone that is uneducated,
and someone that should be stopped.
I close this small file w/ a quote from a respected BBS User in our Community:
1980's Hacker: A person who hacked into a system w/ the sole intent on
learning the system, inside and out. To better educate
oneself, w/ no thought of harm or destructive means.
1990's Hacker: A person who hacks into a system w/ the sole intent of
destructive purposes. No benefit has come of this type
of hacker.
Today the word hacker means to break into a system for malice intent. Why
has this happened? I propose that question to you.
I hope that some of you will recall that more and more people are being busted,
it is no longer anyones fault, but YOUR own for being busted, the rules have
been layed down for years now, you just need to re-educate yourself and learn
something...
Guardian Of Time
NIA---NIA---NIA---NIA---NIA---NIA---NIA
"Whats In A Name? : Brad Templeton"
People keep trying to figure out what an electronic forum (or bulletin board)
is in traditional terms -- common carrier or publication.
I think that it is not analogous to any of the old forms, and a new type
of law has to be created to apply to it.
There are 4 types of BB today:
A) The completely open BB with no supervision (USENET newsgroup, some
BBS operations)
B) The supervised open BB. (most BBS, GEnie, CIS forums, etc.)
C) The heavily supervised BB. (Prodigy, moderated USENET group)
D) The fully edited electronic publication
D is a direct analog of the traditional publication. C is very close, but
not quite. A is close to the "common carrier" model, but does not match
it exactly. B has little analog in traditional publishing.
All four are of course(*) deserving of constitutional prote>
Transfer interrupted!