







"I was in after school doing make up work in my chem class as usual when I noticed one day my teacher, Miss Ricker, entering grades through an Apple network using a fairly simple grade program. She wasn't very security minded and I used that as a window. Through a little use of "Social Engineering" I quick thought something up to ask her and walked up and started asking her info right when she was entering her login and password into the mac. I was looking down into my notebook and pretended to write stuff as I asked her, what I really did was write down her login and password."

--The cybernetic education of a Hacker, in MEME 3.02





"Hackers." The word means something different, depending on whom you ask. People at CERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, might say, "a hacker is someone who breaks into computers." My great-aunt, who recently turned 91, associates hackers with people who drive taxis, from the days when a "hack" meant an unpleasant, or distasteful job. Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, who was interviewed in MEME 2.04, calls himself a hacker. To him "hacking" means developing software in an open, collaborative environment, with a strong ethical sense of right and wrong. The New Hacker's Dictionary defines hacker as "someone who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary."

Hacking, hackers, hack-- whatever the form, these words are the Rorschach test of cyberspace: what you think hacker means says as much about you as it does about hackers. Are hackers good? Are hackers bad? It all depends on what definition of hacking you have.

In this issue of MEME, I send you one of the rare, lucid examples of a hacker memoir from the breaking-into-computers variety of hacker. The story is written by someone whose nom-de-hack is "Genocide," and is a founder of Genocide2600, a hacker-clan based in Alaska and the Northwest of the United States. The piece came my way via another hacker, named WiZDoM. He could well be the same person as Genocide, or not. That's part of this game-- uncertainty.

With hackers you can't be sure what's true, and what's not. Nor does it really matter. Hacker-tales are meant to be heroic. They are yarns, and this one's one of the best I've received in a long, long time. I think you'll enjoy it as well. A brief cautionary note: those readers who take umbrage at "curse words" should be forewarned, Genocide likes to use them. Spelling is left as received.

I make no moral judgment about this essay, other than to say breaking into computers is bad, and you shouldn't do it. You, however, may want to discuss the issues raised by Genocide's essay, and you're invited to do so in the MEME discussion area, on Electric Minds.





The Genocide2600 Group History

Writtin by Genocide 4/1/97





http://www.aracnet.com/~gen2600

http://www.Genocide2600.com

/* Some of the contents of this document may be fictional. I leave the

reader to themselves to figure out what is true and not true and what

you will believe. Since it covers possibly illegal topics and events,

I will not swear that any of the following content is true in any way.

All events herein may or may not have happened, for obvious reasons I

must leave it up to the reader to choose whether or not anything the

read contains even a grain of truth. As for the members, we all know

what really happened. */---



A: Intro

1. What a hacker is. What a hack is.

2. Who we are.

3. The Genocide2600 Manifesto

4. How it started.---



A: Intro

Well, people have been asking me for about a three years or so, how did

you start the Genocide2600 group...how did you get into hacking, how, how,

how, how...etc...Well, I'm going to make a damn good effort to "tell

all". Right now it's April 1st, April Fools day of 1997, I've been a

h/p/v/a/c'er for over 8 years now.

Today the Genocide2600 group is over 150people strong and we occupy

Alaska, Washington, Oregon and are now expanding into the East coast area.

We have made many friends in our business/field and have tought many

people.

Shout outs go out to:

-Silicon Toad, Bishop, MODul8r, Jester, Tim Wilde, Xer0 Tolerance.---



1.

First let me start by defining what I consider a hack, or a hacker.

A "Hack":=

The act of doing an action when there is no known way to do it.

The act of doing something that can't be done.

The act of doing something that is totally against the odds.

A "Hacker":=

Someone who can overcome, against the odds.

Someone who can figure a way out of a game that can't be won.

Someone who teaches others and spreads knowledge when no one

wants to hear it.

Someone who doesn't quit.

Those who rise in the face of thier advesaries when they are

grossely outnumbered.

You don't have to know how to "Crack a password file to be a hacker"

"Use what you have got, and you will not need what you have not..."

-Quote from "Around the world in 80 days" ---



2.

Who we are.

Let me describe what we are and what we do.

We are simply a group of talented people. Nothing more nothing less.

A group of people from all walks of life, from 14years old to 52years old.

Some of the group don't even know what a password file is, hell some of

them don't even know how to turn on a computer. But the point is,

everyone specializes in something and they offer thier services to the

rest of the group. We even have lawyers that assist us...should the need

arise. Everyone helps everyone else in whatever they do, however they

can offer thier expertise in thier chosen field. Most of the group was

chosen by my hand, but now our numbers have grown so large, I have

appointed "heads" that manage areas, ie: one head per Alaska, Washington

and now the East coast. Most of our members choose to stay behind the

viel, in other words they don't choose to be public thus they are

protected and they speak to those of us who are in the open. There are a

handfull of us that do choose to be public:

-DoXaVG, BernZ, Astroboy, WiZDoM, Alexu, OvErLoRD and me - Genocide

Some members of the group are long married and have kids, some

are single, the point is, we could be your neighbor or your babysitter for

all you know. We could be the kid filling your gas in your car, it

doesn't matter, all you really need to know is we are spreading, as fast

as knowledge, faster then light, the speed of information.

The Social Base of the Hacker:

The Genocide2600 Manifesto.

People generally believe that hackers have a milicious intent as

a general rule. This, pardon my language is a crock of shit and

obviously the idea/ramblings of the most generally uninformed people on

the net, I do admit that "YES" there are those that are out to only

destroy, and yes this group does occasionally add to that at a very small

percentage (this will be explained later), but for the most part, we are

in the persuit of knowledge. I do not claim to be a 100% law abiding

person, nor does the group, obviously if you have heard of us, or even

after reading this you will be shaking your head at this point.

As a whole that we believe in a collective good, we believe that

people who try to shut out other are people so others can't listen to them

or people who try to censor our actions/language/activities are the people

who deserve none of the above. We cling to our most basic civil rights.

We also believe in retrobution for what is lost.

Eye for an eye mentality is spoken here, take back what is yours.

Bottom line is this, don't fuck with us, we do fuck back.

Trying to turn peoples minds away from truth or trying to hide

whats REALLY going on is something that is not tollerable no matter

what and that therein is the true crime, not trying to rip the viel from

the sheeps eyes. We're here to show you. We aren't the criminals that

need to be put away. We are the ones you should praise.

People for all time have feared what they did not

understand...what they did not know. You don't know us...you don't

understand us.

Some have labeled us as terrorists, others as criminals. Ok.

Sure. Whatever. Go ahead take the criminals and terrorists away that

fight for your rights. After you have lost the battle because your

soldiers are gone at your own hand, you'll have no one to blame but

yourself.

We fight with the greatest tools of all, our intellect and

courage.---



3.

How it all started.

I started when I was 14, I had never heard of hacking, phreaking

or any of the lot. People really didn't pay much attention to me and

that suited me just fine. I was able to be more an observer then the

person who screwed up and got nailed for something, I would shake my head

and learn from how they fell.

I guess I was what you would call now a phreaker then...I heard

that funny sound when you put coins into the pay phones... found it

curious and I bought a hand recorder for $20.00 and went to town, I

called places I didn't even know about, because I could. Me and my close

personal friends dabbled in Blue Boxing once we discovered BBS' on our

brand new 1200baud modems. I learned telephony from my cousin, the

resident criminal in our town. As I look back now, the first phreaker I

ever knew was my cousin. He tought me the magic of Ma' Bell and how it

could be turned on her. I understood true telephony and hadn't even seen

a computer. I had met my first hacker.

My phreaking died with the end of the blue box. I gave up on it

when those friends whome I surrounded myself with began to be picked off

one by one by the local law. I decided to survive I had to adapt, I knew

what I was doing was generally thought of as criminal. But I finally

found a knowledge that made my mind hunger, made me stay up night after

night. I wanted to learn for the first time in my life.

Although this hunger didn't lead me in the ways of most law

abiding talented computer learners, it did teach me how to make it and

not loose no matter what pieces of the art of survival.

I was in after school doing make up work in my chem class as usuall

when I noticed one day my teacher, Miss Ricker, entering grades through

an Apple network using a fairly simple grade program. She wasn't very

security minded and I used that as a window. Through a little use of

"Social Engineering" I quick thought something up to ask her and walked

up and started asking her info right when she was entering her login and

password into the mac. I was looking down into my notebook and

pretended to write stuff as I asked her, what I really did was write

down her login and password.



If I failed Chemistry, I wouldn't be able to graduate highschool

because it was a required class.

Later that day I had a speech class that I did the grades for on

the same network on a similar mac. I came in 10minutes early, just like

normal and no one was in there. I entered her name and password into the

computer and accessed the class grades via her saved information in her

personal directory on a restricted network hard drive. I found my name

and double clicked on it, there was all my work info, I added extra

credit wherever I could. On a test, I moved it from 63% to a 73%, it was

just enough to boost my grade into the low "D" area. I graduated almost

a year later. Right on time.

My mother was going back to school to get her degree at the local

college in Fairbanks Alaska when I really discovered computers. I used her

access (which, yes I got from a yellow sticky) to the local VAX to wet my

lips with the taste of the computer age. I explored and learned for

about two to three years there in that simple student VAX lab, then they

went to OSF/1 or Digital UNIX as most know it and something happened.

This was a chance at a virgin system, the system administrator didn't

know exactly how to use/manage a actual UNIX system vs. a VAX system.

Before he had a chance to secure the server to any reasonable

level, I had already discovered the unshadowed /etc/passwd file and in a

matter of hours had also discovered my first version of crack. My first

successfull run of my now compiled crack was nearly my last. I was not

aware of the system requirements that crack used at that time. It was

a rather extensive resource hog and after I had set crack to run I put it

in the background and hit "w" to see what everyone was doing. The lab

was full. I had about 40 more seconds before it would finally be done

with the passwd file when I hit "w" the last time. I noticed the system

admin doing a "w fstbo" I knew what was happening. He saw I was using

crack on the passwd file and he also knew I was only around the corner by

looking at my terminal number. I freaked, foregrounded the processes,

killed it and ran.

I only looked back after I had completely left the building,

there in the computer lab was the system admin talking to a student at my

terminal. My luck those computers were in such high demand.

I loved that taste of adrenaline. It was also in that room where

I would meet Alexu, WiZDoM and Astroboy. The first members of the

Genocide2600 group, they didn't even know it yet, niether did I.

The following year yielded many systems, mostely criminally

broken into, but none were damaged other then our initial breakins. I

guess we were also lucky that Fairbanks Alaska was a great region to

begin such a spree. Two military bases, one Army and one AirForce were

only a half hour in each direction, three highschools and a huge college

with multiple Cray computers.

Contests between us all, then about up to 10, began and we

realized we had formed an actual group. We wrote virii in assembly that

would take each other out on the system while eating resources eventually

crashing the computer. If you won, it was your virii left standing.

One of the guys in the group "Malcom" had knowledge of a 2600

magazine and brought up the idea of actually holding a 2600 group meeting

on Fridays at 7pm like in the mag. We all agreed and took turns teaching

whomever would care to listen about computer security, telephony, media,

cryptography, government whatever was our specialty. This was my first

year of College. I was a freshman.

We actually were recognized as a educational group by the

University at that point and were encouraged to hold group meetings and

givin areas where we could meet.

The group continued on like that for about two years. Usually after

the 2600 meetings we would either find a secluded computer room or go

over to one of the members houses and "try out" our newfound info, or

trick, we scowered documented holes in unix operating systems looking for

other holes that may have been similar.

One Friday we held the proceedings at my house and planned a breakin.

I had a Pent75 with 16megs of ram (badass at that point in time) with a

1.275 gig hard drive. The fastest computer of the group. As standard

proceedure we would dialup from an anonymous number in the "Great Hall"

of the University onto "PolarNet" under a hacked PPP account. After

connect we proceeded to telnet to a student account at the local school

network where we had already gotten root access. We would do anything

we really had to do from there usually, but sometimes we were lazy and

would telnet straight out of "PolarNet" or "AlaskaNet".

That night We snooped a commercial server which we will call "moon" and

found we could gain root access remotelly. We got root access after

approxamately 1hour of scanning the target system. We however did not

know that this was one of the foremost computer security systems in the

U.S. We gained root access at approxamately 11pm. Upon entry it

looked like a simple corperate computer, perhaps only a webhosting

machine. Upon closer inspection we noticed that it was a server designed

for information storage that is used by system administrators to crack

into systems in order to secure them. This server also had programs used

to crack systems, so we took them all. We took the programs and the info

they had within the system. It was a total of about 14megs of it, we

downloaded it to the local system which was through a T1 so it didn't

take long, we broke connection to "moon" and proceeded to download the

info from the local server to our computer. Where we passed the info to

eachother.

From then on we couldn't access that "PolarNet" account.

We proceeded to share our new found info with the group members

that friday night and brought disks full of info to give away at the

price of the disks themselfs, the information was spreading.

I had the Genocide2600 webpage up for almost a year at this

point, and the attack on "moon" had yielded some incredible info, so the

page grew amazingly fast. As did the requests for it's removal by the

system administration by of school.

At this time the page was then mentioned by several German underground

magazines at the address:

http://icecube.acf-lab.alaska.edu/~fstbo

With email going to:

fstbo@aurora.alaska.edu

The next Friday I recieved an official warning at my schools account

to "please remove your page from the system" well...I changed it a little

and hid it a little deeper on my account, and the requests stopped for a

little while.

Also that next Friday we had a visitor at the meeting. This was

not uncommon because us being a University group, anyone could come in

and sit in. At times like these we would obviously speak of nothing

illegal. This was, however, different from the rest of the "visits" by

faculty and staff, this was a man in a navy blue suit.

After the meeting was over and everyone was leaving he came up to

me and asked if we could talk, I agreed, and we walked. He informed me

he was here to prove that I had broken into "moon" and that he would be

heading up the investigation. He also informed me that they suspected me

because of my page, my affiliation of the group etc...

I was honestly scared. I called my mother and told her I had

been approached by the FBI and that there was a possibility that I may be

put away as a result. She asked me if I did what they were accusing and I

told her no. Which turned out to be a damn good idea, because she spent

over two hours speaking to them.

They froze my account to view the contents and review what I had

on the system. They were looking for info that would point to me as the

person who broke into the system, they found plenty. The one thing that

saved my neck was that they couldn't tie me to the broken account on

"PolarNet" they could prove that the call came from the University but

not where. They could prove that I had info that was regarded as secret

but they couldn't prove where I had gotten it. I told them I got it off

the internet.

After the entire thing was done and overwith, it had taken up

around 3 weeks and alot of missed classes on my part. My account was

unfrozen right in time for them to barage me with numerous requests to

move the page off of the server again. I burried it deeper into my

account and the requests subsided again.

After the FBI left, the group wasn't quite the same, around half

the "not so into it" members left, probably out of fear for thier school

status. The school slammed the door on the school 2600 group on campus.

The remaining members and I formed the formal Genocide2600 group

we didn't meet in any publically known places or in schedualed places

after that. We would just get together and decide where to go on the

fly. The 2600 group dropped from site and the Genocide2600 group went

under viel, away from view after the papers stopped publishing stories

about some loose internet terrorist at the University.

A couple months later, I got a job at a local internet service

provider, I had alot more time on my hands to surf the web and check out

areas that I didn't know about and discovered news groups I was looking

through the usual alt.2600, alt.warez etc... and noticed people peddling

serial codes and numbers for software, this intrigued me and I added the

"service" to my webpage. The Genocide2600 group's page was the basic

hub for serial numbers at that time and that is what probably what

really put us on the map.

We made friends of other net going hackers by trading info, programs

and knowledge. The big web areas on the net were: SiliconToad, Materva,

CandyMan and us, the Genocide2600 group. CandyMan dissappeared and we

have been asked by certain parties to not really say anything regarding

his silence. Materva is currently out of the scene and revamping his

pages. This left SiliconToad and our group of the original few on the

web, pre the movie "Hackers" and the influx of everyone and thier dog

wanting to be 3l33t3, er rather elite, sorry.

I had plenty of free time while waiting for people to call at the

ISP I worked at (ImagiNet) I discovered a strong regard to the freedom of

speech, after all, it was what was keeping me from going to jail.

Now there are those that abuse the theory of freedom of speech,

some say it's us, the hacker, but what I am referring to are the child

pornography dealers on the net. I know it has been deemed illegal now,

but it still goes on. We were kicking the shit out of these people on

AOL (the primary front) we would get onto AOL with our AOHell programs

and start scanning the chat rooms, when we found someone whome we

suspected or who was talking about it, we would flood them with email

and kick them off, causing them to actually have thier connection break

have to logon and have to deal with a paralyzed mailbox and as soon as

we would see them, WHAM again, they would be gone again. Sure we'd get

caught and kicked off but that was half the fun, we were back on within

10minutes. What I always thought was entertaining were the agents AOL

hired to look for hackers, they would be in the SAME room as us and the

child porno runners and we'd attack the porno runner, who would the

agent go after? Us. They would let the porno runner go 90% of the time

without even a warning. Sure we were breaking the law too, but we do

have some ethics. >;)

Enter BernZ, a young prospective hacker who wrote to me on one

of my last days in Fairbanks, and asked me to help him learn the trade.

Now, I get around 500 emails a week, from non-member sources and half of

them are asking me the same thing. But something was different this

time. He had a style that I liked. He defined what it was he could do,

I told him this was called "Social Engineering" or standard old

manipulation. I could hear him grin over the email. He asked to join

the group after a couple of weeks of correspondence and I finally asked

him where he was. East coast. The group was primarilly a west coast

operation. East coast was a good idea though, both coastal areas were

the biggest expanding computer related areas on the map. So we decided

that yes he should indeed head up the East Coast movement.

And so he did and is.

My job moved to Portland, Oregon, so I followed. I needed a

webserver so I moved it to it's current home:

http://www.aracnet.com/~gen2600

This is where our hits really began to grow. Also our

international image. Magazines started printing our address as a

contriversial/underground webpage. We started turning heads. Somewhere

along the line someone out there (Cheyenne Software) noticed that we

carried serial numbers on our page and the real flame storm started that

day. My account was frozen instantly. They froze the account to

review what was really on the page and see if there was really any

serial numbers, which all of you know is bigtime bad. I was facing

around 2,000 counts of software piracy. The Oregon chapter of the

Genocide2600 group got together that night and cracked the server,

moving any evidence of the serial numbers off of the system. We got

away again.

Almost 3 days later I was at work at about 10am when my pager

went off and told me to call home for messages, I did. Found a message

from someone only identifying themselfs as "Mr. Jerkins" and that I

should give him a call. I did, he said that he wanted to meet with me at

my Gladstone Oregon home and that they would like to bring me somewhere

to talk. I freaked, I don't care what anyone says, if they say that the

hair on the back of thier necks doesn't stand on end when they get a call

from the FBI, they are lying.

I called a emergency meeting at my house of the Genocide2600

members from Oregon for later that night. We probably wore that

recording out listening to it, trying to find out if it was indeed a

joke. We finally decided, no it wasn't a joke. So I called him back and

setup a time.

They were five minutes early. Mr. Jerkins was with 4 other men

dressed in suits, all smiling. They wanted to take me to some place I

didn't recognize, which is no shock seeing I only had lived there 3

months. But I wasn't going to chance it. I told them I wanted to go to

Burgerville down the street at GlennEcho street. Hey, I know it sounds

corney, but if you have ever seen "MoHolland Falls" you would understand.

We packed into a late model Ford Royal Crown Victoria and headed

to the burgerhouse. My leg was uncomfortable because of the Gerber

MarkII boot knife pushing into my ankle and my right hand was on my switch

blade the entire time.

They didn't say a word while we got out of the car. We walked

into Burgerville and everyone behind the counter followed us with thier

eyes and heads. We had to look out of the norm, 4 suited guys all under

6 foot and me, black leather jacket and jeans, and a black "Skellum"

shirt that says, "Un-natural disaster, can you feel hells laughter?"

and six foot tall. We sat, I ate and we talked for almost one hour.

Only two of the four talked. Mr. Jerkins and someone else whome

I can't remember his name. As soon as they opened thier mouths, I began

to sweat.

It seems I was dropped off at home as rapidly as they had picked

me up. I sat there at my computer, my hands shaking, dialed up and

jumped into my email program, pine. I wrote all members of the

Genocide2600 group, in Alaska, Washington and Oregon and informed them, I

had just been offered a job.

That was only a couple of months ago now and I sit here at midnight

typing away and not even wanting sleep anymore. In two weeks the

Genocide2600 server goes up, the new dawn.

http://www.Genocide2600.com

-Genocide

Head of the Genocide2600 Group

*Embrace Freedom*

gen2600@aracnet.com



[EOF]