[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
stuff about a supposed "decryption service" that Mentor and friends
were planning to run, to help crack encrypted passwords off of hacked
systems.
Mentor was an adult. There was a bulletin board at his place of work,
as well. Kleupfel logged onto this board, too, and discovered it to be
called "Illuminati." It was run by some company called Steve Jackson
Games.
On March 1, 1990, the Austin crackdown went into high gear.
On the morning of March 1 a Thursday 21-year- old University of
Texas student "Erik Bloodaxe," co-sysop of Phoenix Project and an
avowed member of the Legion of Doom, was wakened by a police revolver
levelled at his head.
NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE
B R U C E S T E R L I N G T H E H A C K E R C R A C K D O W N 1 4 5
Bloodaxe watched, jittery, as Secret Service agents appropriated his
300 baud terminal and, rifling his files, discovered his treasured
source-code for Robert Morris's notorious Internet Worm. But
Bloodaxe, a wily operator, had suspected that something of the like
might be coming. All his best equipment had been hidden away else-
where. The raiders took everything electronic, however, including his
telephone. They were stymied by his hefty arcade-style Pac-Man game,
and left it in place, as it was simply too heavy to move.
Bloodaxe was not arrested. He was not charged with any crime. A good
two years later, the police still had what they had taken from him, how-
ever.
The Mentor was less wary. The dawn raid rousted him and his wife from
bed in their underwear, and six Secret Service agents, accompanied by
an Austin policeman and Henry Kluepfel himself, made a rich haul. Off
went the works, into the agents' white Chevrolet minivan: an IBM PC-
AT clone with 4 meg of RAM and a 120-meg hard disk; a Hewlett-
Packard LaserJet II printer; a completely legitimate and highly expen-
sive SCO-Xenix 286 operating system; Pagemaker disks and documenta-
tion; and the Microsoft Word word-processing program. Mentor's wife
had her incomplete academic thesis stored on the hard-disk; that went,
too, and so did the couple's telephone. As of two years later, all this
property remained in police custody.
Mentor remained under guard in his apartment as agents prepared to
raid Steve Jackson Games. The fact that this was a business headquar-
ters and not a private residence did not deter the agents. It was still
very early; no one was at work yet. The agents prepared to break down
the door, but Mentor, eavesdropping on the Secret Service walkie-talkie
traffic, begged them not to do it, and offered his key to the building.
The exact details of the next events are unclear. The agents would not let
anyone else into the building. Their search warrant, when produced,
was unsigned. Apparently they breakfasted from the local
"Whataburger," as the litter from hamburgers was later found inside.
They also extensively sampled a bag of jellybeans kept by an SJG
NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE
B R U C E S T E R L I N G T H E H A C K E R C R A C K D O W N 1 4 6
employee. Someone tore a "Dukakis for President" sticker from the
wall.
SJG employees, diligently showing up for the day's work, were met at
the door and briefly questioned by U.S. Secret Service agents. The
employees watched in astonishment as agents wielding crowbars and
screwdrivers emerged with captive machines. They attacked outdoor
storage units with boltcutters. The agents wore blue nylon windbreak-
ers with "SECRET SERVICE" stencilled across the back, with running-
shoes and jeans.
Jackson's company lost three computers, several hard-disks, hundred
of floppy disks, two monitors, three modems, a laser printer, various
powercords, cables, and adapters (and, oddly, a small bag of screws,
bolts and nuts). The seizure of Illuminati BBS deprived SJG of all the
programs, text files, and private e-mail on the board. The loss of two
other SJG computers was a severe blow as well, since it caused the loss
of electronically stored contracts, financial projections, address direc-
tories, mailing lists, personnel files, business correspondence, and, not
least, the drafts of forthcoming games and gaming books.
No one at Steve Jackson Games was arrested. No one was accused of any
crime. No charges were filed. Everything appropriated was officially
kept as "evidence" of crimes never specified.
After the *Phrack* show-trial, the Steve Jackson Games scandal was
the most bizarre and aggravating incident of the Hacker Crackdown of
1990. This raid by the Chicago Task Force on a science-fiction gaming
publisher was to rouse a swarming host of civil liberties issues, and
gave rise to an enduring controversy that was still re-complicating
itself, and growing in the scope of its implications, a full two years
later.
The pursuit of the E911 Document stopped with the Steve Jackson Games
raid. As we have seen, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of com-
puter users in America with the E911 Document in their possession.
Theoretically, Chicago had a perfect legal right to raid any of these peo-
ple, and could have legally seized the machines of anybody who sub-
NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE
B R U C E S T E R L I N G T H E H A C K E R C R A C K D O W N 1 4 7
scribed to *Phrack.* However, there was no copy of the E911 Document
on Jackson's Illuminati board. And there the Chicago raiders stopped
dead; they have not raided anyone since.
It might be assumed that Rich Andrews and Charlie Boykin, who had
brought the E911 Document to the attention of telco security, might be
spared any official suspicion. But as we have seen, the willingness to
"cooperate fully" offers little, if any, assurance against federal anti-
hacker prosecution.
Richard Andrews found himself in deep trouble, thanks to the E911
Document. Andrews lived in Illinois, the native stomping grounds of the
Chicago Task Force. On February 3 and 6, both his home and his place of
work were raided by USSS. His machines went out the door, too, and he
was grilled at length (though not arrested). Andrews proved to be in
purportedly guilty possession of: UNIX SVR 3.2; UNIX SVR 3.1; UUCP;
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]