Given the recent discussion on WireD, I thought some of you might enjoy this editorial (read: rant) authored by Erik Bloodaxe. Enjoy. - paul Forwarded message:
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 1995 20:34:00 CST Reply-To: TK0JUT2@MVS.CSO.NIU.EDU Sender: CU-DIGEST list <CUDIGEST@UIUCVMD.BITNET> From: "Cu Digest (tk0jut2@mvs.cso.niu.edu)" <TK0JUT2@MVS.CSO.NIU.EDU> Subject: Cu Digest, #7.03 To: Multiple recipients of list CUDIGEST <CUDIGEST@UIUCVMD.BITNET>
Computer underground Digest Sun Jan 15, 1995 Volume 7 : Issue 03 ISSN 1004-042X
Editors: Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer (TK0JUT2@NIU.BITNET) Archivist: Brendan Kehoe Retiring Shadow Archivist: Stanton McCandlish Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala Ian Dickinson Copy Reader: Laslo Toth
CONTENTS, #7.03 (Sun, Jan 15, 1995)
File 1--Open Letter to Wired Magazine (fwd) File 2--More Legal Analysis of Steve Jackson Games (Legal Bytes) File 3--The Stupid Net.Coverage News Awards -- 1994 and 1995 File 4--Alliance for Community Media -- Call for Workshops File 5--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 25 Nov 1994)
CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
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Date: Sat, 14 Jan 1995 20:08:38 -0600 (CST) From: David Smith <bladex@BGA.COM> Subject: File 1--Open Letter to Wired Magazine (fwd)
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From--phrack@well.sf.ca.us (Chris Goggans) Subject--Open Letter to Wired Magazine Date--13 Jan 1995 00:51:09 GMT
To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing this under the assumption that the editorial staff at Wired will "forget" to print it in the upcoming issue, so I am also posting it on every relevant newsgroup and online discussion forum that I can think of.
When I first read your piece "Gang War In Cyberspace" I nearly choked on my own stomach bile. The whole tone of this piece was so far removed from reality that I found myself questioning what color the sky must be in Wired's universe. Not that I've come to expect any better from Wired. Your magazine, which could have had the potential to actually do something, has become a parody...a politically correct art-school project that consistently falls short of telling the whole story or making a solid point. (Just another example of Kapor-Kash that ends up letting everyone down.)
I did however expect more from Josh Quittner.
I find it interesting that so much emphasis can be placed on an issue of supposed racial slurs as the focus of an imaginary "gang war," especially so many years after the fact.
It's also interesting to me that people keep overlooking the fact that one of the first few members of our own little Legion of Doom was black (Paul Muad'dib.) Maybe if he had not died a few years back that wouldn't be so quickly forgotten. (Not that it makes a BIT of difference what color a hacker is as long as he or she has a brain and a modem, or these days at least a modem.)
I also find it interesting that a magazine can so easily implicate someone as the originator of the so-called "fighting words" that allegedly sparked this online-battle, without even giving a second thought as to the damage that this may do to the person so named. One would think that a magazine would have more journalistic integrity than that (but then again, this IS Wired, and political correctness sells magazines and satisfies advertisers.) Thankfully, I'll only have to endure one moth of the "Gee Chris, did you know you were a racist redneck?" phone calls.
It's further odd that someone characterized as so sensitive to insults allegedly uttered on a party-line could have kept the company he did. Strangely enough, Quittner left out all mention of the MOD member who called himself "SuperNigger." Surely, John Lee must have taken umbrage to an upper-middle class man of Hebrew descent so shamefully mocking him and his entire race, wouldn't he? Certainly he wouldn't associate in any way with someone like that...especially be in the same group with, hang out with, and work on hacking projects with, would he?
Please, of course he would, and he did. (And perhaps he still does...)
The whole "racial issue" was a NON-ISSUE. However, such things make exciting copy and garner many column inches so keep being rehashed. In fact, several years back when the issue first came up, the statement was cited as being either "Hang up, you nigger," or "Hey, SuperNigger," but no one was sure which was actually said. Funny how the wording changes to fit the slant of the "journalist" over time, isn't it?
I wish I could say for certain which was actually spoken, but alas, I was not privy to such things. Despite the hobby I supposedly so enjoyed according to Quittner, "doing conference bridges," I abhorred the things. We used to refer to them as "Multi-Loser Youps" (multi-user loops) and called their denizens "Bridge Bunnies." The bridge referred to in the story was popularzed by the callers of the 5A BBS in Houston, Texas. (A bulletin board, that I never even got the chance to call, as I had recently been raided by the Secret Service and had no computer.) Many people from Texas did call the BBS, however, and subsequently used the bridge, but so did people from Florida, Arizona, Michigan, New York and Louisiana. And as numbers do in the underground, word of a new place to hang out caused it to propagate rapidly.
To make any implications that such things were strictly a New York versus Texas issue is ludicrous, and again simply goes to show that a "journalist" was looking for more points to add to his (or her) particular angle.
This is not to say that I did not have problems with any of the people who were in MOD. At the time I still harbored strong feelings towards Phiber Optik for the NYNEX-Infopath swindle, but that was about it. And that was YEARS ago. (Even I don't harbor a grudge that long.) Even the dozen or so annoying phone calls I receied in late 1990 and early 1991 did little to evoke "a declaration of war." Like many people, I know how to forward my calls, or unplug the phone. Amazing how technology works, isn't it?
Those prank calls also had about as much to do with the formation of Comsec as bubble-gum had to do with the discovery of nuclear fission. (I'm sure if you really put some brain power to it, and consulted Robert Anton Wilson, you could find some relationships.) At the risk of sounding glib, we could have cared less about hackers at Comsec. If there were no hackers, or computer criminals, there would be no need for computer security consultants. Besides, hackers account for so little in the real picture of computer crime, that their existence is more annoyance than something to actually fear.
However, when those same hackers crossed the line and began tapping our phone lines, we were more than glad to go after them. This is one of my only rules of action: do whatever you want to anyone else, but mess with me and my livelihood and I will devote every ounce of my being to paying you back. That is exactly what we did.
This is not to say that we were the only people from the computer underground who went to various law enforcement agencies with information about MOD and their antics. In fact, the number of hackers who did was staggering, especially when you consider the usual anarchy of the underground. None of these other people ever get mentioned and those of us at Comsec always take the lead role as the "narks," but we were far from alone. MOD managed to alienate the vast majority of the computer underground, and people reacted.
All in all, both in this piece, and in the book itself, "MOD, The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace," Quittner has managed to paint a far too apologetic piece about a group of people who cared so very little about the networks they played in and the people who live there. In the last 15 years that I've been skulking around online, people in the community have always tended to treat each other and the computers systems they voyeured with a great deal of care and respect. MOD was one of the first true examples of a groupthink exercise in hacker sociopathy. Selling long distance codes, selling credit card numbers, destroying systems and harassing innocent people is not acceptable behavior among ANY group, even the computer underground.
There have always been ego flares and group rivalries in the underground, and there always will be. The Legion of Doom itself was FOUNDED because of a spat between its founder (Lex Luthor) and members of a group called The Knights of Shadow. These rivalries keep things interesting, and keep the community moving forward, always seeking the newest bit of information in a series of healthy one-upsmanship. MOD was different. They took things too far against everyone, not just against two people in Texas.
I certainly don't condemn everyone in the group. I don't even know a number of them (electronically or otherwise.) I honestly believe that Mark Abene (Phiber) and Paul Stira (Scorpion) got royally screwed while the group's two biggest criminals, Julio Fernandez (Outlaw) and Allen Wilson (Wing), rolled over on everyone else and walked away free and clear. This is repulsive when you find out that Win in particular has gone on to be implicated in more damage to the Internet (as Posse and ILF) than anyone in the history of the computing. This I find truly disgusting, and hope that the Secret Service are proud of themselves.
Imagine if I wrote a piece about the terrible treatment of a poor prisoner in Wisconsin who was bludgeoned to death by other inmates while guards looked away. Imagine if I tried to explain the fact that poor Jeff Dahmer was provoked to murder and cannibalism by the mocking of adolescent boys who teased and called him a faggot. How would you feel if I tried to convince you that we should look upon him with pity and think of him as a misunderstood political prisoner? You would probably feel about how I do about Quittner's story.
'Hacker' can just as easily be applied to "journalists" too, and with this piece Quittner has joined the Hack Journalist Hall of Fame, taking his place right next to Richard Sandza.
Quittner did get a few things right. I do have a big cat named Spud, I do work at a computer company and I do sell fantastic t-shirts. Buy some.
With Love,
Chris Goggans aka Erik Bloodaxe
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-- _______________________________________________________________________________ Paul Ferguson US Sprint tel: 703.689.6828 Managed Network Engineering internet: paul@hawk.sprintmrn.com Reston, Virginia USA http://www.sprintmrn.com