NYT on MOD

[John Young]

   The New York Times 
   January 26, 1995, p. C17 
 
 
   Books of the Times 
 
 
   Kids or Conspirators: How Hackers Got Caught 
 
   MASTERS OF DECEPTION  
   The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace 
 
   By Michelle Slatalla and Joshua Quittner  
   225 pages. HarperCollins Publishers. $23. 
 
 
   By Chirstopher Lehmann-Haupt 
 
 
   It's difficult to feel much besides amused admiration for 
   the computer hackers spotlighted in "Masters of Deception: 
   The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace," by Michelle Slatalla and 
   Joshua Quittner, a married couple who are reporters for 
   Newsday. After all, what mainly characterizes the gang of 
   adolescents they write about is high intelligence, infinite 
   resourcefulness and boundless curiosity. 
 
 
   Among the Masters of Deception, as the gang is called, 
   there is Paul Stira, nicknamed Scorpion, who as a child 
   learned to program a computer even before he had his hands 
   on one and went on to master the art of cracking 
   computer-game copy-protection codes. Mark Abene, a k a 
   Phiber Optik, was so driven to understand how machines work 
   that he explored and mastered the most sophisticated of the 
   telephone company's computers. 
 
 
   Eli Landopoulos, or Acid Phreak, after helping lure Phiber 
   Optik away from a rival cyberspace gang, Legion of Doom, 
   was moved to write "The History of MOD" for other hackers 
   to envy. And John Lee, or Corrupt, found computer hacking 
   a better way to survive than running with a street gang. 
 
 
   It is difficult for the reader of this book to look upon 
   these and other members of the gang as criminals. Yet they 
   were eventually charged by a New York grand jury with 
   conspiring to "gain access to and control of computer 
   systems in order to enhance their image and prestige among 
   computer hackers," among other counts. And they ended up 
   pleading guilty and serving jail terms, which they have 
   completed. 
 
 
   In telling their stories, Ms. Slatalla and Mr. Quittner 
   have almost as hard a time finding a continuous thread as 
   the Government did building a coherent case against the 
   hackers. The authors begin by describing a crash of the 
   AT&T long-distance system that occurred on Jan. 15 1990. 
   The authors write of the gang's reaction to this crisis: 
   "No self-re-specting computer hacker would ever destroy 
   anything. No hacker would ever purposely hurt the phone 
   system. Paul just wanted to look around. He just wanted to 
   learn more. He'd know it if he'd done something bad. 
   Wouldn't he?" 
 
 
   The lively narrative then backtracks to tell how the 
   hackers formed their gang the previous year. This sequence 
   creates the impression that the gang will turn out to have 
   caused the crash, an expectation that is buttressed by 
   other evidence that Ms. Slatalla and Mr. Quittner describe. 
   The boys crashed smaller systems they invaded, like the 
   Learning Link, a collection of electronic bulletin boards 
   for educators and librarians that is owned by Channel 
   13/WNET, New York City's public broadcasting television 
   station. 
 
 
   The gang left the message "Happy Thanksgiving you turkeys, 
   from all of us at MOD," which prevented access to the 
   bulletin board's files. As the authors write, "the Learning 
   Link crash would become the pivotal event in the case that 
   the Federal Government was slowly building against the boys 
   in MOD." The process was slow because the investigators had 
   to weigh the need for evidence against the risk of damage. 
   As the authors write: "It was kind of like having a 
   tarantula crawl up your leg. If you shook it off too fast, 
   it would escape into the wall. But if you waited too long, 
   you got bitten." 
 
 
   But when, about half way through the book, the narrative 
   arrives back at the AT&T crash of 1990, we learn that the 
   failure was traced not to anything the hackers did but to 
   what the author's describe as "a routine update of the AT&T 
   software." True the gang did much that was wrong like 
   creating and using unbillable telephone accounts, 
   trespassing in cyberspace to make long-distance calls, 
   looking up private information and using it to harass other 
   hackers and stealing and selling other people's credit card 
   numbers. 
 
 
   In short, certain members crossed the line between hacking 
   and cracking and thereby violated the hacker ethic, which 
   holds, in the authors' words: "Thou shalt not destroy. It's 
   O.K. to look around, but don't hurt anything. It's good 
   enough just to be here." 
 
 
   Yet the fact remains that the gang did not cause the AT&T 
   crash. And the worst that was done appears to have happened 
   at a remove from what Mr. Abene was responsible for and 
   after Mr. Stira had more or less withdrawn from hacking. 
   Yet these two received the stiffest sentences. Mr. Abene, 
   the last to complete his sentence, was released in the fall 
   of last year. So one has the impression that what mattered 
   to the Government was less the mischief done than the 
   potential for mischief. 
 
 
   What the slightly jumbled narrative does capture 
   effectively is the contrast between the manic glee of the 
   hackers at the prospect of a vast new unexplored world to 
   conquer, and the Government's nervous disapproval and 
   understandable need to set limits on a mysterious new 
   frontier. The authors try to present both points of view. 
   They don't reveal where their sympathies lie until the last 
   line of their book. Here, after describing the meeting of 
   a hackers' club as "the milling clumps of boys" who "are 
   the picture of entropy, of disorganization, of isolated 
   growing pains and undeveloped social skill," they write 
   with tongue in cheek as their concluding paragraph: 
 
 
   "This is the conspiracy." 
 
 
   End