The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers (10 page)

another computer, he connected his machine to the one used by a civilian employee who worked opposite him. When the man wasn't there and it looked like maybe no one would be drifting into the back room for a while, Danny would commandeer the other computer, put it online, and set it to download some game or music he wanted to the server in the corner.

One day when he was in the middle of getting online for a download, somebody showed up unexpectedly in Danny's work area: a female guard -- always much more hard-nosed and by-the-rules than the men, Danny and William agree. Before he could release his control of the other machine, the guard's eyes widened: She had noticed the cursor moving! Danny managed to quit his operation. The guard blinked, probably fig- uring she must have imagined it, and walked out.

Solution William still vividly remembers the day when the solution to both of their Internet access problems occurred to Danny. The kitchen crew was allowed to take their meals in the officer's dining room after the officers had finished and cleared out. William would often sneak Danny in to eat the "much bet- ter food" in the dining room with him, and they could also talk privately there. "I can still remember the day I got him up there," William related. "He said, `I know how we can do it, B.' That's what they called me -- B, or Big B. And with it he explained to me what we were gonna do."

What Danny envisioned was putting together two pieces of a puzzle; the telephone lines to the outside world, available to him in the Agriculture Department, and William's computers in the kitchen. He proposed a way that would let the two of them use computers and get onto the Internet whenever they wanted, in freedom and safety.

We always sat in the back of the commissary playing games on the

computers. And I thought, "If we could sit down here and play

games, and nobody cares -- the guards don't care as long as we

get our work done -- then why can't we access the Internet from

right here?"

The Agriculture Office had computer equipment that was more up- to-date because, as Danny explained, other prisons around the state "razzed" to their server. His term "razzed" was a way of saying that com- puters at the other prisons were connecting by dial-up to the Agriculture Office server, which was configured to allow dial-up connections through Microsoft's RAS (Remote Access Services).

A key make-or-break element confronted the guys: modems. "Getting hold of modems was a major deal," William said. "They kept those pretty 56 The Art of Intrusion

tight. But we were able to get our hands on a couple." When they were ready to go online from the commissary, "What we would do was dial up on the inner-unit phone lines and razz into the Agriculture Department."

Translation: From the commissary, the guys would enter a command instructing the computer modem to dial a phone call over an internal phone line. That call would be received by a modem in the farm shop, a modem connected to Danny's server. That server was on a local network to all the other computers in the office, some of which had modems con- nected to external phone lines. With commissary and Ag Office com- puter networks talking to each other over the internal phone line, the next command would instruct one of those Ag Office computers to dial out to the Internet. Voil�! Instant access.

Well, not quite. The two hackers still needed an account with an Internet service provider. Initially, they used the login names and passwords of per- sonnel who worked in the department, "when we knew they were gonna be out of town hunting or something like that," says Danny. This infor- mation had been gleaned by installing on the other computers software called "BackOrifice," a popular remote monitoring tool that gave them control of a remote computer as if they were sitting right in front of it.

Of course, using other people's passwords was risky -- with all sorts of ways you might get caught. It was William this time who came up with a solution. "I got my parents to pay for us to have Internet access with a local service company," so it was no longer necessary to use other peo- ple's sign-on information.

Eventually they kept the Internet connection through the Agriculture Office going 24/7. "We had two FTP servers running down there down- loading movies and music and more hacking tools and all kinds of stuff like that," says Danny. "I was getting games that hadn't even been released yet."

Nearly Caught In their commissary headquarters, William hooked up sound cards and external speakers so they could play music or hear the soundtrack as they watched a downloaded movie. If a guard asked what they were doing, William told them, "I don't ask your business, don't ask mine."

I told [the guards] all the time there's some things in life that I can

promise. Number one, I won't have a pistol and I won't shoot any-

body in here. Number two, I will not do drugs and dilute my mind.

Number three, I'm not gonna have a pimp and I'm not gonna be

a pimp. Number four, I won't mess with a female officer.

I couldn't promise them that I wouldn't fight. I never lied to 'em.

And they respected my honesty and my forthrightness, and so Chapter 3 The Texas Prison Hack 57

they'd do things for me. You can get guards to do favors by

conversation.

Conversation rules the nation. You talk women out of their

panties, see what I'm saying, you talk men into doing what you

want them to do for you.

But no matter how clever a talker a prisoner may be, no guard is going to allow an inmate free reign with computers and outside phone lines. So how did these two get away with their hacker escapades in plain view of the guards? William explained:

We were able to do a lot of the stuff we did because they looked at

us like half wits. We're in the seat of redneck-dom, so the bosses

[guards] had no idea what we were doing. They couldn't even

fathom what we were capable of.

Another reason would have to be that these two inmates were doing com- puter work others had been paid to take care of. "Most of the people they had there that were supposed to be in the know about things like comput- ers," says William, "they just weren't capable, so they had inmates doing it."

This book is full of stories of the chaos and damage hackers can cause, but William and Danny were not bent on criminal mischief. They merely wanted to enhance their growing computer skills and keep themselves entertained -- which under their circumstances is hardly difficult to under- stand. It's important to William that people appreciate the distinction.

We never did abuse it or hurt anybody. We never did. I mean from

my standpoint, I deemed it necessary to learn what I wanted to

learn so I could go straight and be successful once I was released.

While the Texas prison officials remained in the dark about what was going on, they were fortunate that William and Danny had benign motives. Imagine what havoc the two might have caused; it would have been child's play for these guys to develop a scheme for obtaining money or property from unsuspecting victims. The Internet had become their university and playground. Learning how to run scams against individuals or break in to corporate sites would have been a cinch; teenagers and preteens learn these methods every day from the hacker sites and elsewhere on the Web. And as prisoners, Danny and William had all the time in the world.

Maybe there's a lesson here: Two convicted murderers, but that didn't mean they were scum, rotten to the core. They were cheaters who hacked their way onto the Internet illegally, but that didn't mean they were will- ing to victimize innocent people or naively insecure companies. 58 The Art of Intrusion

Close Call The two neophyte hackers didn't let the pleasurable distraction of Internet entertainment slow their learning, however. "I was able to get the books that I wanted from my family," says William, who felt his escapades were a form of sorely needed hands-on training. "I wanted to understand the intricate workings of a TCP/IP network. I needed that kind of knowledge for when I got out."

It was an education but it was fun, too -- you know what I'm

saying? It was fun because I'm an A-type personality -- I like

living on the edge. And it was a way to snub our nose at "the

man." Because they were clueless.

Besides the serious side and the fun side of their Internet use, Danny and William also got a few kicks from socializing. They started electronic friendships with some ladies, meeting them in online chat rooms and communicating by e-mail. With a few, they acknowledged they were in prison; with most, they neglected to mention the fact. No surprise there.

Living on the edge can be invigorating but always carries a dire risk. William and Danny could never stop looking over their shoulders.

"One time we got close to getting caught," William remembered. "One of the officers we didn't like because he was real paranoid. We didn't like to be online while he was working."

This particular guard called the commissary one day and found the line continually busy. "What made him freak out was that one of the other guys working in the kitchen had started a relationship with a nurse in the prison clinic." The guard suspected that the prisoner, George, was tying up the line with an unauthorized call to his nurse fianc�e. In reality, the phone line was tied up because William was using the Internet. The guard hurried to the commissary. "We could hear the key in the gate, so we knew somebody was coming. We shut everything down."

When the guard arrived, William was entering reports on the computer as Danny innocently looked on. The guard demanded to know why the phone line had been busy for so long. William was ready for him and reeled off a story about needing to make a call to get information for the report he was working on.

We couldn't have gotten an outside line from back there, and he

knew it, but this guy was just super-paranoid. He thought that

somehow we had helped George call his fianc�e. Chapter 3 The Texas Prison Hack 59

Whether he believed William's story or not, without proof the guard couldn't do anything. George later married the nurse; as far as William knows, he's still in prison and still happily married.

Growing Up How does a youngster like William -- a kid from a stable home with car- ing, supportive parents -- land in prison? "My growing up was excellent, man. I was a C student but very smart. Never played football and all that stuff, but never got into any trouble until I went off to college."

Being raised Southern Baptist was not a positive experience for William. Today, he feels that mainstream religion can harm a young person's self- esteem. "You know, teaching that you're worthless from the get-go." He attributes his poor choices in part to the fact that he had become con- vinced he couldn't be successful. "You know, I had to gain my self-respect and self-esteem from somewhere and I gained it from people fearing me."

A student of philosophy, William understood what Friedrich Nietzsche meant by a "metamorphosis of the spirit":

I don't know if you've ever read any Nietzsche, but he spoke of the

camel, the lion, and the child. And I was really a camel -- I did

what I thought would make people happy to gain self-worth from

people liking me, rather than me liking myself and carrying

myself on my own merit.

Despite this, William made it through high school with an unblemished record. His troubles started after he enrolled in a junior college in the Houston area, then transferred to a school in Louisiana to study aviation. The instinct to please others turned into a need for respect.

I saw that I could make money selling Ecstasy and stuff. People

feared me 'cause I was always armed and would always fight,

and you know, just live life like an idiot. And then got myself in

a situation of a drug deal gone bad.

He and his customer ended up rolling around, struggling for control. The other guy's buddy showed up; it was two against one, and William knew he had to do something desperate or he would never walk away from there. He pulled out his gun and fired. And the man was dead.

How does a boy from a strong, stable family face this hard reality? How does he share the dreadful news?

One of the hardest things in my life to do was tell my mother that

I did it. Yeah, it was very hard. 60 The Art of Intrusion

William had a lot of time to think about what landed him in prison. He doesn't blame anyone but himself. "You know, it was just the choices I made because my self-esteem was wrecked. And it wasn't nothing that my parents did because they brought me up the way that they thought they should."

For Danny, everything went wrong in a single night.

I was just a stupid kid. The night of my eighteenth birthday, they

gave me a big party. On the way home, a couple of the girls

needed to use the restroom, so I pulled off at a restaurant.

When they came out, they had a couple of guys following them

and harassing them. We piled out of the car and there was a big

fight, and before everything was over, I ran over one of them.

And then I panicked and we drove off. I left the scene.

It was the Richard Nixon/Martha Stewart syndrome at work: not being willing to step up and take responsibility for his action. If Dan hadn't driven off, the charge would most likely have been manslaughter. Leaving the scene compounded the mistake, and once he was tracked down and arrested, it was too late for anyone to believe it might have been accidental.

Back in the Free World William was a quarter of the way through a 30-year sentence, but he wasn't having any success on his annual visits before the parole board. His talent for taking the initiative again came to the fore. He began writ- ing letters to the parole board, one letter every two weeks, with copies addressed individually to each of the three board members. The letters detailed how constructive he was being: "What courses I was taking, the grades I was getting, the computer books I was reading, and so on," showing them that "I'm not frivolous and I'm not wasting my time."