Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker by William L. Simon, Kevin Mitnick, Steve Wozniak Read Free Book Online Page A
Tags: BIO015000
“Mr. Micah Hirschman, please turn onyour stewardess call button.” When he did, a stewardess came to him and said, “The pilot wants to speak with you in the cockpit.” You can just imagine his surprise.
He was led to the cockpit. The copilot spoke into the radio to say Micah was present, then handed him a microphone. A voice over the radio said, “This is FBI Special Agent Robin Brown. The Bureau has learned that you have left the country, headed for France. Why are you going to France?”
The whole situation made no sense. Micah gave his answer, and the agent grilled him for a few minutes. It turned out the Feds thought that Micah and I were pulling off some Stanley Rifkin–style big computer hack, maybe setting up a phony transfer of millions from a U.S. bank to some other bank in Europe.
It was like a scene from a caper movie, and I loved the thrill of it.
After getting a taste of that kind of excitement, I was hooked—and I hungered for more. In high school my brain was so occupied with hacking and phreaking that I had little attention or motivation left for the classroom. Happily, I discovered a solution that was one big step better than becoming a dropout or waiting for the Los Angeles School District to show its displeasure by kicking me out.
Passing the GED exam would give me the equivalent of a high school diploma without wasting any more of my time or my teachers’ time. I signed up for the exam, which turned out to be way easier than I had expected—about an eighth-grade level, I thought.
What could be better than becoming a college student studying computers, working toward a degree while feeding my insatiable thirst for computer knowledge? In the summer of 1981, at the age of seventeen, I enrolled at Pierce College, a two-year school in nearby Woodland Hills.
The school’s computer-room manager, Gary Levi, recognized my passion. He took me under his wing, giving me special status by allowing me to have a “privileged account”—on the RSTS/E system.
His gift had an expiration date. He left the school; not long after, the Computer Science chair, one Chuck Alvarez, noticed I was logged in to a privileged account and told me to sign off immediately. I explained that Levi had given me permission, but it didn’t wash; he booted me from the computer lab. My dad went in with me for a meeting with Alvarez, whooffered as an excuse, “Your son already knows so much about computers that there is nothing Pierce College can teach him.”
I dropped out.
I had lost my access to a great system, but in the late 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, the world of personal computing went through a dramatic transition period, bringing the first desktop machines that included a monitor or even had one built in. The Commodore PET, the Apple II, and the first IBM PC began to make computers a tool for everyone, and to make computers much more convenient for heavy users… including computer hackers. I couldn’t have been happier.
Lewis De Payne had been my closest hacking and phreaking partner just about from that first time he called and said he wanted to get together and learn from me. Even though he was five years older—which at that stage of life makes quite a difference—we shared the same boyish exhilaration from phone phreaking and hacking. And we shared the same goals: access to companies’ computers, access to passwords, access to information that we weren’t supposed to have. I never damaged anyone’s computer files or made any money from the access I gained; as far as I know, Lewis didn’t either.
And we trusted each other—even though his values were, well, different from mine. A prime example was the U.S. Leasing hack.
I got into U.S. Leasing’s system using a tactic that was so ridiculously easy I should have been embarrassed to try it. It went like this.
I would call the company I’d targeted, ask for their computer room, make sure I was talking to a system administrator, and tell
He was led to the cockpit. The copilot spoke into the radio to say Micah was present, then handed him a microphone. A voice over the radio said, “This is FBI Special Agent Robin Brown. The Bureau has learned that you have left the country, headed for France. Why are you going to France?”
The whole situation made no sense. Micah gave his answer, and the agent grilled him for a few minutes. It turned out the Feds thought that Micah and I were pulling off some Stanley Rifkin–style big computer hack, maybe setting up a phony transfer of millions from a U.S. bank to some other bank in Europe.
It was like a scene from a caper movie, and I loved the thrill of it.
After getting a taste of that kind of excitement, I was hooked—and I hungered for more. In high school my brain was so occupied with hacking and phreaking that I had little attention or motivation left for the classroom. Happily, I discovered a solution that was one big step better than becoming a dropout or waiting for the Los Angeles School District to show its displeasure by kicking me out.
Passing the GED exam would give me the equivalent of a high school diploma without wasting any more of my time or my teachers’ time. I signed up for the exam, which turned out to be way easier than I had expected—about an eighth-grade level, I thought.
What could be better than becoming a college student studying computers, working toward a degree while feeding my insatiable thirst for computer knowledge? In the summer of 1981, at the age of seventeen, I enrolled at Pierce College, a two-year school in nearby Woodland Hills.
The school’s computer-room manager, Gary Levi, recognized my passion. He took me under his wing, giving me special status by allowing me to have a “privileged account”—on the RSTS/E system.
His gift had an expiration date. He left the school; not long after, the Computer Science chair, one Chuck Alvarez, noticed I was logged in to a privileged account and told me to sign off immediately. I explained that Levi had given me permission, but it didn’t wash; he booted me from the computer lab. My dad went in with me for a meeting with Alvarez, whooffered as an excuse, “Your son already knows so much about computers that there is nothing Pierce College can teach him.”
I dropped out.
I had lost my access to a great system, but in the late 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, the world of personal computing went through a dramatic transition period, bringing the first desktop machines that included a monitor or even had one built in. The Commodore PET, the Apple II, and the first IBM PC began to make computers a tool for everyone, and to make computers much more convenient for heavy users… including computer hackers. I couldn’t have been happier.
Lewis De Payne had been my closest hacking and phreaking partner just about from that first time he called and said he wanted to get together and learn from me. Even though he was five years older—which at that stage of life makes quite a difference—we shared the same boyish exhilaration from phone phreaking and hacking. And we shared the same goals: access to companies’ computers, access to passwords, access to information that we weren’t supposed to have. I never damaged anyone’s computer files or made any money from the access I gained; as far as I know, Lewis didn’t either.
And we trusted each other—even though his values were, well, different from mine. A prime example was the U.S. Leasing hack.
I got into U.S. Leasing’s system using a tactic that was so ridiculously easy I should have been embarrassed to try it. It went like this.
I would call the company I’d targeted, ask for their computer room, make sure I was talking to a system administrator, and tell
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