Domination 08 Hack - Phreak

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                               *  Hack and Phreak  *
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Welcome back to the hack and phreak chapter, which
has laid somewhat absent from recent editions.
This edition, and hopefully from now on it will be back
hopefullyon a permanent basis.
This time, as promised in last edition, it is presented
by none other than Kingfisher of Triad.
Without any further delay, over to KF..
 
Me and Cia:
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At about 11:00 hours AM local Swedish timethe 19th of
September 1996, a Swedish hacker broke into the CIA
webserver and altered the homepage of the
American military intelligence agency.
Central Intelligence Agency, and changed it's name into
Central Stupidity Agency, and at the top of the page
was written "We only got one thing to say: Stop lying
Bo Skarinder".
The hacker signed the message with the group alias
"Power Through Resistance".
The heading alluded to state-attorney Skarinder's
prosecution of the informal Swedish hacker
organization SHA, Swedish Hackers Association, put on
charges for breaking into computer DIAB, Telia
(Sweden's biggest phone company), KTH (the Royal
School of higher technical education), the Swedish
Agency for Administrative Development and some other
companies, and for the usual At&t credit card frauds.
 
about 15:00 hours same day, i recieved e-mail from
Svenska Dagbladet (short: SvD - major Swedish
newspaper): "call us back right away".
I did so, still unaware of the incident having taken
place at all.
At SvD Lennart Lundquist had heard of the intrusion
via CNN, who after recieving an anonymous hint made
the incident one of their headlines of the day.
After that he and the assistant Webmaster at SvD
attempted some Sherlock Holmes status in order to
find out who was behind all this.
At a swift glance of the hacked homepage he noticed
3 links to the underground server.
* Flashback *, 3 links to a certain hacker group
called TRIAD, and 1 link each to "HACKERZ.ORG" and the
adult magazine "Playboy".
So he started digging into things with this, as his only
available data.
 
To obtain further information he entered the IRC
channel #flashback on Euronet, a realtime chat for
the underground magazine bearing the same name.
Without telling his journalistic intentions, he started
asking about the hack.
A not so very in-the-know regular, who also just
heard about the hack, said something about "Triad
possibly involved".
No sooner said than done, this was a clue. Lennart
started working following up the hypothesis that
TRIAD were responsible for the hack. After all, they
we're linked at the cracked homepage, weren't they?
The person in charge of the Triad homepages
happens to beme. This is easy to find out by simply
checking the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of the
page, and if you enter the page you can easily find my
full name (Linus Walleij), complete with mail address and
all. As i use a Unix-shell anyone can easily investigate
some few facts about me, as when i was last logged in,
using the Unix-command, 'finger'.
 
When Lennart did this, he found out that i had been
logged in at about midnight local Swedish time. (I had
been at a terminal reading mail and chatting on IRC.)
CIA had stated that the intrusion had been committed
inbetween 24:00 Swedish time (18:00 local American
time, as the personal left work at the company hosting
CIA webserver) and 13:30 (7:30 local American time,
when work resumedand the alterations discovered).
Somehow he misinterpreted this as a statement that
the intrusion actually "took place" at midnight, and was
discovered half past one PM.
 
Then he could sum up the following premises:
1: The intrusion occured midnight, local Swedish time.
2: Linus Walleij was logged on at this time.
3: Triad were linked on the hacked pages. Triad are
"hackers".
4: A someone at the IRC-channel #flashback makes a
wild guess that Triad have something to do with it.
5: Linus Walleij maintains the Triad homepages and
also bears the login name and e-mail address "Triad".
 
Suspicion:
To sum it all up: all indicative "evidence" pointed out
tht Triad through Linus Walleij were responsible of the
intrusion. This was the hypothesis i was confronted
with as i called up SvD and got to talk with Lennart's
assistant.
However: an important part of this jigsaw puzzle was
missing -- expert knowledge of the field.
As you know, the very word "hacker" can mean
anything inbetween "computer enthusiast" and
"criminal computer spy". Myself i have nothing against
being called "hacker" in the first sense, and i guess
everybody in Triad are hackers in that sense. To be
precise, we are a bunch of Commodore C64 enthusiast
active in Sweden since 1986. As far as i know, nobody
in Triad has ever hacked into any computer system --
if for nothing else, than for the simple reason that
C64-programming doesn't bring skills like that.
Anyone with true knowledge of Swedish hackers would
have known this.
 
A couple of days later the actual responses, that is
"Power Through Resistance" themselves, went public
and declared that the crack was done at about 11:00
AM, local Swedish time -- just a few hours before it
was discovered.
None of this was known to SvD, who without asking
printed my name in the newspaper and exposed me in
public as a member of the suspect association "Triad"
probably still convinced that i had a part in this, but
hindered from saying so in public by possible
defamation charges. Thus they did second best and
handed out my name, which is extremely rude in the
case of civil citiziens unwillingly exposed in public light,
which i -- i guarantee -- indeed was.
I might need to point out that this is in no way illegal
- just utterly bad manners, probably arousen by
sensationalism.

Another quoted person however, they didn't name:
the hacker-expert at Vetenskapsjournalisterna
(a company for Scientific Journalism) who was instead
named "a person with good contactsamong Swedish
hackers". I might add that "I" was the person who
hinted SvD to call this person up as i noticed they
weren't very experienced in the hacker business.
(They also told me this: "This is all new to us.)
 
Second Thoughts:
Well, what does all this matter, after Dagens Nyheter
(the largest  Swedish newspaper), Dagens Eko (the
main Swedish news radio network), IT-nyheterna (the
biggest Swedish online-paper) and Internet Guiden
(the major Swedish Internet magazine) all stood up
behind me, printed my version and sort of made the
public denial for SvD (as they wouldn't do it themselves)
 
Well, for me it meant a lot of undeserved attention,
plus an aura of mysticism which seems to glow around
me in Sweden's autumn darkness. Never before have
so many journalists requested my "expertise"
concerning hackers (which i somehow have -- in any
case compared with some certain others) and never
before have i had such great possibilities of
publishing my little scriptures as i have now.
That7s a dream for a 23-year-old guy who only two
years ago, attended courses in creative writing.
After things calmed down i named the whole event
involving CNN, Svd, and all the other mass media my
"15 minutes of Fame" a term coined by Visual artist
Andy Warhol. After all it's a bit of fun looking back
upon,  though i was terribly upset as it was all going on.
 
 
Power Through Resistance followed up the hack by
breaking into Internet Guiden's homepage, making
nasty remarks regarding their "security expert" all
over the index page, an event they chose to silence.
CIA, well, they now announce that all calls are being
logged, and that it is an indictable crime to alter the
contents of their webspace. Ofcourse they are
talking American law here -- Swedish authorities still
don't give a damn what intrusions are being made by
Swedish hackers in the USA, as far as it doesn't harm
our diplomatic relations. Power Through Resistance,
who or whom it may be, can feel all comfortable, at
least what concerns the police.
Military intelligence might show some interest, and even
open up possibilities for well-paid work according to
the principle "if you can't beat'em, join 'em"
 
Ofcourse this is a horrible pity for CIA -- this Uncle
Sam's terror-apparatus, which apart from publishing
webpages also deliver weapons to the  freaked-out
assasins "Contras" in the Nicaragua and the
FMLN-guerilla in El Salavador, supports terror deeds
in Cuba and the Middle East, keeps the drugdealers
of Costa Rica afloat and so forth.
I must truly admit how hard it is to go to sleep at night
knowing that this formidable decent organization
suffered from evil Swedish hackers. But i guess that's
the can you have to carry in the struggle to maintain
USA as a primary anti-communist world-police force.
A thankless task indeed. (This is called sarcasm.)
 
The Swedish Hackers Association, playing only a minor
part this time, were sentenced to conditional
sentences and fines they can easily afford, keeping in
mind their well-paid works as IT-experts for huge
companies and authorities. One member was freed of
all charges.
And SvD... Well, i've got nothing to add in. It would be like
shooting a sitting duck.
 
                                   XXXXXXXXXXXXXX  AKA  Kingfisher / Triad