The Link 12 CD Review

             *************
             * CD REVIEW *
             *     by    *
             *  NEPTUNE  *
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i have not bought any new music lately,
so i wasn't sure what to do for this
chapter. anyway, i eventually decided
to review a book, which is totally
irrelevant to the whole idea of a "cd
review", but then i'm a pretty irrelev-
ant sort of guy. and i know it's a book
you'll all be interested in, so......
            APPROACHING ZERO
 data crime and the computer underworld
----------------------------------------

which one of us could resist a book with
a title like that? i knew straight away
it was going to be good. it was only
published last year, so it's fairly
up-to-date; and it is the type of book
that drags you in right from the start.
i could hardly put it down: i read the
whole lot in one weekend, and i wouldn't
mind reading it again straight away, if
i had time. so i'd better tell you a bit
more about it...
basically the book traces the evolution
of the computer underworld from its very
origins to the present day. in case you
were wondering, it does NOT have any-
thing to do with the scene we are a part
of: it is more to do with the ILLEGAL
side of things: hackers, virus writers
etc.

surprisingly, the whole thing started
with an activity still known as "phreak-
ing": cheating the phone system to get
free calls. the hacker underworld grew
out of a society of experienced phreak-
ers. and as we know, this type of thing
is still going on amongst computer-based
societies such as ours: just ask telecom
about that 0014 number!

this is where the book begins its hist-
ory of the hacker underworld: with a
chapter called "phreaking for fun". it
tells of activities which many of us are
ourselves involved in: using freecall
numbers which are supposedly "secret",
the use of blue boxes (devices which
emulate the tones used by the phone
system); and other related amusements
such as free conference calls etc. the
phone system is described as a "giant
electronic playground", and some of the
technological feats which the more exp-
erienced phreakers accomplished are
incredible.

probably the most amazing was a stunt
executed by a phreaker known as captain
crunch. one of his specialties was
stacking up calls from one switching
office to another. in this case, he took
his equipment to a phonebooth in la,
where he dialled through to tokyo, which
connected him to india, and then on to
greece, from greece to south africa,
from south africa to south america, and
then to london, through to new york, and
finally to an la operator who dialled
the phonebooth NEXT TO HIS! when he
picked it up and yelled, he could hear
the echo of his voice on the other phone
as it travelled in a circle around the
planet. he even repeated the same trick
using a communications satellite to
bounce his voice through space, and back
to the booth next to him! of course, it
was totally useless, but it was a huge
thrill to achieve something like that.

gradually phreakers like captain crunch
came to know each other and work
together, often communicating with each
other through free conference calls.
and as the book points out, out of these
groups of "technological junkies" grew
the hacker society. as the authors put
it, "the two groups merged neatly into
one high-tech subculture".

so the book now describes the activities
indulged in by hackers: there are var-
ious stories about famous incidents in
which hackers have been involved. back
in 1984, a group of british hackers
actually managed to break into prestel,
a computerised information service run
by british telecom. pretty soon the
foreign exchange page of prestel listed
the exchange rate as "1 pound = 50
dollars"! the surprising thing was how
easy this was to do: when asked for a
four digit code, the hacker tried typing
"1234".... and was allowed straight into
the system.

however, the book details many hacker
activities which are far more serious
than simple pranks. there are plenty of
stories of hackers breaking into credit
card agencies and copying out numbers...
which they then traded with each other
and often ran up huge bills with their
purchases. there is the story of one of
the most notorious cases of hacking in
history, the "illuminati conspiracy",
in which us military computers were
pried for information which was then
sold to the russians. (incidentally, a
whole book has been written about this
particular case: "the cuckoo's egg", by
clifford stoll, and it's quite good too)
and finally there's the story of the two
hackers (whose identities are still
unknown), who claimed to have cracked
the computers responsible for a certain
bank's EFT, or electronic fund transfer.
they apparently carried on the scheme
every day for a week, and at the end of
that week they each earnt $66000 in
cash.

apart from hacking, the other main ill-
egal activity described in the book is
virus writing. as far as i'm concerned,
writing a virus is a pretty useless and
destructive thing to do: unlike hacking,
which as we've seen can be VERY profit-
able! but after reading this book, and
seeing the extent of the virus problem,
i'm glad i don't own a computer that's
prone to this type of threat. the worst
part is the sheer number of viruses:
there are just so MANY, and so many
different types, that it's hard to see
how we can fight the problem at all. the
book claims that even now, there would
be about 5 million virus-infected disks
in the world: and not only is this
number growing, but the RATE at which
it's growing is growing! the people who
make the programs which scan for viruses
can't keep up with the constant flow of
new infections: one programmer in bang-
kok has reportedly set up his computer
to produce SIX HUNDRED viruses every
hour!
one of the worst culprits is a bulgarian
virus writer known as the DARK AVENGER.
he appears to be one of the most intell-
igent - and most dangerous - of his
kind. all of his viruses are hard to
detect, highly contagious, and deadly:
usually doing something like wiping the
hard disk clean.

think for a minute about how a virus
scanner works. what it does is to search
disks for a small piece of data: a few
lines of code, or a text string... that
is known to be part of a certain virus.
if it finds that string, it knows that
the disk is infected.

what the dark avenger has done in one
of his most recent viruses is to produce
a bug that ENCRYPTS itself every time it
is spread to another disk. he claims
there are FOUR THOUSAND MILLION differ-
ent ways in which it can be encrypted.
this means that this virus is virtually
UNDETECTABLE.

the sections on viruses were probably
the scariest part of the whole book.
hacking and phreaking are mainly good,
clean fun (even if they ARE illegal):
but, if the virus problem is as serious
as this book claims, then we could be
headed for a state where important comp-
uters worldwide begin to suffer. it's
only a matter of time before one of
these bugs infect a military computer, a
computer at a hospital... the possibil-
ities are frightening.

anyway, with a few kilobytes of text i
really can't hope to describe this book
completely. i've outlined the main areas
it covers, and some of the more interes-
ting anecdotes it contains, and i hope
you're interested enough to read it
yourself. like i said, i found it one of
the best books i'd read in a long time.

so, some extra info:

APPROACHING ZERO: data crime and the
                  computer underworld.

authors: bryan clough and paul mungo.

publisher: faber and faber, 1992.

isbn: 0-571-16850-7 (with this number
                    you can order a copy
                    through most shops)
the bibliography also contains some
interesting titles:

THE HACKER'S HANDBOOK  hugo cornwall

       publisher: century communications

BEATING THE SYSTEM  owen bowcott and
                       sally hamilton
       publisher: bloomsbury

THE CUCKOO'S EGG    clifford stoll
(a good book)
              publisher: doubleday

and some other sources i've dug up which
you might like to see if you're inter-
ested in hacking:

HACKERS  by steven levy, 1984.

2600
the quarterly journal of the american
hacker.
po box 752
middle island, new york usa
11953-0752



REALITY HACKERS / MONDO 2000 (another
po box 40271                magazine)
berkeley
california usa
94704

all of these should make interesting
reading. that's all from me for now:
next month, i might actually review a
cd!                      /neptune.
----------------------------------------
PS. don't forget to send to my addy for
    swapping: also, i can now be con-
    tacted via email on internet:
 c9326542("at")wombat.newcastle.edu.au