closing the net.txt

黑客培训教程

			 "Closing the Net"
				by
			  Greg Costikyan

[Reproduced with permission from the January 1991 issue of _Reason_
magazine.  A one-year subscription (11 issues) is $19.95.  Copyright
1991 by the Reason Foundation, 2716 Ocean Park Blvd., Suite 1062,
Santa Monica, CA 90405.  Please do not remove this header.]

       Back in early February, newspapers across the country reported that
computer hackers were interfering with emergency calls over the 911
communications network.  The reports said the hackers had penetrated the
system using information from a secret computer document.
       The scare grew out of an indictment by a grand jury in Lockport,
Illinois.  On February 7, Craig Neidorf and Robert Riggs were indicted on
seven counts of wire fraud, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
of 1986, and interstate transportation of stolen goods.
       Prosecutors alleged that Neidorf and Riggs had conspired to steal,
using fraudulent methods, a confidential and proprietary document from the
Bell South telephone company.  This document, it was claimed, could allow
computer hackers to disrupt the 911 emergency network.
       The arrest of Neidorf and Riggs was only the beginning.	The Secret
Service, which has authority over crimes involving government computers,
had embarked on a vast, nationwide investigation of hacker activity:
Operation Sun Devil.


       Imagine the night face of North America, shining not with cities but
with lines of light showing the transmission of data.  Brightest are New
York City, the financial capital, and California, the technological
capital, with Washington, D.C., a close third.	The lines that crisscross
the country are telephone wires and cables, microwave transmissions, and
packet-switching networks designed for computer communication.	Here and
there, beams dart into space to reflect off satellites and back to earth.
       The computer networks in this country are huge.	The largest are
entities like UseNet and InterNet, which link every academic computing
center of any size and are accessible to every scientist, university
student, and faculty member in the nation.  The networks also include
government-operated systems, such as MilNet, which links military computers
that do not carry confidential information.  And there are the commercial
services, such as Dow Jones News/Retrieval, SportsNet, CompuServe, GEnie,
and Prodigy.  CompuServe is the largest of these, with half a million
subscribers.
       In addition to these massive entities are thousands of tiny bulletin
board services, or BBSes.  Anyone with a computer and a modem can start a
BBS; others can then call it up and use it.  BBSes offer, in miniature,
essentially the same services that the commercial nets offer:  the ability
to chat with others by posting messages to an electronic bulletin board and
the ability to upload and download software and text files.  There are more
than 5,000 BBSes in the United States, most of them operated for fun.  Few
charge their users.  In my local calling area alone, I know of BBSes for
writers, gamers, Macintosh enthusiasts, gays, and the disabled -- and I'm
sure there are others.
       The vast majority of BBSes deal with unexceptional topics.  But some
boards deal with questions of computer security.  These attract hackers.
       Naturally, hackers discuss their hobby:	breaking into computers.
Usually, however, bulletin board discussions are general in nature.
Hackers are not stupid, and they know that posting credit card numbers or
the like is evidence of criminal activity.  By and large, BBS discussions
rarely, if ever, contain information that would be illegal if published in
print form.  It's not illegal, after all, to tell your readers how to
commit illegal acts.  If it were, books like _The_Anarchist's_Cookbook_ and
_Scarne_on_Cards_ (and half the murder mysteries in print) would be banned.
       The laws dealing with electronic transmissions, however, are far
from clear.  And the methods used to enforce these vague laws set a
dangerous precedent for abridging freedom of speech.
       In the future, the Net -- the combination of all the computer
networks -- will be the primary means of information transmission, with
print publication merely its adjunct.  The Net will replace the press, and
users of the Net must enjoy precisely the freedoms enjoyed by the press.
If users of the Net have to worry about police surveillance, if censorship
is rife, if the state forbids mere discussion of certain topics -- then the
liberty for which the Founders fought will have been destroyed, not by war
or tyranny, but by mere technological change.


       From the government's point of view, the arrest of Neidorf and Riggs
did not end the threat to the 911 network.  The document they had stolen
was not a single piece of paper that could be returned to its rightful
owner.	It was an electronic document that Riggs had downloaded from a Bell
South computer.
       Riggs belonged to a hacker group called the Legion of Doom, whose
members shared information.  It was likely that others in the group had
copies of the 911 document.  Worse, Riggs had uploaded the 911 document to
a bulletin board service in Lockport, Illinois.  Neidorf had downloaded the
file from the Lockport BBS.  Anyone else who used the same BBS could have
downloaded it, too, meaning that dozens of people might have this dangerous
information.  Worse yet, Neidorf had published an edited version of the
Bell South document in an issue of his underground computer magazine,
_Phrack_.
       Unlike conventional magazines, _Phrack_ never saw a printing press;
it was distributed electronically.  After preparing an issue, Neidorf would
dispatch it, via various computer networks, to his address list of 1,300
names.	Any recipient could then upload the magazine to a bulletin board or
to one of the academic or commercial nets.  That meant thousands, perhaps
millions, of people had access to the information in the Bell South
document.
       We may imagine that the Secret Service was gravely concerned about
the potential threat to emergency services.  If not, then their subsequent
actions are hard to fathom.


       On March 1, 1990, employees of Steve Jackson Games, a small game
company in Austin, Texas, arrived at their place of business to find that
they were barred from the premises.  The Secret Service had a warrant, and
the agents conducting the search wouldn't let anyone in until they were
done.
       The agents ransacked the company's offices, broke a few locks, and
damaged some filing cabinets.  They searched the warehouse so thoroughly,
says company founder Steve Jackson, that afterward it "looked like a
snowstorm," with papers strewn randomly.  The agents confiscated three
computers, a laser printer, several pieces of electronic equipment
(including some broken equipment from a storeroom), several hard drives,
and many floppy disks.	They told Jackson they were seizing the equipment
"as evidence" in connection with a national investigation.
       Among the equipment seized was the computer through which S.J. Games
ran a BBS to communicate with customers and freelancers.  It had never been
a congregating point for hackers and was about as much a threat to the
public order as a Nintendo game.
       The loss of the equipment was bad enough.  Worse, the Secret Service
seized all existing copies -- on hard drives, floppy disks, and paper -- of
S.J. Games' next product, a game supplement called GURPS Cyberpunk.  The
loss of that data shot Jackson's publication schedule to hell.	Like many
small publishers, S.J. Games runs on tight cash flow.  No new products, no
income.  No income, no way to pay the bills.
       Over the next several weeks, Jackson was forced to lay off about
half of his 17 employees.  By dint of hard work, he and his staff managed
to reproduce the data they'd lost, mostly from memory.	S.J. Games finally
published GURPS Cyberpunk as "The Book Seized by the Secret Service."  It
has sold well by the (low) standards of the field.
       Jackson estimates the raid has cost him more than $125,000, a sum a
small company like his can ill afford.	(The company's annual revenue is
less than $2 million.)	He was nearly put out of business by the Secret
Service.
       What justified the raid and the seizures?  Apparently, this:  The
managing editor of Steve Jackson Games is Loyd Blankenship.  Blankenship
ran The Phoenix Project, a BBS of his own in the Austin area.  Blankenship
consorted with hackers.  He was fascinated by the computer underground and
planned to write a book about it.  He may or may not have once been a
hacker himself.  He certainly knew and corresponded electronically with
admitted members of the Legion of Doom.
       But perhaps Blankenship's worst luck was this:  An issue of
Neidorf's _Phrack_ magazine included an article titled "The Phoenix
Project."  As it happens, that article had nothing to do with Blankenship's
BBS of the same name.  But the Secret Service was well aware of the
contents of _Phrack_.  Indeed, the revised indictment of Neidorf and Riggs,
issued in July, cited the article by title.  The same morning that the
Secret Service raided Steve Jackson Games, agents awakened Blankenship and
held him at gunpoint as they searched his house.  They seized his computer
and laser printer as "evidence."
       Consider the chain of logic here.  Robert Riggs is accused of a
crime.	Riggs belongs to a group.  Loyd Blankenship is friends with other
members of the group, though not with Riggs himself.  Steve Jackson Games
employs Blankenship.  Therefore, the Secret Service does grievous financial
injury to Steve Jackson Games.	This is guilt by association taken to an
extreme.
       Neither Blankenship, nor Steve Jackson Games, nor any company
employee, has ever been charged with so much as spitting in a public place.
The Secret Service refuses to comment, saying only that S.J. Games was not
a target of the investigation.
       The company is now receiving legal help from the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, an organization devoted to promoting civil liberties in
electronic media.  The Secret Service has returned most -- but not all --
of the company's seized equipment.  Some of it is broken and irreparable.
The government has made no offer of restitution or replacement.