From davidsol@panix.com Mon Apr 28 15:22:14 1997
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 14:08:27 -0500
From: "David S. Bennahum" 
To: -=* WiZDoM *=- 
Subject: MEME 3.02

WiZDoM, FYI this is what the current issue of MEME looks like.  I am going 
to hold sending it to the end of the day, around 4:30 EST, so you can send 
me any comments, if you have them, otherwise I'll assume this is good to 
go...

Again, many thanx.

best,
db
[...here is the issue as it will look...]


-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
meme: (pron. 'meem') A contagious idea that replicates  like a virus, 
passed on from mind to mind. Memes function the same way genes and 
viruses do, propagating through communication networks and face-to-face 
contact between people.  Root of the word "memetics," a field of study 
which postulates that the meme is the basic unit of cultural evolution. 
Examples of memes include melodies, icons, fashion statements and phrases.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


MEME 3.02					
http://memex.org/meme3-02.html



"I was in after school doing make up work in my chem class as usual when I 
noticed one day my teacher, Miss Ricker, entering grades through  an Apple 
network using a fairly simple grade program.  She wasn't very  security 
minded and I used that as a window.  Through a little use of  "Social 
Engineering" I quick thought something up to ask her and walked  up and 
started asking her info right when she was entering her login and  
password into the mac.  I was looking down into my notebook and  pretended 
to write stuff as I asked her, what I really did was write  down her login 
and password."

	--The cybernetic education of a Hacker, in MEME 3.02

"Hackers."  The word means something different, depending on whom you ask. 
 People at CERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon 
University in Pittsburgh (http://www.cert.org/), might say, "a hacker is 
someone who breaks into computers."  My great-aunt, who recently turned 
91, associates hackers with people who drive taxis, from the days when a 
"hack" meant an unpleasant, or distasteful job.  Richard Stallman, founder 
of the Free Software Foundation, who was interviewed in MEME 2.04 
(http://memex.org/meme2-04.html),
calls himself a hacker. To him "hacking" means  developing software in an
open, collaborative environment, with a strong ethical sense of right and
wrong.  The New Hacker's Dictionary defines hacker as "someone who enjoys
exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their
capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the
minimum necessary."  
(http://murrow.journalism.wisc.edu/jargon/jargon_22.html#TAG831) Hacking, hackers, hack-- whatever the form, these words are the Rorschach 
test of cyberspace: what you think hacker means says as much about you as 
it does about hackers.  Are hackers good?  Are hackers bad?  It all 
depends on what definition of hacking you have.

In this issue of MEME, I send you one of the rare, lucid examples of a 
hacker-memoir from the breaking-into-computers variety of hacker.  The 
story is written by someone whose nom-de-hack is "Genocide," and is a 
founder of Genocide2600, a hacker-clan based in Alaska and the Northwest 
of the United States.  The piece came my way via another hacker, named 
WiZDoM.  He could well be the same person as Genocide, or not.  That's 
part of this game-- uncertainty.  

With hackers you can't be sure what's true, and what's not.  Nor does it 
really matter.  Hacker-tales are meant to be heroic.  They are yarns, and 
this one's one of the best I've received in a long, long time.  I think 
you'll enjoy it as well.  A brief cautionary note: those readers who take 
umbrage at "curse words" should be forewarned, Genocide likes to use them. 
 Spelling is left as received.

I make no moral judgment about this essay, other than to say breaking into 
computers is bad, and you shouldn't do it.  You, however, may want to 
discuss the issues raised by Genocide's essay, and you're invited to do so 
in the MEME discussion area, on Electric Minds:

http://www.minds.com/cgi-bin/EMPane.cgi?c=21&f=0&i=1&t=9

--dsb


Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 16:42:43 -0800 (AKDT)
From: -=* WiZDoM *=- 
To: The_World@universe.com
Cc: gen2600@aracnet.com
Subject: Thought you may want to read.



			The Genocide2600 Group History

			Writtin by Genocide 			4/1/97



	http://www.aracnet.com/~gen2600
	http://www.Genocide2600.com



	/* Some of the contents of this document may be fictional.  I 
	leave the reader to themselves to figure out what is true and not 
	true and what you will believe.  Since it covers possibly illegal 
	topics and events,

	I will not swear that any of the following content is true in any 
	way.  All events herein may or may not have happened, for obvious 
	reasons I must leave it up to the reader to choose whether or not 
	anything the read contains even a grain of truth.  As for the members, 
	we all know what really happened. */

---
A:	Intro

1.	What a hacker is.  What a hack is.
2.	Who we are.
3.	The Genocide2600 Manifesto
4.	How it started.
---

	A:	Intro

Well, people have been asking me for about a three years or so, how did

you start the Genocide2600 group...how did you get into hacking, how, how, 
how, how...etc...Well, I'm going to make a damn good effort to "tell 
all".  Right now it's April 1st, April Fools day of 1997, I've been a 
h/p/v/a/c'er for over 8 years now.

Today the Genocide2600 group is over 150people strong and we occupy 
Alaska, Washington, Oregon and are now expanding into the East coast area.

We have made many friends in our business/field and have tought many 
people.  

	Shout outs go out to:

	-Silicon Toad, Bishop, MODul8r, Jester, Tim Wilde, Xer0 Tolerance.

---
1.

First let me start by defining what I consider a hack, or a hacker.  

A "Hack":= 
	The act of doing an action when there is no known way to do it.
	The act of doing something that can't be done.
	The act of doing something that is totally against the odds.

A "Hacker":=
	Someone who can overcome, against the odds.
	Someone who can figure a way out of a game that can't be won.
	Someone who teaches others and spreads knowledge when no one 
	wants to hear it.
	Someone who doesn't quit.	
	Those who rise in the face of thier advesaries when they are 
	grossely outnumbered.

  You don't have to know how to "Crack a password file to be a hacker"

 "Use what you have got, and you will not need what you have not..."
 -Quote from "Around the world in 80 days"	

---
2.
Who we are.

	Let me describe what we are and what we do.

	We are simply a group of talented people.  Nothing more nothing 
less.  A group of people from all walks of life, from 14years old to 
52years old.  Some of the group don't even know what a password file is, 
hell some of them don't even know how to turn on a computer.  But the 
point is, everyone specializes in something and they offer thier 
services to the rest of the group.  We even have lawyers that assist 
us...should the need arise.  Everyone helps everyone else in whatever 
they do, however they can offer thier expertise in thier chosen field.  
Most of the group was chosen by my hand, but now our numbers have grown 
so large, I have appointed "heads" that manage areas, ie: one head per 
Alaska, Washington and now the East coast.  Most of our members choose to 
stay behind the viel, in other words they don't choose to be public thus 
they are protected and they speak to those of us who are in the open. 
There are a handfull of us that do choose to be public:

	-DoXaVG, BernZ, Astroboy, WiZDoM, Alexu, OvErLoRD and me - Genocide

	Some members of the group are long married and have kids, some 
are single, the point is, we could be your neighbor or your babysitter for 
all you know.  We could be the kid filling your gas in your car, it 
doesn't matter, all you really need to know is we are spreading, as fast 
as knowledge, faster then light, the speed of information.  

The Social Base of the Hacker:
The Genocide2600 Manifesto.

	People generally believe that hackers have a milicious intent as 
a general rule.  This, pardon my language is a crock of shit and 
obviously the idea/ramblings of the most generally uninformed people on
the net, I do admit that "YES" there are those that are out to only
destroy, and yes this group does occasionally add to that at a very small
percentage (this will be explained later), but for the most part, we are
in the persuit of knowledge.  I do not claim to be a 100% law abiding
person, nor does the group, obviously if you have heard of us, or even
after reading this you will be shaking your head at this point.

	As a whole that we believe in a collective good, we believe that
people who try to shut out other are people so others can't listen to them
or people who try to censor our actions/language/activities are the people
who deserve none of the above.  We cling to our most basic civil rights.
We also believe in retrobution for what is lost.  

	Eye for an eye mentality is spoken here, take back what is yours.  

	Bottom line is this, don't fuck with us, we do fuck back.

	Trying to turn peoples minds away from truth or trying to hide
whats REALLY going on is something that is not tollerable no matter
what and that therein is the true crime, not trying to rip the viel from
the sheeps eyes.  We're here to show you.  We aren't the criminals that
need to be put away.  We are the ones you should praise.

	People for all time have feared what they did not
understand...what they did not know.  You don't know us...you don't
understand us.

	Some have labeled us as terrorists, others as criminals.  Ok.
Sure.  Whatever.  Go ahead take the criminals and terrorists away that
fight for your rights.  After you have lost the battle because your
soldiers are gone at your own hand, you'll have no one to blame but
yourself.

	We fight with the greatest tools of all, our intellect and
	courage.

---
3.
How it all started.

	I started when I was 14, I had never heard of hacking, phreaking 
or any of the lot.  People really didn't pay much attention to me and 
that suited me just fine.  I was able to be more an observer then the 
person who screwed up and got nailed for something, I would shake my head 
and learn from how they fell.

	I guess I was what you would call now a phreaker then...I heard 
that funny sound when you put coins into the pay phones... found it 
curious and I bought a hand recorder for $20.00 and went to town, I 
called places I didn't even know about, because I could.  Me and my close 
personal friends dabbled in Blue Boxing once we discovered BBS' on our

brand new 1200baud modems.  I learned telephony from my cousin, the 
resident criminal in our town.  As I look back now, the first phreaker I 
ever knew was my cousin.  He tought me the magic of Ma' Bell and how it

could be turned on her.  I understood true telephony and hadn't even seen 
a computer.  I had met my first hacker.

	My phreaking died with the end of the blue box.  I gave up on it 
when those friends whome I surrounded myself with began to be picked off 
one by one by the local law.  I decided to survive I had to adapt, I knew 
what I was doing was generally thought of as criminal.  But I finally 
found a knowledge that made my mind hunger, made me stay up night after 
night.  I wanted to learn for the first time in my life.

	Although this hunger didn't lead me in the ways of most law 
abiding talented computer learners, it did teach me how to make it and 
not loose no matter what pieces of the art of survival.  

	I was in after school doing make up work in my chem class as 
usuall when I noticed one day my teacher, Miss Ricker, entering grades 
through an Apple network using a fairly simple grade program.  She wasn't 
very security minded and I used that as a window.  Through a little use of 
"Social Engineering" I quick thought something up to ask her and walked 
up and started asking her info right when she was entering her login and 
password into the mac.  I was looking down into my notebook and 
pretended to write stuff as I asked her, what I really did was write 
down her login and password.
	
	If I failed Chemistry, I wouldn't be able to graduate highschool 
because it was a required class.

	Later that day I had a speech class that I did the grades for on 
the same network on a similar mac.  I came in 10minutes early, just like 
normal and no one was in there.  I entered her name and password into the 
computer and accessed the class grades via her saved information in her 
personal directory on a restricted network hard drive.  I found my name 
and double clicked on it, there was all my work info, I added extra 
credit wherever I could.  On a test, I moved it from 63% to a 73%, it was 
just enough to boost my grade into the low "D" area.  I graduated almost 
a year later.  Right on time.

	My mother was going back to school to get her degree at the local 
college in Fairbanks Alaska when I really discovered computers.  I used 
her access (which, yes I got from a yellow sticky) to the local VAX to 
wet my lips with the taste of the computer age.  I explored and learned for 
about two to three years there in that simple student VAX lab, then they 
went to OSF/1 or Digital UNIX as most know it and something happened. 

This was a chance at a virgin system, the system administrator didn't 
know exactly how to use/manage a actual UNIX system vs. a VAX system. 

Before he had a chance to secure the server to any reasonable 
level, I had already discovered the unshadowed /etc/passwd file and in a 
matter of hours had also discovered my first version of crack.  My first 
successfull run of my now compiled crack was nearly my last.  I was not 
aware of the system requirements that crack used at that time.  It was a 
rather extensive resource hog and after I had set crack to run I put it 
in the background and hit "w" to see what everyone was doing.  The lab 
was full.  I had about 40 more seconds before it would finally be done 
with the passwd file when I hit "w" the last time.  I noticed the system 
admin doing a "w fstbo" I knew what was happening.  He saw I was using 
crack on the passwd file and he also knew I was only around the corner by 
looking at my terminal number.  I freaked, foregrounded the processes,
killed it and ran.

	I only looked back after I had completely left the building, 
there in the computer lab was the system admin talking to a student at my 
terminal.  My luck those computers were in such high demand.

	I loved that taste of adrenaline.  It was also in that room where 
I would meet Alexu, WiZDoM and Astroboy.  The first members of the 
Genocide2600 group, they didn't even know it yet, niether did I.

	The following year yielded many systems, mostely criminally 
broken into, but none were damaged other then our initial breakins.  I 
guess we were also lucky that Fairbanks Alaska was a great region to 
begin such a spree.  Two military bases, one Army and one AirForce were 
only a half hour in each direction, three highschools and a huge college 
with multiple Cray computers.

	Contests between us all, then about up to 10, began and we 
realized we had formed an actual group.  We wrote virii in assembly that 
would take each other out on the system while eating resources eventually 
crashing the computer.  If you won, it was your virii left standing.  

	One of the guys in the group "Malcom" had knowledge of a 2600 
magazine and brought up the idea of actually holding a 2600 group meeting 
on Fridays at 7pm like in the mag.  We all agreed and took turns teaching 
whomever would care to listen about computer security, telephony, media, 
cryptography, government whatever was our specialty.  This was my first 
year of College.  I was a freshman.

	We actually were recognized as a educational group by the 
University at that point and were encouraged to hold group meetings and 
givin areas where we could meet.

	The group continued on like that for about two years.  Usually after 
the 2600 meetings we would either find a secluded computer room or go  
over to one of the members houses and "try out" our newfound info, or 
trick, we scowered documented holes in unix operating systems looking for 
other holes that may have been similar.

	One Friday we held the proceedings at my house and planned a 
breakin.  I had a Pent75 with 16megs of ram (badass at that point in time) 
with a 1.275 gig hard drive.  The fastest computer of the group.  As 
standard proceedure we would dialup from an anonymous number in the 
"Great Hall" of the University onto "PolarNet" under a hacked PPP 
account.  After connect we proceeded to telnet to a student account at 
the local school network where we had already gotten root access.  We 
would do anything we really had to do from there usually, but sometimes 
we were lazy and would telnet straight out of "PolarNet" or "AlaskaNet".  

     That night We snooped a commercial server which we will call "moon" 
and found we could gain root access remotelly.  We got root access after 
approxamately 1hour of scanning the target system.  We however did not 
know that this was one of the foremost computer security systems in the 
U.S.  We gained root access at approxamately 11pm.  Upon entry it 
looked like a simple corperate computer, perhaps only a webhosting 
machine.  Upon closer inspection we noticed that it was a server designed 
for information storage that is used by system administrators to crack 
into systems in order to secure them.  This server also had programs used 
to crack systems, so we took them all.  We took the programs and the info 
they had within the system.  It was a total of about 14megs of it, we 
downloaded it to the local system which was through a T1 so it didn't 
take long, we broke connection to "moon" and proceeded to download the 
info from the local server to our computer.  Where we passed the info to 
eachother.  

	From then on we couldn't access that "PolarNet" account.

	We proceeded to share our new found info with the group members 
that friday night and brought disks full of info to give away at the 
price of the disks themselfs, the information was spreading.

	I had the Genocide2600 webpage up for almost a year at this 
point, and the attack on "moon" had yielded some incredible info, so the 
page grew amazingly fast.  As did the requests for it's removal by the 
system administration by of school.

	At this time the page was then mentioned by several German 
underground magazines at the address:

	http://icecube.acf-lab.alaska.edu/~fstbo

	With email going to:

	fstbo@aurora.alaska.edu

	The next Friday I recieved an official warning at my schools 
account to "please remove your page from the system" well...I changed it 
a little and hid it a little deeper on my account, and the requests 
stopped for a little while.

	Also that next Friday we had a visitor at the meeting.  This was 
not uncommon because us being a University group, anyone could come in 
and sit in.  At times like these we would obviously speak of nothing 
illegal.  This was, however, different from the rest of the "visits" by 
faculty and staff, this was a man in a navy blue suit.

	After the meeting was over and everyone was leaving he came up to 
me and asked if we could talk, I agreed, and we walked.  He informed me 
he was here to prove that I had broken into "moon" and that he would be 
heading up the investigation.  He also informed me that they suspected me 
because of my page, my affiliation of the group etc...

	I was honestly scared.  I called my mother and told her I had 
been approached by the FBI and that there was a possibility that I may be 
put away as a result.  She asked me if I did what they were accusing and I 
told her no.  Which turned out to be a damn good idea, because she spent 
over two hours speaking to them.

	They froze my account to view the contents and review what I had 
on the system.  They were looking for info that would point to me as the 
person who broke into the system, they found plenty.  The one thing that 
saved my neck was that they couldn't tie me to the broken account on 
"PolarNet" they could prove that the call came from the University but 
not where.  They could prove that I had info that was regarded as secret 
but they couldn't prove where I had gotten it.  I told them I got it off 
the internet.

	After the entire thing was done and overwith, it had taken up 
around 3 weeks and alot of missed classes on my part.  My account was 
unfrozen right in time for them to barage me with numerous requests to 
move the page off of the server again.  I burried it deeper into my 
account and the requests subsided again.

	After the FBI left, the group wasn't quite the same, around half 
the "not so into it" members left, probably out of fear for thier school 
status.  The school slammed the door on the school 2600 group on campus.  

	The remaining members and I formed the formal Genocide2600 group 
we didn't meet in any publically known places or in schedualed places 
after that.  We would just get together and decide where to go on the 
fly.  The 2600 group dropped from site and the Genocide2600 group went 
under viel, away from view after the papers stopped publishing stories 
about some loose internet terrorist at the University.

	A couple months later, I got a job at a local internet service 
provider, I had alot more time on my hands to surf the web and check out 
areas that I didn't know about and discovered news groups I was looking 
through the usual alt.2600, alt.warez etc... and noticed people peddling 
serial codes and numbers for software, this intrigued me and I added the 
"service" to my webpage.  The Genocide2600 group's page was the basic 
hub for serial numbers at that time and that is what probably what 
really put us on the map.  

	We made friends of other net going hackers by trading info, 
programs and knowledge.  The big web areas on the net were: SiliconToad, 
Materva, CandyMan and us, the Genocide2600 group.  CandyMan dissappeared 
and we have been asked by certain parties to not really say anything 
regarding his silence.  Materva is currently out of the scene and 
revamping his pages.  This left SiliconToad and our group of the 
original few on the web, pre the movie "Hackers" and the influx of 
everyone and thier dog wanting to be 3l33t3, er rather elite, sorry.

	I had plenty of free time while waiting for people to call at the 
ISP I worked at (ImagiNet) I discovered a strong regard to the freedom of 
speech, after all, it was what was keeping me from going to jail.

	Now there are those that abuse the theory of freedom of speech, 
some say it's us, the hacker, but what I am referring to are the child 
pornography dealers on the net.  I know it has been deemed illegal now, 
but it still goes on.  We were kicking the shit out of these people on 
AOL (the primary front) we would get onto AOL with our AOHell programs 
and start scanning the chat rooms, when we found someone whome we 
suspected or who was talking about it, we would flood them with email 
and kick them off, causing them to actually have thier connection break 
have to logon and have to deal with a paralyzed mailbox and as soon as we 
would see them, WHAM again, they would be gone again.  Sure we'd get   
caught and kicked off but that was half the fun, we were back on within 
10minutes.  What I always thought was entertaining were the agents AOL 
hired to look for hackers, they would be in the SAME room as us and the 
child porno runners and we'd attack the porno runner, who would the 
agent go after?  Us.  They would let the porno runner go 90% of the time 
without even a warning.  Sure we were breaking the law too, but we do 
have some ethics. >;)

	Enter BernZ, a young prospective hacker who wrote to me on one 
of my last days in Fairbanks, and asked me to help him learn the trade.  
Now, I get around 500 emails a week, from non-member sources and half of 
them are asking me the same thing.  But something was different this 
time.  He had a style that I liked.  He defined what it was he could do, 
I told him this was called "Social Engineering" or standard old 
manipulation.  I could hear him grin over the email.  He asked to join 
the group after a couple of weeks of correspondence and I finally asked 
him where he was.  East coast.  The group was primarilly a west coast 
operation.  East coast was a good idea though, both coastal areas were 
the biggest expanding computer related areas on the map.  So we decided 
that yes he should indeed head up the East Coast movement.

	And so he did and is.

	My job moved to Portland, Oregon, so I followed.  I needed a 
webserver so I moved it to it's current home:

	http://www.aracnet.com/~gen2600

	This is where our hits really began to grow.  Also our 
international image.  Magazines started printing our address as a 
contriversial/underground webpage.  We started turning heads.  Somewhere 
along the line someone out there (Cheyenne Software) noticed that we 
carried serial numbers on our page and the real flame storm started that 
day.  My account was frozen instantly.  They froze the account to 
review what was really on the page and see if there was really any 
serial numbers, which all of you know is bigtime bad.  I was facing 
around 2,000 counts of software piracy.  The Oregon chapter of the 
Genocide2600 group got together that night and cracked the server, 
moving any evidence of the serial numbers off of the system.  We got 
away again.

	Almost 3 days later I was at work at about 10am when my pager 
went off and told me to call home for messages, I did.  Found a message 
from someone only identifying themselfs as "Mr. Jerkins" and that I 
should give him a call.  I did, he said that he wanted to meet with me at 
my Gladstone Oregon home and that they would like to bring me somewhere 
to talk.  I freaked, I don't care what anyone says, if they say that the 
hair on the back of thier necks doesn't stand on end when they get a call 
from the FBI, they are lying.

	I called a emergency meeting at my house of the Genocide2600 
members from Oregon for later that night.  We probably wore that 
recording out listening to it, trying to find out if it was indeed a 
joke.  We finally decided, no it wasn't a joke.  So I called him back and 
setup a time.  

	They were five minutes early.  Mr. Jerkins was with 4 other men 
dressed in suits, all smiling.  They wanted to take me to some place I 
didn't recognize, which is no shock seeing I only had lived there 3 
months.  But I wasn't going to chance it.  I told them I wanted to go to 
Burgerville down the street at GlennEcho street.  Hey, I know it sounds 
corney, but if you have ever seen "MoHolland Falls" you would understand.

	We packed into a late model Ford Royal Crown Victoria and headed 
to the burgerhouse.  My leg was uncomfortable because of the Gerber 
MarkII boot knife pushing into my ankle and my right hand was on my switch 
blade the entire time.

	They didn't say a word while we got out of the car.  We walked 
into Burgerville and everyone behind the counter followed us with thier 
eyes and heads.  We had to look out of the norm, 4 suited guys all under 
6 foot and me, black leather jacket and jeans, and a black "Skellum" 
shirt that says, "Un-natural disaster, can you feel hells laughter?" 
and six foot tall.  We sat, I ate and we talked for almost one hour.

	Only two of the four talked.  Mr. Jerkins and someone else whome
I can't remember his name.  As soon as they opened thier mouths, I began 
to sweat.

	It seems I was dropped off at home as rapidly as they had picked 
me up.  I sat there at my computer, my hands shaking, dialed up and 
jumped into my email program, pine.  I wrote all members of the 
Genocide2600 group, in Alaska, Washington and Oregon and informed them, I 
had just been offered a job.

That was only a couple of months ago now and I sit here at midnight 
typing away and not even wanting sleep anymore.  In two weeks the 
Genocide2600 server goes up, the new dawn.

		http://www.Genocide2600.com

	-Genocide
	 Head of the Genocide2600 Group

	 		*Embrace Freedom*

		       gen2600@aracnet.com
[EOF]