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You can go to jail warning: I usually fubar the names of ISPs in these guides because so many haxor types
attack any computer system I write about. Succeed.net is a real name. If you want to attack it, fine. Just
remember that we have boobytrapped the heck out of it. So if you attack, men in suits bearing Miranda cards
will pay you a visit.
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Why Should I Give a Darn? -- Ways Bystanders Get Hurt
To most people, hacker wars are Legion of Doom vs. Masters of Deception stuff. Interesting, but like
reading science fiction. But what does it have to do with your life? You may figure that if you never do
anything that gets some computer dweeb who thinks he s a haxor mad, you won t have a problem.
Yet chances are that you may already have been brushed by hacker war. Have you ever tried to login to
your online provider and couldn t make a connection? Did you call tech support and they told you they
were down for maintenance ? Tried to send email and gotten a message cannot send mail now. Please try
again later ? Sent email that disappeared into cyberspace without a trace? Gotten email back with a User
unknown or worse yet, host unknown message? Been unable to surf to your favorite Web site?
It could have been technical error (cough, cough). But it may have been more. A cardinal rule of online
services is to never, ever admit in public to being hacked. Only if a reporter outs them first will they
reluctantly admit to the attack. This is because there are cybernazi gangs that, when they hear of an online
service under attack, join in the attack.
Why cybernazis do this is not clear. However, what they accomplish is to make it hard for small companies
to compete with giants such as America Online. The giant online services can afford a large staff of
computer security experts. So with the cybernazis rampaging against the little Internet service providers, it is
not surprising that so many of them are selling out to the giants.
I don t have any evidence that the cybernazis are in the pay of giants such as AOL. In fact, I suspect
cybernazis are trying to drive the small competitors out of business solely on the general principle that they
hate freedom of anything.
It is common for hacker wars that start as a private disagreement to spill over and affect thousands or even
millions of bystanders.
For example, in Sept. 1996, syn flood attackers shut down the Panix ISP for several days. In Oct. 1997 the
ISP Succeed.net was shut down by a team of hackers that deleted not just Bronc's but also over 800 user
accounts. Many other ISPs have suffered shutdowns from hacker wars, often because the attackers object
to political views expressed on their Web pages.
On June 4, 1997, hacker wars made yet another quantum leap, shutting down the Internet backbone service
provider AGIS in retaliation for it allowing Cyberpromo and several other spam empires to be customers.
Tomorrow these skirmishes could pit nation against nation: power grids that serve hundreds of millions
failing in the dead of winter; air traffic control systems going awry with planes crashing; hundreds of
billions, trillions of dollars in banking systems disappearing without a trace. Pearl Harbor. Digital Pearl
Harbor. Famine. Years before we could climb out of an economic collapse as bad as the Great Depression.
You think this is a ridiculous exaggeration? Those of use who have been in the bullseye of the
cybernazis find this future easy to believe.
Winn Schwartau has been warning the world of this coming disaster since June of 1991. Someone must be
listening, because in September 1997 an industry group, formed in the wake of hearings by the US Senate s
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, appointed Schwartau team leader, Manhattan Cyber Project
Information Warfare/Electronic Civil Defense (see http://www.warroomresearch.com/mcp/ and
http://www.infowar.com).
Schwartau, in his book Information Warfare, tells us about some of the attacks the cybernazis have made on
his family. These attacks have included massive credit card fraud, tampering with his credit rating, turning
off his home power and phone, and even tampering with the local emergency services dispatch system so
that all ambulance, fire and police calls were directed to his home instead of to those who called 911 for
emergency help.
Those of us on the front lines of cyberwar have seen these attacks first hand. The cybernazis, as Schwartau
discovered, were willing to even risk the lives of people who had nothing to do with him.
Yes, we know hacker wars do to us, and we know what it does to you bystanders.
Why You May Get Hit
Hacker war happens to other people, right? Spammers get hacked. Hacker gangs pick fights with each other.
But if you behave politely around computer criminals, you are safe, right? OK, as long as you don t live in
the neighborhood of one of us Internet freedom fighters like Schwartau or me you are safe.
Wrong. Dead wrong.
Let s look at an example of a hacker war, one that doesn t seem to have any motivation at all. We re talking
the Internet Chess Club. Not exactly controversial.
In mid Sept. 1996 it was shut down by a syn flood attack in the aftermath of daemon9 publishing a program
to implement the attack in the ezine Phrack.
There have bene many bystanders hit with the wars against this Happy Hacker list. It all started with
cybernazis who wanted stop you from getting email from me. For example, on Dec. 6, 1996, someone had
written to the dc-stuff hackers email list (subscribe by emailing majordomo@dis.org with message
"subscribe dc-stuff) saying I think they (or maybe 'we') will survive, Carolyn's book. Rogue Agent replied:
I'm just doing my part to make sure that it doesn't happen. Ask not what the network can do for you, ask
what you can do for the network. We shall fight them in the routers, we shall fight them in the fiber, we shall
fight them in the vaxen... I'm an activist, and I won't stop my activ ism just because I know others will take it
too far.
On Dec 20 Rogue Agent wrote to me:
Ask Netta Gilboa; her magazine's in shambles and her boyfriend's in prison, while she lives in fear. Ask Josh
Quittner (author of Masters of Deception); for a while there, he had to change his (unlisted) phone number
literally every two weeks because of the nightly anonymous calls he was getting. Somehow they always got
the new number. Ask John Markoff (coauthor of the hacker best-seller Takedown); he can't even let people
know what his email account is or he gets spammed the next day.
This is not a threat... All I'm doing is telling you what's coming... you're playing with fire. There is a darker
element in my culture, and you're going to meet it if you keep going.
This is not a threat. Yeah, right. That s what most of the guys who threaten us say.
Five days later, while it was still dark on Christmas morning, the owner of the Southwest Cyberport ISP
where I had an account was woken by an alarm. His mail server was down. No one using that ISP could get
email any more. They had been hit by a massive mailbombing by someone styling himself johnny xchaotic.
jericho surfaced as the public spokesman for the attacker, claiming intimate knowledge of his techniques and
motivations.
The evening of Dec. 28, someone cracked the dedicated box that Cibola Communications had been
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