Hackerville

Is it possible to start a nuclear war by whistling some secret patterns in the pay phone? Whistling what? That is just stupid of someone to say things like that.
I have the same reaction when I first read that anything of that sort is humanly possible. Enter Kevin Mitnick, the very first of the breed of hackers who with his intractable ways of hacking had cost various companies and government organizations millions of dollars. Kevin practiced the art of hacking when it was not even illegal. In those times, once you hack some company there is no need to give the interview and the company you hacked hire you based on your hacking skills. Bill Gates got his first job assignment by hacking. Wow.

In October 2004, I was working in Research Triangle Park (RTP) the so called silicon valley of the East Coast. Raleigh, Durham & Chapel Hill (all in the state of North Carolina) are the 3 vertices of RTP. I was working on a 3 months assignment with this telecommunications company based in Raleigh when I first read about Kevin. At first I was amazed with the gift of hacking that Kevin has and on second thought I asked myself why he did not use these skills to his advantage to become a software czar or someone like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs? I mean, it was 1970 the start of the computer and internet revolution and anybody with extraordinary skills in computers can gain the benefits from it.

In the late 1970s, Kevin grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles. This was the peak of the computer revolution and anyone associated with it was getting proliferated. Kevin was no different when it comes to taking up bad habits. He does have a checkered past and his parents were divorced. In 1979, Kevin was 17 years old, still in high school when he first started hacking. Kevin started his hacking adventures by phone phreaking. Phone phreaking is nothing but cracking or tweaking the phone network to made long distance calls, anonymous calls and gather the information (like name, age, sex & telephone number) about the individuals registered with the particular telephone network. Kevin used to work as ham/radio operator during high school and got introduced to phone phreaking by one of his friend’s. The dad of this friend used to work as a ham operator. According to Kevin this friend of his can do amazing stuff with the telephone network and this attracted Kevin towards this unusual craft. During the late 1970s most of the telephone companies are making a switch from the traditional electro mechanical circuitry to electronic systems and this is where they need the front end computer hooked to the electronic system to monitor it. This is how Kevin transitioned from phone phreaking to actual computer hacking. To continue his nefarious practice of phreaking he now has to learn the art of computer hacking as computers became the primary interface to the telecom network. Kevin was able to interface his ham radio with the telephone system and dial into computers and access them through the touch-tone pad. Once into the system he can retrieve all the vital information from the computer.

The breaking of Bell’s COSMOS (Computer System for Mainframe Operations) in the year 1981 was one of the significant hacks carried out by Kevin. Back then COSMOS was the primary system for the telecom companies to store and maintain all the customer and individual company databases. This was first criminal offense recorded against Kevin and he was reprimanded and sentenced for 3 months. His next arrest came in 1983 when he was caught getting into the Pentagon over the ARPAnet. 6 months was his prison sentence this time. After that Kevin was caught 2 more times for various cyber heist and hackings. Kevin seems to violate each and every warning issued by the law officials but he keep ignoring them and as a result ended up being a fugitive.

Motorola, Sun Microsystems (now Oracle), California DMV, Pentagon and Novell were some of the notable victims of the hacking practices carried out by Kevin. Out of many hacking carried out by Kevin his hacking at Motorola is one that Kevin is proud of. He used his social engineering skills to gain the access in the secure Motorola facility as he want to know the source code for the MicroTAC Ultra Lite cell phone. According to Kevin he became fascinated with MicroTAC as it looks like the communication equipment used in the famous Star Trek series. He also admitted that his only intention to gain access to Motorola was his curiosity to learn the source code for the new cell phone and nothing more. It is something like tearing down the iphone apart to make it work on the T-mobile network instead of AT & T or Verizon. In February 1995, the elusive Kevin was finally pinned down by the authorities in Raleigh (North Carolina). It is just a mere coincidence that I read about Kevin when I was in Raleigh too. Tsutomu Shimomura along with computer journalist John Markoff helped FBI in tracking down Kevin. Shimomura was a computer security expert and his computer and emails were compromised by Kevin. Shimomura wrote a book Takedown based on the real life incidences of Kevin Mitnick and his dramatic arrest. Movie with the same name got made and released in 2004.

After his arrest the authorities want to make sure that Kevin was not going out easily. The law enforcement officials were able to convince the judge about the exceptional talent of Kevin Mitnick and his fascinating hacking skills. Kevin ended up serving 5 years in the federal prison out which 1 year was in solitary confinement as the prosecutor made a statement that Kevin is capable of hacking several defense organizations which in turn can trigger ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) leading to a nuclear war. The judge got impressed, not by the prosecutor statement but by the movie War Games (as it reflects that hacking can lead to a war) and agreed to put Kevin in solitary confinement. Kevin got released in the year 2000 and now running a computer security consultancy. His message for the young hackers, do not follow in his footsteps. There are millions of innocuous ways to learn and explore but that should not come on the cost of exposing vital information and jeopardizing critical infrastructure.

What is hacking? There no solid definition for this. There is always a war of words going on between pro/anti hacking communities. Some try to define it as ethical or unethical, some try to form groups like Red Hat or Black Hat hackers, some call it cracking or hacking. I guess hacking is breaking something in order to make it better. That brings me back to my original question - Is it possible to start a nuclear war by whistling some secret patterns in the pay phone? I guess Kevin Mitnick was not the one to answer this question, but who knows. I assume the answer for this question can be given by Joybubbles or popularly known as whistler. He was the very first phone phreaks. Joybubbles was born blind with a perfect pitch (something which is god gifted and cannot be created of developed). He discovered at an early age that he is capable of whistling any tone he wanted. He discovered his gift accidentally as he used to call unconnected numbers to listen to the error messages. During one such engagement he started whistling and the phone got disconnected, it happen again and again that while he whistles the phone got disconnected. At this point he called AT & T and came to know the phone switch responds to a frequency of 2600 MHz and his pitch matches the same. Truly amazing stuff. I wish Joybubbles could answer this question for me and for all the humanity, but he cannot as he died in 2007.

So does that mean the nuclear war triggered via pay phone got averted? For now I guess but ……