File: WHO IS CHESHIRE CATALYST? Read 20 times =-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-= - - = The Intruder = - - = [A biography of Cheshire Catalyst -- Technology Illustrated (Oct/Nov 1982)] = - by Douglas Colligan - = = - Awesome Photography by John Goodman - = (too bad we couldn't reproduce it!) = - [Word Processed by BIOC Agent 003] - = = --=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Whether it's the phone system or a computer network, there's always a way to slip in for free. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cheshire first started going astray after an incident during his senior year at an upstate New York high school in the late sixties. The school has a small IBM computer, one that he heard could make pictures of his hero, Snoopy. He asked to use it and was told no, it was only for the advanced math students. "And that," he says, "was the first IBM 'big lie' I ever saw through." The suggestion that computers were only for eggheads was more than enough to whet his curiosity. So he got friendly with the teacher in charge of the computer and eventually became fluent in several computer languages. Today he works for a large Manhattan firm where he teaches his fellow employees how to use word processors and perform other computer-related chores. In his off hours, Cheshire (short for Cheshire Catalyst) uses computers in a slightly different way. Once he takes off what he calls his real-world disguise (his tie), he settles down in front of his Apple II keyboard and starts "phreaking" -- ambling through the circuits of his archenemy, the phone company, exploring its electronic geography, and slipping in and out of computer networks. As the name suggests, computer networks are computer-to- computer communications systems that run over the same lines people use to make phone calls. With a simple attachment for the phone receiver and the right code numbers, a computer user can hook into a network. If people clever enough and persistent enough want to get into a network, they can just keep sending different number combinations over the phone to the network until they hit the right code, or password. Today just about everyone, from national banks, to the Defense Department, uses computer networks to transact business. Cheshire, of course, is not his real name. It's not even his real pseudonym. The reason for the secrecy is that Cheshire is a member of the underground movement, a nationwide assortment of people devoted to satisfying their sense of adventure with the best that Apple and IBM and the phone system have to offer. Not everything they do is, strictly speaking, legal. The history of this movement goes back to the days of the phone phreaks, as they called themselves, whose hobby was to make as many phone calls for as little money as possible. Their secret weapon was the blue box, which got its name from the fact that the first one discovered by the phone company happened to be packaged in a blue-painted box. A blue box is an ingenious package of electronics that lets users trick the phone company's tone-activated long- distance system into letting them make a long-distance call for the price of a local one. For the 20 years or so that the blue boxes have been around, there has been a continuing cat-and-mouse game between the phone phreaks and the Bell System. For every new method the Bell System has devised to detect the boxes, the phreaks have come up with a better box. Cheshire's initiation into the phone phreaking came when he decided to see if he could somehow get onto the Telex system (a network of specially equipped keyboard machines used for sending messages over telephone lines). His one problem was that the area where he lived was served by an independent phone company that didn't have the kind of equipment it took to handle Telex messages. So Cheshire figured out how to get his home computer to do the work of that equipment. Before long he was sending phantom messages to Telex machines all over the world. Messages like: "Good grief! I seem to have reached Adelaide, Australia. This is just a computer hacker in the United States out for a good time." Cheshire shares his virtuosity with other phone phreaks and computer hackers (a hacker is a person who has an almost addictive fascination for playing around with computers) six times a year in a modest little publicaton called the TAP newsletter. It's the only tangible manifestation of a secretive group calling itself the Technology Assistance Program. The newsletter is to phone phreaks what The Wall Street Journal is to stockbrokers. Each four-page issue is an odd amalgam of articles: how to make and use lock picks; how to log onto computer networks like Telenet without paying; how to turn number-14 brass washers into phone slugs; and, during the hostage crisis in Iran, what the phone number of the American Embassy in Tehran was, so that anyone who felt like telling the captors off could give them a ring. The newsletter illustrates how sophisticated the craft of being any kind of phreak has become. There are not only blue boxes, but red boxes, purple boxes, black boxes, beige boxes, white boxes, brown boxes, yellow boxes, green boxes, a colorless mutes. Some, like purple boxes, are combination units, in this case a blue box, which tricks the phone company's equipment into letting the user make a long-distance call for free, and a red box, which does an excellent imitation of the sound of a coin being deposited in a pay phone. A black box makes the phone company think the call was not answered even as the conversation is going on. And so on. The by-lines under the newsletter's articles are as colorful as the boxes: The Professor, The Wizard, Dr. Atomic, Alexander Mundy (the lead character in the old "It Takes a Thief" television series), and Jim Phelps (of "Mission Impossible" fame: "Good morning, Mr. Phelps..."), to name a few. Cheshire himself acts as an unofficial press liaison for TAP, if only because he's one of the few members who will consent to be interviewed about it. Each Friday after work, a small band of TAP people gathers together to exchange gossip, discuss new developments in the world of computers and phone phreaking, or hash over the contents of their next newsletter. Meetings are usually attended by Tom Edison, the newsletter's editor, Cheshire, and several others. Like Cheshire, all have technical backgrounds. VAX-man is a computer programmer; The Librarian, a systems analyst; another regular, who wouldn't even give a pseudonym, has a middle-management job with a defense contracter. All TAP members are adamant about the public's right to know the kind of technical information their newlsletter publishes. "We're just an information service for people," says The Librarian. "And a lot of the information is public knowledge," adds Cheshire. "We're just sharing the forbidden knowledge that the Bell System doesn't want you to know." Like what? Well, like the toll-free 800 numbers, for example. Some phone phreaks have figured out how to use the 800 numbers to get transferred onto other, unpublicized toll-free lines to make free calls all over the country. The idea that phone phreaks belong to the people is one with a venerable past. Measured against other underground publications, TAP is positively geriatric. It was started in 1971, on May Day, in fact, by Mr. Couterculture himself, Abbier Hoffman, and a phone phreak who called himself Al Bell. Since it was an outgrowth of the Youth International Party, or Yippies, it was originally called YIPL, for Youth Internationl Pary Line. A few years later there was a political schism in the ranks between the phone phreaks and the Yippies. The former, who were more interested in blue boxing Ma Bell than in pushing politics, took charge of the periodical and relaunched it under the name of TAP. Cheshire happened onto TAP in the late 1970's. His contributions to the newsletter, he says, have been in tune with what he calls "the light side of the hack." "It's true that by just hacking around you can probably find the loophole that can get you in a computer or network. You have to have luck, time, and knowledge. Still, there's one thing you're certain of: You can break in. It's only a computer." Light-side hackers will find a loophole in the computer or computer network's security and, as Cheshire puts it, "play around inside." He does it with his goofy Telex messages or in some instances by tracking down government snoops and doing his best to embarrass them. He once noted that a mysterious computer in Quantico, Virginia, would occasionally tap into a local informal comptuer network called B-Boards, short for bulletin boards. The person would read the computer mail but whould never send or receive any messages. Noting that the FBI has a computer-crime training school in Quantico, Cheshire sent the eavesdropper a message detailing the TAP newsletter's semisubversive offerings a suggesting that he or she subscribe. During a lunch break once, a friend of Cheshire's wandered into a computer network called ARPANET, started up by the Defense Department back in 1969. After a little noodling around, Cheshire's friend found himself reading displays from a computer at a Norwegian seismic station that monitors Soviet nuclear testing. Being anti-phone company doesn't mean being anti-American, and Cheshire and his friends were disturbed by the ease with which the top- secret computer could be tapped into. As a result, they decided to set up a special phone-phreak conference two years ago. They sold tickets in advance ($5 a person) by running ads in their newlsletter, rented a conference room at the Gramercy Inn in Washington, D.C., and attracted an audience of about 100. Among other things, Cheshire told those who attended about his friend's romp through the Norwegian computer. Did anyone in the government pay attention? "Well, we did notice a couple of guys out there in the audience wearing sports coats who turned a shade of light green when they heard," he says. Dark-side hackers, by contrast, often tap into other people's computers to alter or destory (crash) their programs. Some West Coast hackers manages to break into the computers of the phone company and selectively reclassify service on their phones, giving themselves free service options like call forwarding. Some dark-siders go a step further. Exploiting the inevitable program loopholes, skilled hackers have been known to coax complete lists of users' passwords out of computer time-sharing systems. They can even command the computer to keep them abreast of future password changes. Such lists, when the users include banks and large businesses, can be sold for thousands of dollars on the black market. When it comes to anything that has a whiff of dark-siding, Cheshire is a spectator. He doesn't blue box, and he scrupulously pays his phone bill on time to keep the heat off TAP. Although, in private he is a kind of high-tech merry prankster, in public he walks the straight and narrow. Even so, there are those who know about his activities. "Officially," he says, over lunch at a midtown restaurant near his office, "my boss doesn't know what I do in my spare time." Unofficially, his employer does know. "That's why I was hired," he says. "I knew the Telex network inside out because I came in the back door." It was a skill his company knew would come in handy when there wasn't time for the more traditional ways of getting onto the Telex network. Basically, Cheshire is more Kilroy than Jesse James. What has him hooked is the amusement of it all. "I'm just playing around," he says. Computer crime? "I'm not out to steal megabucks. I know I could if I wanted to," he adds, "but knowing I could is good enough for me." "Even the phone company doesn't arouse all that much hospitility from him. In fact, the one act of censorship done by TAP was carried out with the phone company's welfare in mind. Someone has sent TAP plans for a hydrogen bomb. For the first time, TAP decided a story was too hot to touch. Why? "Among other things, anyone using that technology is going to take out the phone network. And that's not what we're into," he says. "There's a real love-hate relationship between us and the phone company. We don't particularly appreciate the bureaucracy that runs it, but we love the network itself," he says, "lingering the word love. "The network is the greatest thing to come along in the world." "Our lunch ends, and Cheshire flags the waiter to ask where the pay phone is. I watch him as he makes a call. He puts in a dime, just like eveyone else. <> [Courtesy of Sherwood Forest ][ -- (914) 359-1517]