Hakker, Dispatch 001: July 2003

Once I had a name.

And a job, and a life, and a home.

And I thought I had human rights.

Forget everything else you've heard about the hacker underground, the Internet, and computer crime.

I'm the real deal.

I'm a thief.

And sometimes... an assassin.

When I have to call myself anything, I'm HAKKER.

 

1

I don't know why I'm sharing this with you. I don't know who you are who's reading this, so I guess it's mutual. (EYE, are you reading this too? If you do, drop dead.)

Just recently I killed a few guys. Four, maybe five. In all fairness, they tried to kill me first. Can't say they stood a chance, though. They were all black and I'm white, but it wasn't a "hate crime" or political. It wasn't personal - I didn't know them. It was all about money. I'll explain what happened, just don't get the wrong idea about my motives. I may be a killer, but I'm not a racist.

Maybe I'm writing this to ground myself better in reality. During the really bad nights and days, when I have to lie in my sleeping bag in some cold, dingy basement, eating penicillin and vitamin tablets to keep disease away, trying to sleep through the noise of a generator or a heater... then I can't quite connect mentally to my past. As if all those memories happened to someone else. That's a bad sign. So I write stuff down on my laptop to keep my memories intact, since I can't talk to anyone about the past. If anyone who reads this decides to try and find me, forget it. You won't find me in a phone book or on a homepage. (I have positively absolutely nothing to do with the website www.hakker.org, but I've visited it a few times.)

I remember the time before the Internet became a public space, way back when it belonged to the government and a few devout nerds. I was one of them. The youngest one, the least known one. And I fell in love with the idea of being part of a select few, the few who pioneered this new worldwide network of computers.

I'm not talking about the stupid hormone-driven stuff, like MUDs or message boards for stealthy creeps who exchange dirty pictures and chat each other into a collective orgasm. I was always into the Internet for the deep hidden stuff. Military secrets. New technology. AI research. Neural networks. The evolution of something that had never before existed on this planet, that I couldn't name or describe, but I knew it was real and I was part of it. Hidden knowledge is like sex to me; I've always been too curious about how things work.

But then, of course, I was naive too and got myself into a world of trouble and got "deleted"... I'll explain later.

About just recently... the guys I killed were spammers. They were one of the gangs running the good ol' African banking scam. You've probably received one of their junk e-mails at least once. It's that scheme where you get a message from someone who claims to be an associate/son of an exiled African leader, or he claims to be a lawyer who says you've inherited a fortune from a dead relative in Africa you never heard about. Then he asks you to send him a sum of cash to "help the exiled leader get his hidden stash out of a Swiss bank account," or to "unlock your inheritance from an African bank" or something. You're promised a huge share of the Swiss bank account, or a fabulous inheritance, or whatever. Then he asks for another cash deposit, and another... and so on.

The scheme works because the few dumb citizens who get scammed are too embarrassed to go to the police, and because it's dirt cheap to keep sending those messages to every e-mail user in the world. Besides, these African spammers can be pretty dangerous to mess with. Which is why I killed them: I got paid to stop them, and it was the easiest way to get the job done. Earned me a neat sum of cash from a client who wishes to be anonymous, and I respect that.

These spammers were also running the usual spamming schemes: "GROW YOUR PENIS 3-4 INCHES LONGER," "SEE THE HOTTEST ILLEGAL TEENS," "GET RICH NOW," and so on. Did it matter to me, that recent night, that tens of millions of people are being pestered daily by these messages and would personally thank me for rubbing out a few spammers? Can't say it did. It was paid work. But maybe it made the job easier.

You wouldn't believe me if I told you who the client was. I still laugh when I think about it. How did my client find me? He didn't. I found him. I don't travel overseas, because without a registered identity and a valid passport I can't just jump on a plane or a boat. My client lived on the other side of the Atlantic. I've been surfing his company websites for some time, picked up a few internal memos, hacked into their systems, and seen that his company had a serious and growing spam problem.

No point in sending him an e-mail and offering him my services - the spammers have started their own "GET RID OF SPAM NOW" scams, too. This man has an unlisted phone number, but I figured out a way to contact him through his secretary. Took me a few weeks, while I was busy doing some other stuff, but through the internal memos I found that he had a scheduled phone conference with another company rep within a few hours. This was my chance.

This was recently, I won't reveal more than that. The conversation went something like this:

"This is the office of (CEO's name), how may I help you?"

"Hi, this is (phony credentials), I had a phone appointment with Mr. (CEO's name). (Coughs) Sorry, I have a bit of a cold, so I'd better make this brief..."

"Of course. I'll get you through to him right now."

"Thank you. (Coughs)"

"Hello, (first name) speaking."

"Sir, I want to help you with the spam problem."

"Who is this?"

I had to talk fast.

"Please don't hang up, this is a serious business offer. I know who's been clogging your servers with the junk e-mail that's costing your company millions of dollars to clean up. I can stop some of these spammers. For good. It will save you a lot of money and resources. And it'll send a message to other spammers. This is a one-time offer."

"Keep talking..."

I've heard tapes of my own voice. It sounds like the voice of a short, stocky guy, about 20-30 years old. Cold and emotionless. Suits me fine. I really tried to sound nice on the phone. Didn't want to scare a potential client away.

"They're working from overseas, and the police can't stop them. But I can."

"You have a European accent."

"You don't know my name, you only pay me after you've seen a result, you won't be implied, and I'll never bother you again."

He sounded amused.

"How do I know you're not a spammer yourself?"

"I'm not. I can't risk that kind of exposure."

His tone turned more serious.

"And assuming you were paid for this imaginary job, how much would you ask for - hypothetically?"

"Fifty thousand Euros in cash, delivered at a place and time I'll tell you, after the job is done. The info you need will be sent by snail mail in an envelope. You don't have to say yes or no here. Try to sneak your answer into a public message or a press release instead, where no one can make the connection to this offer."

The voice on the phone breathed at me for a few seconds. Then he made a laugh.

"I suggest you read the Wall Street Journal, print or online. Good luck, whoever you are."

"Goodbye, sir."

I took the phone card out of the payphone slot, and walked out of the booth. I was dressed like any other citizen. Can't show my face in public wearing my work gear. (In case you're wondering: No, I DON'T prance around in black leather pants, long black coat and sunglasses. Only a complete lamer (I just realized I'm getting old - I've been in the scene long enough to remember a word like "lamer!") who'd seen THE MATRIX too many times'd try to attract attention like that. I saw that stupid movie just once and got bored real fast.)

I read the Wall Street Journal like he said, and on the third day I found his answer. He'd published a rare editorial about how spam was such a serious problem that ought to be dealt with.

I had to smile. Damn clever way of replying. So now I had a deal, and several possible targets. My next task was to find the worst spammers within my geographical reach, lure them to a place of my own choosing, and trap them. I had had plenty of time to track down one of them and get my hands on him - by the time I made the call to my client, I already had a target. The target belonged to the African Spammer mafia in Germany. His name was... does it matter? Let's say his name was Leon Blablabla.

2

The African Spammer mafia is very small - and despite what you may have heard, most of them are not Islamic fundamentalists, just regular criminals trying to make money. It doesn't take lots of brains to set up a junk e-mail scheme - you hire server time from one of the many commercial "server farms" out there, or buy your own server on the cheap, and you buy the needed spamming software from the international spamming community. This international community is small and scattered across the world - I don't think it rakes in more than a few millions of dollars a year, total. But it's EASY money, much safer than selling dope.

I marked Leon Blablabla the following way. Spammers in the USA are stupid enough to gather in semi-official conventions, where they share their software and methods. Because of the invitations to a convention, a mailing list for spammers existed somewhere on the Web, and all I had to do was find it.

This is how you find a spammer's "secret" (ha!) internal mailing list: Do Web searches. Just gotta know what to look for. I use a browser program I coded myself. It's pretty simple: I leave it running for a few hours, and let it search for communications between spammers. Regular spam is almost always sent through a server farm somewhere in the world; the spammers think that they can't be traced that way. A few of them are encryption freaks and use encrypted e-mail between themselves... but there's always SOMEONE in their midst who's going to give himself away in a mail, and use the keywords that give them away. The NSA can probably do the same work, but they don't care about small fry. And the police... I have no idea what the cops are doing.

Or maybe I just threw you a smokescreen? Why should I give away my tricks of the trade? Ha ha.

So I found a mailing list in an e-mail sent somewhere from a spammer during a convention in Texas. I ran an ISP check on the list (you can do it yourself at www.whois.org ) and got the server addresses. Most of them led to anonymous server farms, but a few of the addresses really belonged to individuals... one of which lived in Germany, in the City of X. The rest was easy: I logged into the German phone directory on the Web, and found the number that matched the address of this individual. That's when I actually got his name and address.

(I don't want to whine... but wireless computing is making the task of finding a single user more difficult. The users are getting less stationary. Some users log in at public venues like libraries, and avoid being traced. I can find them too, it just takes more time.)

I bought a bus ticket to Germany from (country name withheld) and sat on the bus for a day. I had a phony passport, for emergencies only, but I didn't count on being stopped by cops. I wasn't traveling in my work gear - and besides, I look like a short, pale, stocky blond guy in nerdy glasses. Cops are naturally inclined to think of me as harmless. Perhaps I've been caught on security cameras a few times, but I don't officially exist - so how could the police know who to look for?

On the bus I sat next to an old lady. She tried to make small talk. I had to nod and make "that's interesting" noises, just so I wouldn't attract attention.

I recall she asked me my name, and I wondered for a moment if I should give her the name I used to have once. "I'm H. Ellison, pleased to meet you." My old sensei would've told me not to let my guard down.

"I'm Roger... Roger Moore."

"Oh, you mean like the old actor. Isn't he dead?"

"I know how he must feel."

She giggled, must've thought I was making a bad joke. I wasn't.

To make a long story short: I stepped off the bus in the City of X, Germany, carried my backpack to a cheap hotel, and checked in. I always carry cash - haven't got a bank account, since I don't exist - and a generous tip to the desk clerk is a good way to keep him from asking nosy questions. The lobby had a small security camera. Didn't matter. I'm just another young backpacking traveler. Ordered some food up, watched TV, showered, slept.

Next morning I went to the local public library and borrowed a computer. Found one of these incredibly handy city maps online, and made a printout of Leon's precise address. Took a city bus to the block where he lived. Stood and waited - I'm real good at hiding, even in broad daylight - until a guy with African appearance left the building. I watched his posture carefully to make up my mind - habitual PC users have a peculiar stooping gait. I made a test: sneaked into a crowd behind him, and shouted with a deep bass voice: "LEON!"

He turned around real quick and scared, and I just melted into the crowd. He didn't notice me, the short white guy, because he was looking for the big man with the deep voice. Then he walked on. I kept following him. He went into an office of the state unemployment agency, Treuhandt or Troyhant it's called, and did some business there. I slunk in, pretended to check the job ads on the walls, and saw him sit there by a computer. I pretended to make a call with my stolen cell phone and used the camera to take a snapshot of him for later.

It was a cloudy day. Hadn't been in daylight crowds for a while, felt a little edgy. My eyes smarted. I tailed Leon to a street plaza, where he met up with some friends. I decided to retreat a little, too many potential eyes on me here, and went into a thrift shop. Bought some stuff for the job, and for later. Then back to the hotel. Ordered pizzas and kept one. Watched TV. Did exercise. Took vitamins. Brushed, flossed and picked my teeth and rinsed with fluoridated water. (When you don't have a name or a social security number, your NUMBER ONE priority is: Don't get a toothache.)

I donned another get-up for the afternoon and evening: I packed some cheap throwaway clothes from the thrift shop, so I looked like a dumb tourist, and a plastic bag for the gear. I put on change of clothes that would be underneath. Kinda sweaty in the summer, but I had to do it this way. Plus the surgical gloves for avoiding fingerprints and bloodstains. And the pizza box under one arm.

When I'd left the hotel, I found a café and entered the restroom, where I put on the clothes on top of what I was already wearing.

I went back to his street address and waited in a corner. Strolled around every now and then so nobody would get suspicious. The tricky part was to jump him without being seen by anyone else. I hadn't seen him leave his apartment in company, but I couldn't be sure yet that he lived alone. As for getting inside the building, I had a few ideas.

In the late afternoon, Leon came walking back to the entrance, and he had company now - some woman. Damn. I didn't need this complication. They stood and talked outside the entrance to the building - maybe he wanted her to come up to his place, it looked like he was flirting her up - but eventually, she said goodbye and walked away.

Leon stared after her. A light drizzle started to fall. I took the small umbrella I'm always carrying around, and opened it. He beat me to it, and the entrance door shut closed before I could reach the handle. Damn. Had to use the door phone, then. But it'd be too risky to call Leon and alert him.

I pushed a button next to another resident's name - let's say it was "A. Helmut" or some other generic German name. No one answered. I tried another name.

>From the door phone came a voice, in German: "Yes?"

I spoke a little German.

"Pizza delivery!"

"I didn't order a pizza?"

"Is this A. Helmut, Kolberstrasse 23?"

"Yes..."

"The pizza is paid for, and it's getting cold. You want it or not?"

I've tried this before. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. The door lock buzzed, and I was in. I took the elevator to a floor above Leon's apartment, and delivered the pizza to A. Helmut. He signed my phony receipt, took his pizza and slammed the door. I kept a blank expression on my face the whole time.

Then I took the elevator to Leon's place, on the top floor. Checked the door handle first. The door was unlocked. I sneaked in, holding my folded umbrella ready. Leon sat in front of his computer, looking at some dirty pictures. I was very quiet; I'd practiced stealth since I was eight. When I was right behind Leon's forward-hunching back, he saw my reflection in the screen and started. I punched him in the back of the head with my umbrella, and he dropped like a rock. It's reinforced with a steel rod inside the aluminum shell. (The umbrella, not his head.)

Now I acted quickly: took out the duct tape rolls I'd bought in the thrift shop, locked the door, checked the windows, tied him to the chair and taped his mouth shut, found his cell phone and took it, pulled down the curtains on the windows.

I went to the bathroom, and came back with a glass of water. Now I clipped the mirrorshades onto my glasses, so he couldn't see my eyes. This is not a fashion statement: I won't use dark shades because they obstruct vision. The mirrorshades give a psychological advantage, too.

I splashed water over his neck and face, and gently shook him awake. Leon was a pudgy, nervous-looking guy - at least he looked nervous with duct tape over his mouth.

"Are you awake?" I asked him. Calm tone. No violent shaking of his head. Muted body language. I want him lucid, not stuttering.

"Uuht uh fuhk uh yuh duhhunh? Uhh kuhh yuh!!"

"Just nod your head. Leon, I'm in a hurry, so please don't make this difficult. All I want from you is information. Not money. Information. Then I'll go. Understand?"

"Fukh yuh!"

The way he stared at me, at the reflecting surfaces of my mirrorshades, could mean that he was scared, or mad at me, or both. I dug in my plastic bag and found the bottle of lighter fluid. I poured lighter fluid over his pants and showed him how rapidly a rag soaked in the same stuff burns. Maybe he peed himself, it was hard to tell, but he started to shake. I stood still with the lighter held out in front of him.

"You are going to give me the names, addresses and phone numbers of every one of your associates in the e-mail business. Every name you can think of. And name your leader. Or I will set you on fire. Got notebooks? I'll take those too."

I freed one of Leon's hands and gave him a pen. He kindly gave me the names and addresses of every one of his associates, plus a few other spammers in other countries as a bonus. The computer wasn't necessary; he used a notebook for all his e-mail addresses.

I took the book and the notes, and told Leon that he and his associates must meet me at a location I'd phone in later. Then I tied his hands again, blindfolded him, and left the apartment as quickly as I could without making any noise.

I tossed away the outer layer of cheap clothes and returned to the hotel. I checked out of the hotel and took my backpack with me. When I left this time, my night gear was underneath the pants and jacket I wore on top as "disguise."

3

My night gear is what I mostly wear when I'm on a job or moving about between sunset and dawn. Like the backpack, it's all painted the color of dry concrete. Black is too obvious, but gray at night passes people by. The paint isn't flammable, it repels water... plus it contains light-polarizing chemicals with a neat side effect: when the paint is filmed by a videocamera, the image of the painted surface blurs on the tape. When I duck my head down, the painted baseball cap turns my head into a blur on surveillance tapes. (Where did I get that paint? Trade secret. Let's just say I stole it from somewhere I wasn't supposed to be.)

Soft sneakers are the thing to wear during night work - easier to run and climb in, and they don't make noise.

I gathered the stuff I'd hidden away for the showdown in a bag, and took a bus on a route around the city. The sun went down, but the sky wouldn't go dark. We came to a dark, unlit city block i hadn't seen before. I stepped off. A run-down, condemned area, obviously a leftover from when the place was called East Germany. Suited me fine. I called up Leon's friends on his cell phone and told them all to meet me at the location, street Y, number Z, within an hour, or I'd rat to the police about their spamming-scamming business. I made it sound like a simple blackmail attempt. Of course, it wasn't. It was a hit.

I prepared my stuff, found a room up on the fourth floor, and waited. Put on a cheap throwaway raincoat. (A note to you Americans: I always mix it up how you number the stories in a house.)

It took half an hour before the first two cars stopped outside the block. I stuck my head out of a broken window on the fourth floor. Nice cars. A bunch of black guys wearing ski masks came out. I waved at them and shouted: "Come up, all of you, and we'll talk. Leave the guns in the car."

As I'd expected, one of them pointed a flashlight up in my face and started shooting. I ducked inside and checked my cigarette lighter. Two shots cracked against the eroded brick wall outside. At least he had the brains to use a silenced pistol.

Footsteps. Several guys, coming up the creaky stairs, making about as much noise as an 18-wheel truck. One of them swore as his foot crashed through the old wooden stairs. For an occasion like this, I consider the worst possible options. For instance, they might try to torch the house with me in it - if they were smart. But hey, these were ordinary spammers... what could I expect?

They didn't torch the house. They came up the stairs to take me out at point-blank range. Stupid.

"Stop!" I shouted in the staircase, letting them shine the flashlights into my mirrorshades as I stepped into sight. They stopped and almost tripped over each other, ready with baseball bats, knives and a pistol.

I showed them the big water pistol I'd bought before. Brightly colored plastic. I took careful aim at the biggest guy's face.

"This water pistol is loaded," I said calmly.

They began to laugh. It was too stupid, too unexpected. Then I flicked on the lighter in my other hand, and showed them exactly what I meant.

It takes some training to use a water pistol loaded with makeshift napalm; you must use the correct mixture of flammables and sticky liquids, and hold the flame with great skill. Don't try this yourself - I guarantee you'll end up on the Darwin Awards website under the headline "Man Sets Himself On Fire With Water Pistol."

I had trained myself carefully; the spammers were completely unprepared for what came next. In a few seconds the air was thick with burning clothes and people. They were still screaming when I ran to the back of the house. The soot and smell got into the raincoat, so I threw it away. The climbing rope hung from the window where I'd placed it. I quick-climbed down to the street level and sneaked around to the front of the old building. Smoke and flames were pouring out from the fourth floor. The screams had stopped.

The guy standing guard at the entrance was shouting up at the fire, as if that was going to help the others - he was panicking, obviously. He didn't even see me coming. Suddenly he turned around and spotted me five meters away. I darted to the side, expecting him to pull a gun, but he rushed into one of the cars and started the engine. Smart move. Couldn't let anyone get away, though.

I sighed, lit my cigarette lighter, ran up to the car that started to move, and sprayed the front of it with the last burst from my water pistol. It drove away, the hood and grill burning, making a lot of noise as it accelerated. I tossed the spent water pistol - it had started to leak now - and stopped running. Wondered how far he'd get in a brightly burning vehicle before the cops stopped him.

He didn't get that far. A loud bang came from a block away, followed by a column of glowing smoke and the crackle of flames eating into upholstery and human flesh.

I felt nothing. I felt sick. Trembling a little. Time to leave.

I returned to the hotel, showered and slept. Nice to sleep in a real bed, don't do that often enough. I dreamed about something that happened when I was a kid. We're sitting in a bus, my parents and I. I'm an only child. Someone in a ski mask runs into the bus and screams in a language I don't understand. Passengers scream and shout. My father reacts and lifts me from my seat, throws me out through the open doors in the middle of the bus. I land hard in the dust and gravel, tumble around, look up at the bus. My father elbows his way outside with several other passengers. The sun is blazing in the sky, hot ground burns my fingers. The bus starts to roll away down the street, with the doors still open. I glimpse my mother for the last time: inside the bus, her hands and face pressed against the window, and she's shouting but I can't hear. Then I hear a bang, and she's gone.

I don't remember much of the day after that. And I always wake up after that part of the dream, and I don't want to fall asleep again.

Next day I check out of the hotel, pack my night gear in the backpack, and leave the place wearing everyday clothes. The guys who died in the fire (and the car) are all over the news. I pass by a tabloid headline, and read that the killings last night were an internal showdown between criminal gangs. I wonder if my client paid the newspaper to print that, but realize that it he didn't have to.

I post a letter to my client, with the instructions on how to pay me. I use surgical gloves, so he can't get fingerprints from the envelope. I sign the letter "HAKKER."

4

That was a few days ago. Now I'm not in the City of X anymore. I won't tell you in which city or country. My client paid me off just before I started writing these last lines. He didn't try anything, just sent a man who delivered the cash in a plain bag at a bus station. I picked up the bag, jumped onto my moped and speeded off into the night.

Now I have another hideout, and enough cash to last me for a while. I need the cash to finish my project. And then... I just don't know. I try to focus on the prize. To find and kill EYE.

If I run out of cash, I could always delete some more spammers. Too bad most of them are overseas. If I ever manage to get to America or Asia, I'll have plenty of work.

Once I had a name.

And a regular job, and a life, and a home.

And I thought I had human rights.

Forget everything else you've heard about the hacker underground, the Internet, and computer crime.

I'm the real deal.

I'm a thief.

And sometimes... an assassin.

When I have to call myself anything, I'm HAKKER.

CONTINUED IN DISPATCH 002 (July, 2003) >>

"THE HAKKER DISPATCHES (c) A.R.Yngve (by agreement with "A Hakker")"