hacking

	==Phrack Magazine==

	Volume Seven, Issue Forty-Eight, File 5 of 18

	-:[ Phrack Prophile ]:-

	This issue, we have a "very special episode" of the Phrack Prophile. As
	everyone knows, Phrack is once again in flux, and an entirely new editorial
	staff is coming on board. In an effort to introduce everyone to these three
	hackers, we've had them do profiles. Ladies and Gentlemen (yeah, like any
	ladies OR gentlemen read Phrack), meet your new editors: Daemon9, ReDragon
	and Voyager.

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Prophile on Daemon9


	Personal
	~~~~~~~~
	Nomenclature: daemon9/route/infinity
	In real life: Mike D. (as in David, not Diamond) S.
	DOB: 10.05.73
	Likes: Women who aren't afraid to cry.
	Dislikes: Hippies. GOD, I hate hippies...
	Ink: Large back piece, and growing... (It's the outline of
	a die. (No, not as in a pair of dice, but as in a
	computer chip...)
	Other: Glock 19 with trigger-guard mounted laser-site.
	Passions: Computers. Computer Security (or lack there of).
	Health. Mental and Physical aptitude.
	Main URLs: http://www.infonexus.com/~daemon9
	ftp://ftp.infonexus.com/pub
	mailto://route@infonexus.com
	mailto://daemon9@netcom.com
	Hardware
	~~~~~~~~
	Years with Computers: 14ish
	Computers Owned: Towers: P90/32MB/3GIG (Windows NT/Solaris/DOS-WFW)
	Mids: P120/32/2GIG (Linux), 486-66/16/700MB (FreeBSD),
	486-50/16/540 (Linux)
	Laptops: P133/16/800, (Windows NT/Linux)
	486-75/16/500 (DOS/WFW)
	Networks Owned: The Information Nexus (infonexus.com)

	Media
	~~~~~
	Music: Front242, FLA, The Goats, NIN, Diatribe, 16Volt,
	Morphine, etc...
	Movies: Usual Suspects, Miller's Crossing, Sneakers, Fletch
	Army of Darkness, True Romance, NBK, etc...
	Books: TCP/IP Illustrated vols. I-III, UNP, Applied
	Cryptogrpahy 2nd edition, Computers and Intractablity:
	A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness, and so on...

	A Bit of History
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

	Ah, the days of my youth... Carefree, happy-go-lucky, life was a big
	open door to me. One spring a very good friend of mine told me I should get
	an ``Internet'' account to write him mail while he was away at school.
	"Huh...?"
	...Was my concise reply. I was deep into the computer thing at that time,
	but I had not gotten into the Internet yet. Well, we went out and bought
	a (at the time) $200 2400 BPS modem and got me hooked up with this brand new
	service provider, NetCom Online... At first I merely used the thing for
	email, but soon after I taught myself all about Unix, I discovered all the
	wonders of Usenet and IRC (AKA the Big Waste). Most people know me from my
	frequent alt.2600 presense. That's where I met Voyager. We quickly found
	that we had the same interests as far as computers and hacking went. The
	rest is history... Sorta.


	The Theory Behind It All
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

	When I look back and try to figure out how the hell I got here, I have
	one person to thank. My father. He bought me my first Commodore 64. I can
	remember hooking that archaic thing up to my TV, writing my own adventure
	games in basic, and saving them to a tape drive. My computer time line goes
	something like this:

	c64 Apple IIc IBM XT IBM 286 486/33 486/66 P90 486/66 486/50 P120 P133...
	1982 1984 1986 1987 1991 1992 1994 1995 1996 1996 1996

	I am not happy unless I am bathed in a contstant stream of extraneous
	RF radiation. My room is alive with a myriad of blinking and flashing lights,
	several humming fans, and hundreds of feet of fire-hazard-inducing cables.
	I have to put tin-foil on all of my windows just to keep the sun out and the
	temperature down. You'd be amazed how well that works.

	The pursuit of knowledge is what led me down the path I am following.
	I am simply not satisfied with knowing that something works. I need to
	know why and how, and how to break it and then how fix it... I do not solve a
	problem by merely finding a work-around. I slam head on into the fucking
	thing and work with it until a solution presents itself.

	Intelligence, to me, is not what you know, or how much you know. It is
	the ability to reason logically and rationally when the need arises and, if
	pragmaticism is not the best approach, let intuition and chaos guide you.
	Intelligence is adaptive and ever-changing... Memory capacity is too often
	mistaken for smarts...


	People I Know
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~

	Linenoiz: The reason I fell into the whole Internet scene to begin with.
	Best friends for 12 years, I would not be where I am now
	without him. He is one of the most intelligent people I know.

	Nihil: The reason I fell into the whole hacking scene to begin with.
	We have had our differences over the years, but our computing
	interests are too similar to let petty squabbles come in the
	way of our friendship. The other one of the most intelligent
	people I know.

	Mythrandir: I met Myth about 2 years on alt.2600. Sharp kid. Very sharp.
	We think so alike on some things it's freaky. We'll get going
	on that Tiger Team soon enuff, Jeff...!

	Alhambra: Strong coder. We did the DemonKit for Linux (and are still
	working on it..;)). Jeremy and I also have very similar
	interests as far as hacking goes. I am glad he is here
	with me in the Guild. I need more people like him. Not a
	risky gambler, but hey, I took care of that for both of us...

	Halflife: Coder supreme.


	Shouts Out To
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~

	Brent, Carrie, ColdFire, Crow, Halflife, Heather, Jason, Jen, Kev,
	Ka_mee, MikeP, Mudge, Shawn, SirSyko, Tim, Tom, Topher, Xanax, Vision


	What I Have Done
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

	alt.2600
	--------
	It used to be that you could find me in that group like clockwork. I
	was always there. Reading, posting, flaming, lurking. That was me. For
	years. This is where most people probably first remember me from. I took
	it upon myself to self-moderate and answer all the questions I could possibly
	handle... I usually posted several times daily. At last count, I posted over
	2100 times (according to ~/.tin/posted). I was prolific. I have fond memories
	of back then... But, times have changed. That group has gone almost completely
	to hell (AKA the way of #hack). Thesedays, it's a fucking miracle if I find a
	worthwhile thread to follow-up to... These days, look for me on comp.security.*,
	comp.protocols.tcpip, sci.crypt, alt.security.pgp and so on...


	zines...
	--------
	Oh yeah, I wrote some code and a few rag-tag articles for some Zines
	out there. Can't remember the names...


	the Guild
	---------
	The Guild is my group of roudy Internauts. I started the group about
	20 months ago for several reasons, some of which are just now becoming
	clear to me. For a while there, we were putting out a zine, The Infinity
	Concept, but that is on hiatus while I do Phrack. Various members have done
	coding and exploits. Look for more to come from the Guild...


	ftp.netcom.com/pub/da/daemon9
	-----------------------------
	Somewhere along the line about 2 years ago, I started to take
	advantage of netcom's free 5 megs of ftp space. I put together a modest
	collection of tools and whatnot (under 6 megs of stuff). For some yet
	undiscovered reason, people flocked to the site. I have no clue why. It
	wasn't that great. What I find even more fascinating is the fact that
	to this day people still go looking there for hacking paraphenelia.
	The site has been vacated for almost a year now. If you are reading this
	and still have a link to my O-L-D netcom ftp site, UPDATE it to point to
	ftp.infonexus.com. I am much more proud of this site... Hundreds of megs
	of top-notch stuff here. Anyway, the netcom site went down because Brian
	Smith (at the time the only member of the netcom security staff) told me I
	couldn't have certian tools there for distro. When I ignored him, he froze
	my account. This was the final catalyst in me deciding to start the
	Information Nexus...


	the Information Nexus
	---------------------
	Ah yes... The InfoNexus... My frustration with Netcom led me to do
	what I had been wanting to do for some time, start my own site. This site
	would be a Haven for hackers, a place where they could come and be sure to
	find only the finest in technologies and tools. A place of much learning and
	information trade. A knowledge dumping ground. Thus was born the Information
	Nexus. With anywhere from 6-10 machines the Nexus is a heterogenous
	environment: the OS's range from several Unix flavors, several versions of
	Windows NT, and, of course, the mundane stuff (like DOS/WFW). The main box,
	Onyx, is a heavily tweaked Linux machine. It is a P120 with 32MB RAM and 2
	GIGs of HD space.
	As it stands now, accounts are given on restricted basis, only to
	friends and people I know (or people whose reputation precedes them). As soon
	as I upgrade the link from a 28.8 modem I will start offering accounts to the
	masses, at a nomial fee. I will also open up ftp access, allowing a greater
	number of users at all hours.


	The Infinity Concept
	--------------------
	TIC is the zine the Guild put out. Some of the noteworthy subjects
	written on: Cryptography, Windows NT security, Unix security,the security
	of PGP, and several coding projects... We have done 3 issues to date, but
	I have stopped further production of the zine to devote my full attention to
	Phrack magazine.


	Phrack Magazine
	---------------
	Several months back, I hopped on IRC with some of my Guild-mates and
	was having a wonderous discussion on, oh, nothing. Well, Voyager was on, and
	he dragged me into a private chat. He told me about ErikB stepping down, and
	told me he and ReDragon were to take over as the new editors... I was very
	happy for him, and told him I would have jumped at the chance to do it. That
	was his next question... Since then, ReDragon, Voyager and I have been
	salivating like dogs waiting to get our hands on the legend that is Phrack
	Magazine.
	My pledge is twofold: Timely distribution and nothing but the highest
	quality articles. We will be distributing Phrack on a regular seasonal
	rotation and will weed out all but the top-notch articles. I plan to write
	at least one article per issue. I promise this much: You will not be
	disappointed...


	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Prophile on ReDragon


	Personal
	~~~~~~~~

	Handle: ReDragon
	Call Him: Dave
	Past Handles: Dr. Disk (circa '84), The Destroyer (circa '88)
	Handle Origin: Thomas Harris Book, Saab insignia, D&Dish sort of
	name, then I decided it would be cooler (and original)
	if it was all one word and one D.
	Date of Birth: 12/30/75
	Age of current date: do the math yourself
	Height: 5' 11"
	Weight: 175
	Eye Color: Green
	Hair Color: Brown
	Computers: Apple ][e, Atari 800, 8088, 386sx/16, 386dx/40, and
	right now a 486/33
	------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	I got my Hayes Micromodem //e in the summer of '84. I was eight years old
	and with the help of my babysitter begged my way onto an H/P board. I used
	to read Phrack and write BASIC code, I was quite the clueless newbie for a
	while. People say age doesn't matter, but it does when you are that young.
	My lameness continued, I learned Pascal, the years passed, and I started to
	figure out how things worked. I discovered Unix, it was cool. I learned
	what Crack was, I used it. Years passed I started to figure out how things
	worked. I would go into more detail but I don't really care to tell the
	world about my life, ask me privately if you care.


	ReD's Favorite Things
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
	Women: yes
	Cars: Saab
	Foods: Taco Bell (doesn't everyone?), Young animals killed cruely
	Music: Pink Floyd, Beatles, anything not techno
	Leisure: IRC is bad for you, just say no.
	Alcoholic Fun: Bottled beer, Jaegermeister, Long Island Iced Teas


	Most Memorable Experiences
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

	Saab car trouble in Queens on the way to HOPE.
	Saab car trouble on PA Turnpike on way back from Pumpcon.
	Saab stranded on George Washington Bridge on way to SummerCon '95.
	Saab finally breaks down on NY Turnpike on way home.
	SummerCon '95 (memorable that I don't remember any of it)
	SummerCon '96 (the worst organized con I have ever been to)


	Some People To Mention
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

	The Green Machine (for altering my life more than I can imagine)
	Acker (even though you gave up on it all, wish I knew what you were doing now)
	Bluesman (why didn't you tell me about C earlier?)
	Zorgo (for ruining my life showing me IRC)
	Wozz (I still don't believe you grew up there)
	r00t (you're all a bunch of idiots, but i love you)
	Asriel (we are pretty similar people, except I'm not a narq)
	Max-Q (screaming at me "Nice Fuckin' Con!" after Summercon '96, I was touched)
	Taran King (you were cool to me when I was nobody, I was impressed)
	Sirsyko (only hacker I know that I actually trust)
	ErikB (annoying him enough made for an interesting summercon and a new phrack)
	l0pht (for bringing back what hacking is really about)
	b (stuff?)

	Why Phrack?
	~~~~~~~~~~~

	I have been in one way or another involved in the "hack scene" for more
	than half my life. I spent a large part of that on the lower end of the
	knowledge ladder, and throughout it all few people helped me along directly.
	What I recognize though is that there have been scores of people that have
	spent their time, at no personal gain to themselves, to help educate others
	about something that they know a bit more about than the rest of us.
	I read a lot of books to learn about hacking; I paid for them and the
	authors have gotten the money they deserve. I learned quite a bit from
	college; I paid quite a lot for college. But I have learned about hacking
	most of all from hackers. How can I repay those that have given me so much?
	We are rather fortunate to be in a position where we actually can give
	something back to them. We can give them a new generation of hackers that
	have the same opportunities to learn and to share their knowledge that we
	had. We can show them that we haven't forgotten about where we started; we
	haven't forgotten about why we are hackers; and we haven't forgotten that
	to be a hacker is a passion, and it is something we are proud of.
	To my peers, consider giving something back to the community. To the next
	generation, learn from what we give and explore from what you learn; it will
	soon be your turn to take our place. And to those that made this all possible,
	to those that gave their own knowledge in the name of the community, the
	hundreds of authors, the ten editors, and most of all the readers: Thank You.

	-ReDragon

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


	Prophile on Voyager

	Personal
	~~~~~~~~
	Handle: Voyager
	Call him: Will
	Date of Birth: 06/23/69
	Age: 27
	Height: 6'
	Weight: 200lb
	Computers owned: 486DX4-100(FreeBSD), 486SX25(OS/2) and P-75 laptop(PC-DOS)


	How did this handle originate? I jumped on IRC one day and didn't want
	to use my real handle, so I made this one up on the spur of the moment.


	How I Got Started
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
	I didn't start hacking computers until I went to college. I taught
	myself to use PRIMOS and I started hacking because the 150k disk quota I
	was given wasn't large enough for me to compile decent sized programs.

	I started hacking in '87 and didn't run into another hacker until '91.
	I got Internet access and I found Phrack on ftp.eff.org. Wow! I
	thought, these people are serious. Shortly thereafter, I compiled the
	VMS client for IRC and I was talking to other hacker types on a regular
	basis.

	About that time, I put up a BBS. The system is now known as "Hacker's
	Haven." The system has become fairly popular, with over 1,400 users
	surviving the last 90 day purge.

	In '92, I wrote a "bot" in the IRC scripting language and called it
	"HackSrv." HackSrv distributed H/P files on demand and also opped all of
	us regular #hack cronies.

	Late in '92 I moved to Atlanta and started organizing 2600 Meetings. We
	had a blast. We held them at my apartment. I can't imagine what my
	neighbors thought. I still remember 40 people in my tiny living room
	huddled around the TV watching sneakers. One week, we were hacking on
	one terminal, IRC'ing on another, watching a lockpicking demo on the
	front door, sorting trash on the balcony, having firearms instruction in
	the bedroom, and setting off bottle rockets from the kitchen to the
	living room. The last is not a good idea, by the way.

	Over the course of the next few years, #hack went completely to hell.
	The place became littered with clueless newbies asking clueless newbie
	questions. Other people, usually even less clueful newbies, would kick
	and ban people for asking questions. This effectively stopped all useful
	conversation on #hack, as anyone who brought up a technical topic was
	likely to be kicked immediately. This led to a group of #hack ChanOp's
	who had absolutely no technical knowledge and instead wasted away the
	hours stroking their egos. I was annoyed by the incredible cluelessness
	that had taken over the once fine channel and decided to do something
	about it.

	Towards that end, I wrote the #hack FAQ. The #hack FAQ was to be given
	to new people to bring them up to speed in a short amount of time. This,
	I reasoned, would raise the intellectual level on conversation on #hack.
	It would also set the tone for conversation on #hack back to the technical
	atmosphere I had known just a few years earlier. Later, the #hack FAQ
	became the alt.2600/#hack FAQ and it's purpose was expanded to cover
	the newsgroup alt.2600.

	In the Summer of '94 I moved to Denver and joined up with TNO. TNO is a
	group of friends who share an avid interest in computer and telephone
	security. Today, TNO consists of Cavalier, DisordeR, Major, Edison and
	myself.

	Over the last few years, I've written for Phrack, 2600, CoTNo and FUCK.
	I've wanted to be Phrack editor since Taran King retired. When ErikB
	told me he was looking to retire from the job, and that I was being
	considered as the next Phrack editor, it hit me just how big of a
	responsibility this was. I spoke with ReDragon (Editor of FEH) and
	daemon9 (Editor of The Infinity Concept). Together, we agreed to set
	aside our current e-zine's (I was the current Editor of CoTNo) and focus
	all of our attention on Phrack. We have received offers of support from
	many old and new people in the hacking community. I am looking forward
	to a bright future for Phrack.


	Interests
	~~~~~~~~~
	Women: Sharp and quick
	Cars: Big and fast
	Food: Spicy to the point of pain
	Music: Rock and Roll
	Favorite performers: Jimmy Buffett, The Eagles
	Favorite author: Joel Rosenberg
	Favorite Book: Unix Power Tools


	Most Memorable Experiences
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

	KL kicking me off #hack for saying that hacking was wrong.

	Captain Hemp hiding my address and phone number in a bag of trash.

	Reading my first sniffer log.

	Getting arrested with Captain Hemp outside of a Southern Bell facility.

	Finding the switch with the unpassworded root account.

	Being pulled over on the way to HoHoCon while we were moshing in the
	van.

	DeadKat and Cavalier doing the root dance.

	Being followed by the security guard with the baby seat.

	Major and I not getting mugged and beaten by the gang of thieves, even
	though he could barely stand up and neither of us were carrying at the
	time.


	Some People To Mention
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

	Major : You are, at the same time, one of the best people I have
	ever known and one of the worst people I have ever
	known. I am just glad I am on your side, and you mine.
	I trust you with my life, and with a few of the
	situations we've been through, that's not just talking.

	Cavalier : You taught us all what was important in a group. Your
	steadiness and common sense has helped carry TNO through
	the dark times. As always, I'm glad to have you here.
	You can always be counted on, and that means a great
	deal to me.

	The Presence : It is always a pleasure to talk to you. You have taught
	me more than anyone else in the scene. You will always
	be one of the best. The strength of your ethics will
	guide you through where lesser men would fail.

	Captain Hemp : There's no one I'd rather be arrested with.

	NoCar / K : Congratulations on your new system!


	The Final Question
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
	I have met quite a few hackers. Very few have been "geeks" in the
	traditional sense of the term. I have met hacker business people,
	hacker jocks, hacker criminals, hacker stoners, hacker programmers, and
	hacker skater punks. It's a sport for just about anyone with
	intelligence, dedication, and absolutely no respect for authority.

	_______________________________________________________________________________