| .oO Phrack 49 Oo. |
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| Volume Seven, Issue Forty-Nine |
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| 4 of 16 |
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| -:[ Phrack Pro-Phile ]:- |
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| We discussed for a long time who in the hacking world today best |
| exemplifies everything that is right with hacking today, and we came |
| up with a unanimous conclusion that it was Mudge. And so we were quite |
| happy that our first choice for the first pro-phile that we have done |
| accepted our invitation. He cracked your Apple warez when you couldn't, |
| he wrote buffer overflows before they were cool, he owned your Sendmail |
| (and probably still does), and he still manages to give more back to the |
| community than anyone else around. We can't say much more about him so |
| let's see what he has to say for himself... |
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| Mudge |
| ~~~~~ |
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| Personal |
| ~~~~~~~~ |
| Handle: mudge |
| Call him: Enough people know it that its not secret, if you know |
| it great, if not you probably don't have to. |
| Past handles: Many old Apple ][ crackers remember me by a different |
| handle. That handle is long put to rest thanks to the |
| government. |
| Handle origin: Mudge is a very common Irish last name. Though I'm not |
| Irish I met someone with the name and couldn't believe |
| it was a proper name. Out of homage to this person I |
| took it as a handle several years ago (and since I |
| couldn't use the old one for legal reasons). |
| Date of Birth: Mid to Late '60s |
| Age at current date: Mid to Late 20s |
| Height: 6'0" |
| Weight: 150 |
| Eye color: Blue |
| Hair Color: Brownish / dirty blonde and loooong |
| Computer: MPP Risc machine with 16 processors, 4 processor i860 |
| Cadmus, 2 Sparcs, my original Apple ][+, NeXT cube, |
| 486, 4 Sun 3's, Textronix 4051, SouthWest Technical |
| Products 75 |
| Sysop/Co-Sysop of: Cell-Block, Magic Tavern, Co-Sysop on the old Circus |
| and Circus-II boards, ATDT, Works, and various AEs |
| scattered across the country. And a little place |
| called the l0pht. |
| Boards Frequented: Terrapin Station, Metal Shop, Black Crawling Systems, |
| Used to hang on Rutgers' with the old Darpa people |
| (they know who they are) through telenet. |
| Net address: mudge@l0pht.com |
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| Favorite Things |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| Women: Not a big womanizer, when I hook up with someone it's usually |
| for quite some time. Though it's always nice when big companies |
| try to bribe you other ways. (Moreso 'cause it shows how sleazy |
| the big companies are in comparison to human beings :>) |
| Cars: Ford GT40, Porsche Wolf, Ferrari 318's, and of course a black |
| SVT Cobra with black leather interior. |
| Foods: Beer |
| Beers: Mateen Triple - with a runner up of Pilsner Urquell |
| Music: Frank Zappa, Dream Theater, Rush, Gentle Giant, King Crimson |
| Instruments: Guitar. I actually hold advanced degrees in music (hehe had |
| to make some money so here I am back in the 'puter world). |
| Guitars: Ibanez 7 string, Gibson es225 Jazzer, and a custom built Ibanez |
| from an endorsement deal (which is signed by 2 porn stars) |
| Books: Jack of Shadows, Roadmarks, Stranger in a Strange Land, |
| This Immortal, Steal this Urine Test, Steal this Book, PANIC - |
| the wonderful Sparc buffer overflow writers bible. |
| Turn Ons: Pet Rocks |
| Turn Offs: 7/11 employees who think they can dance to Frank Zappa |
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| Other Passions, Interests, Loves: |
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| I love running the l0pht and the people that are involved in it. There's |
| nothing like knowing that you are, at least attempting, to keep information |
| flowing and offering back to the community. I love a lot of things. It's |
| nice to see there is a sense of humor in the scene, and that there are still |
| enough old-school hackers that are willing to help if approached correctly |
| Granted there aren't enough of the older ones to answer every aol.com |
| e-mail... It's a great feeling to be beneficial to both sides. For instance: |
| when the 8.7.5 sploit went out and when we were doing a lot of work on SecureID |
| (which much to their schagrin we got *really* far) that both the people writing |
| the software and the hackers were happy to see our results. It's all about |
| information and learning. If you stop learning... you're not doing it right. |
| Unfortunately... it usually takes disseminating sploits to get some of the |
| large companies to fix their buggy software. |
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| Most Memorable Experiences |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| Having a bunch of suits get out of, yes, K-cars and take away most of my |
| belongings - learning 6502 (and living it) assembler - writing my first |
| buffer overflow a few years back - the band cutting it's first audio CD - |
| playing the music for one of Hobbit's laser shows - having Wietse Venema |
| ask me "not" to break into bell labs at a talk he was giving - having the |
| bellcore author of the OTP RFC write me e-mail realizing that I had beaten |
| him to the punch with vulnerabilities - everyday that I spend with my |
| girlfriend - hearing one of the songs I wrote and played on being played |
| on the radio - The L0pht and it's people - everytime that you finish working |
| on a new project and it actually works [especially when you are working on |
| a hypothetical exploit and it pans out]. |
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| Some People to Mention |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| Cheshire Catalyst for the initial inspiration. The L0pht folks, Raven, |
| Hobbit for being a flat out brilliant fucker, ReDragon (best sense of humor - |
| and best patience... look who he works for ;-)), Glyph - one nasty coder, |
| Squarewave for providing countless hours of ooh's and aahhh's while |
| pouring through his code. The NewHack folks. G-heap, Pope, SpaceRogue, |
| Kingpin, Tan, Weld, Stefan, Brian Oblivion, t-com, all the standard |
| people that hang out and have a good time at the cons with the l0pht folks |
| (ie the r00t, NHC, l0ck/anti l0ck, cDc...) shit ALL the cDc folks. etc., |
| etc. etc. The ASR guys. There are so many people that have contributed so |
| much. I'm sure I've left out many. |
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| The biggest one: my father [the only person who could sit there and grin |
| through all of it... and explain the leafing procedures and how the 6502 |
| REALLY worked] (that's not leafing through on the Apple ][+... two |
| separate things). |
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| A few things you would like to say: |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
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| French Toast please... |
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| 31337 is not a strong XOR key... |
| (unless your secret host key is less than 5 characters long) |
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| Thanks to the new phrack lineup for keeping a good thing going. |
| Still remember DL'ing the latest ones along with the Countlegger series |
| and having to Dalton's Disk Disintegrator them back together. |
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| Oh yeah... |
| and if someone tells you something is secure... |
| ask them to prove it, and then STILL don't believe them. |
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| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| One last thing, in your personal experience, have you found that most |
| people in the scene are pretty much computer geeks? |
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| "Absolutely not. I've had the privilege to hang out with everyone from |
| Weitse Venema, Dan Farmer, Casper Dik, Peter Guttman, to the hacker scene |
| like Hobbit, Daemon9, the l0pht folks... and there's very few out of the |
| bunch that I would label 'computer geeks'. Computer geeks seem not to have |
| that creative twist in many cases that hackers have. This is the same twist |
| that says: I don't care what it's _supposed_ to do - I bet I can make it do |
| *this*." |
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| Thanks a lot for the prophile. |
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| "Thanks a lot for the opportunity." |
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