Radio show focuses on hacking

Web posted June 14, 1997

Associated Press

More than half of the little red lights are flashing on the control panel, indicating that about 15 people are calling in to talk to Eric Corley.

``Good evening,'' says Corley, greeting another caller to his radio show on WBAI radio in New York. The Tuesday evening show is called ``Off the Hook.'' It's a program by and for hackers in the New York metropolitan region, and Corley, editor of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, is the host.

But this caller isn't from Long Island, New Jersey, New York City or any of the other parts of the Northeast that are in the WBAI listening area.

``Emmanuel, I just thought I'd try to see if I can get through,'' says the caller in a broad Australian accent. By the way, in the hacking community Corley goes by the nom de hack of Emmanuel Goldstein, the perhaps fictitious rebel leader in George Orwell's novel ``Nineteen Eighty-Four.''

Corley is surprised. His show reaches a lot of people, but the WBAI signal isn't that strong. It's 11 a.m in Australia, and it's the next day there. And this hacker, who must have listened to the show on the audio archive available at the 2600 Web site at http://www.2600.com, has called in even though he can't hear the show live.

Corley and the caller discuss the state of hacking in Australia, the names of the Australian equivalents of the FBI, the CIA and the Secret Service, phone deregulation and whether the hacker will be at the Beyond Hope hackers conference in New York on Aug. 8-10.

``I'll be there,'' the hacker says.

The Australian hacker tells Corley that there are 2600 groups in Adelaide and Melbourne, duplicates of the original group that revolve around the magazine, which Corley publishes in Middle Island, N.Y.

``It's hard to define just what constitutes 2600,'' says Corley by e-mail a few days after the show. ``We've got around 3,000 subscribers, around 40,000 people who pick us up in bookstores and newsstands (people are that afraid of being on our subscriber list, even though it's encrypted and has never been compromised). We have meetings all around the world on the first Friday of every month, which basically is a way for people with the `2600 spirit' to get away from computers for a while and meet new people. We also have them at the same time so the feds can't go and spy on all of us at once. We're probably responsible for a lot of new federal employees.''

Corley himself pleaded guilty in 1984 to charges he broke into an e-mail system owned by GTE Corp. He was placed on probation.

For as long as hackers have been messing around in the entrails of computers and telephone systems - and it's been a long time now - law-enforcement officials have been chasing and prosecuting them. Throughout this history the two sides have maintained two distinct takes on hacking.

Hackers say that although there is a small number of bad hackers who use their expertise for personal gain, the vast majority are simply exploring systems and pointing out the gaping holes in security so the people who own and operate those systems can patch the holes.

Nonsense, say law-enforcement officials.

``It's a complicated thing to understand,'' says Bob Weaver, assistant to the Secret Service special agent in charge of the New York Electronics Crime Task Force. ``Let me draw you a schematic to explain.''

Weaver leans forward, picks up a pen and draws a dollar sign on a pad of paper.

``That's what it's all about,'' he says.

Weaver also points out that just because you might leave your back door unlocked, it doesn't mean it's fine for someone to stroll into your kitchen to teach you a lesson.

Trespassing and theft are crimes, pure and simple, law-enforcement officers say. Even if the only thing hackers are stealing is free telephone service.

Different segments of the show demonstrate both sides of this argument.

One of the hackers explains to the listening audience a simple way to get free long-distance calls from NYNEX pay phones - the system hole was patched later - and Corley demonstrates the system on air. And then he wonders out loud if they have just committed fraud.

But the main focus of the first half of Corley's show is on something that might appeal to nearly everyone who has used a telephone in recent years: how to reach a human being when calling information rather than going through the annoying and impersonal recorded messages.

Corley demonstrates.

He calls 411, and a recording asks him what town and listing he is looking for. ``I'm looking for the telephone number for NYNEX, please,'' he tells the machine.

A few moments later he dials 0 and tells the operator he's having trouble getting through to information. Unaware she's being broadcast live throughout the metropolitan region, she happily transfers him. And although he has to wait in a telephonic line, he successfully bypasses the messages that ask him for town and listing.

He makes the same request for NYNEX' number. The information operator is confused.

``I'm interested in a business transaction,'' Corley explains. ``I'd like to purchase the company, actually.''

``Really?'' asks the operator, sounding genuinely intrigued.

After the phone tricks are over, Corley takes phone calls, including the call from Australia. One of the calls is from a woman who appears to know little about computers. She does know, however, that someone recently made an expensive call to Bangladesh and had it billed to her MCI phone card, which, incidentally, she didn't even order.

Corley explains how easy it is for malevolent hackers to obtain other people's calling-card numbers.

``The truth is there are so many ways of making phone calls on someone else's phone bill it's not funny,'' he says. ``That's one of the things we try to show people.''

The woman wants to know if there's anything she or the phone company can do to block this.

Corley sees another chance to expose what he considers the true nature of most phone companies, and he's not going to pass up the opportunity. ``You can't block stupidity,'' he says.