Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [10]
“Complimentary apple juice” was one of my favorite gags. After a customer placed an order, we’d explain that our ice machine was broken, so we were giving away free juice. “We’ve got grapefruit, orange, and… oh, sorry, looks like we’re out of grapefruit and orange. Would you like apple juice?” When the customer said yes, we’d play a recording of someone peeing into a cup, then say, “Okay. Your apple juice is ready. Please drive forward to the window and pick it up.”
We thought it would be funny if we drove people a little nuts by making it impossible to place their order. Taking over the speaker, each time a customer pulled up and placed an order, a friend of ours would repeat the order, but in a strong Hindi accent with hardly a word understandable. The customer would say he couldn’t understand, and our friend would say something else just as impossible to understand, over and over—driving customers crazy, one after the other.
The best part was that everything we said at the drive-through also blared out over the speaker outside, but the employees couldn’t override it. Sometimes we’d watch the customers sitting outside at the tables, eating their burgers and laughing. No one could figure out what was going on.
One time, a manager came out to see who was messing with the speaker. He glanced around the parking lot, scratching his head. There was no one around. The cars were empty. No one was hiding behind the sign. He walked over to the speaker and leaned in close, squinting, as if he expected to see a tiny person inside.
“What the fuck are you looking at?!” I shouted in a raspy voice.
He must’ve jumped back ten feet!
Sometimes when we were playing these pranks, the people who lived in the apartments nearby would stand on their balconies, laughing. Even people on the sidewalk were in stitches. Lewis and I actually brought friends along with us several times, because it was so hilarious.
Okay, childish, but I was only sixteen or seventeen at the time.
Some of my escapades weren’t quite as innocent. I had a personal rule about not entering any phone company facilities, tempting though it would be to actually gain access to the systems and maybe read some phone company technical manuals. But, as they say, it was less like a rule for me than a guideline.
One night in 1981, when I was seventeen, I was hanging out with another phone-phreaker buddy, Steven Rhoades. We decided to sneak into Pacific Telephone’s Sunset-Gower central office, in Hollywood. Since we were already phone phreaking, strolling into the phone company in person was the ultimate hack. Access was by pressing the right code numbers on the outside door’s keypad, and we social-engineered the code without a problem, letting us walk right in.
My God—how exciting! For us, it was the ultimate playground. But what should we look for?
A large man in a security guard’s uniform was making his rounds of the building and came upon us. He was built like a nightclub bouncer or an NFL lineman—very intimidating. Just standing quietly, hands at his sides, he could scare the pants off you. Yet somehow, the tighter the situation, the calmer I seem to get.
I didn’t really look old enough to pass for a full-time employee. But I dived in anyway. “Hi,” I said. “How’re you tonight?”
He said, “Fine, sir. May I see your company ID badges please?”
I checked my pockets. “Damn. I must have left it in the car. I’ll just go get it.”
He wasn’t having any of that. “No, you’re both coming upstairs with me,” he said.
We didn’t argue.
He brings us to the Switching Control Center on the ninth floor, where other employees are working.
Heart pounding. Chest heaving.
A couple of switch techs come over to see what’s going on. I’m thinking that my only option is to try to outrun the rent-a-cop, but I know there’s slim chance of getting away. I’m desperate.