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As his directory listing was being displayed on his workstation, I typed

rlogin lankforj@mrdbolt

which logged me into his account, “lankforj,” on the mrdbolt server.

And I was into his account without needing his password.

I asked Jeff if he saw the .rhosts file that we had just created, and he confirmed that he did. “Great,” I said. “Now I can close the trouble ticket. Thanks for taking the time to test it.”

And then I had him delete the file to make it appear that everything was back to its original state.

I was so excited. As soon as we hung up, I quickly obtained root access and set up the log-in backdoor on the mrdbolt server. I started typing at hyperspeed, so charged I couldn’t slow my fingers down.

My guess had been correct: mrdbolt was the mother lode, the link used to share development work among the Mobile Radio Division, NEC USA, and NEC Japan. I found several versions of source code for several different NEC handhelds. But the source code I really wanted, for the NEC P7, wasn’t online. Damn! All that effort, and I wasn’t hitting pay dirt.

Since I was already into the internal network, maybe I could get the code from NEC Japan. Over the next several weeks, I would be able without much difficulty to get access to all the servers used by the Mobile Radio Division in Yokohama.

I continued my search for the cell phone source code but found that there was a massive excess of information: the company was developing phones for a number of different markets, including the United Kingdom, other European countries, and Australia. Enough, already; it was time for an easier approach.

I checked the mrdbolt server to see who was logged in. Jeff Lankford appeared to be a workaholic: well after the end of the normal working day, he was still online.

For what I had in mind, I needed privacy. Darren and Liz had already left for the day; Ginger had the swing shift, so she was still around, but her office was on the opposite side of the computer room. I partly closed the door to the space I shared with my coworkers, leaving it just far enough ajar that I could see if anyone approached.

What I was about to do was gutsy. I was no Rich Little when it came to doing accents, but I was going to try to pass myself off as Takada-san, from NEC Japan’s Mobile Radio Division.

I called Lankford at his desk. When he picked up the phone, I launched into my act:

“Misterrrrr, ahhh, Lahngfor, I Takada-san… from Japan.” He knew the name and asked how he could help.

“Misterrrrr Lahng… for—we no find, ahhhh, vers’n three ohh five for hotdog uhh project”—using the codename I’d picked up for the NEC P7 source code. “Can you, ahhh, put on mrdbolt?”

He assured me that he had Version 3.05 on floppy and could upload it.

“Ahhh, thank… ahhh, thank you, Mr. Jeff…. I check mrdbolt soon. Bye.”

Just as I was ringing off in my apparently not-too-pathetic accent, the door swung all the way open, and Ginger was standing there.

“Eric… what are you doing?” she asked.

Bad timing.

“Oh, just playing a joke on a buddy of mine,” I told her.

She gave me a weird look, then turned and walked away.

Whoa! Close call!

I logged into mrdbolt and waited for Jeff to finish uploading the code, which I then immediately transferred to a system at USC for safekeeping.

During this period, I was constantly searching through all the administrator emails at NEC for certain keywords, including FBI, trace, hacker, gregg (the name I was using), trap, and security.

One day I came across a message that rocked me on my heels:

FBI called because source code showed up at a site that they monitor in LA. May 10th the files were FTP’ed from netcom7 to site in LA. 5 files, containing about 1 total meg of stuff. 1210-29.lzh p74428.lzh v3625dr.lzh v3625uss.lzh v4428us.scr. Kathleen called Bill Puknat.

Puknat—whose name I had dropped in my first phone conversation with Jeff Lankford—was the lead software engineer for the Mobile Radio Division in the States. “Kathleen” must be Kathleen Carson, from the FBI in Los Angeles. And “a site that they monitor in LA” had