Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [167]
“Jeez, I need to test my demo tonight so I’ll be ready for my client in the morning. What do I do now? Is there any way I could get a copy from you?”
Marty thought it over. “Well… I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll put the compiler on my workstation just long enough for you to get it.”
“Great. As soon as it’s up, I’ll transfer it to removable media so it won’t be on my workstation either. Then I’ll call you back to let you know I’m done,” I said. “And Marty?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll keep it secret. I promise.”
Marty gave me the hostname of his workstation so I could use FTP to transfer the file. To my surprise, he had enabled anonymous FTP access so I didn’t even need an account to get the files.
Like taking candy from a baby.
As far as I know, Marty never knew he was duped and will find out only if he reads it here.
Still high from the success of getting the compiler, I woke up to find that my phone was dead. I’d done something really stupid that put my freedom at risk.
Not willing to risk making business calls associated with my new identity from a cloned cell phone, I got dressed and went to the closest pay phone and called the phone company, Southern Bell, to find out why my phone wasn’t working. After keeping me waiting for a long time, a supervisor came on the line and began asking a lot of questions. Then she told me, “A Michael Stanfill called us from Portland and said you’re using his identity.”
“That guy must be mistaken,” I told her. “I’ll fax you a copy of my driver’s license tomorrow to prove my identity.”
Suddenly I realized what had happened. The Raleigh power company, Carolina Power & Light, required a large deposit. If you had references from your former utility company, you could avoid paying it, so I’d called the power company that Michael Stanfill used in Oregon—Portland General Electric—and asked for a reference letter to be faxed. I told the lady on the other end of the line that I still wanted to keep my account in Oregon but was buying property in Raleigh. When they sent the letter to me, they had apparently sent a courtesy copy to the real Stanfill, as well. I felt like a total idiot: by trying to save a $400 deposit, I’d completely blown my cover.
I had to move now.
I had to get a new identity now.
I had to get the hell out of my apartment now!
I’d never even had a chance to attend one of those all-residents’ parties or managed to meet a cute girl.
Finding a job had of course been one of my first priorities. I’d mailed out job résumés and cover letters as Michael Stanfill to more than twenty places—most of the potential employers in the area. Now, with my phone disconnected, none of these prospective employers would be able to reach me! Worse, it would be too risky to try the same places again under a different name. This put me at an extreme disadvantage.
I’d signed a six-month lease, so I told the round-faced lady in the rental office, “I really like this place, but I’ve had a family medical emergency and have to leave.”
She said, “If it’s an emergency, the company will let you out of the lease. But they aren’t going to refund you anything on this month’s rent.” I felt like saying, “Forget the refund, consider it a payoff, and if the Feds show up asking questions, I was never here.”
The next day, I took a new place across town at the Friendship Inn to live in while I searched for a new apartment. Even with my relatively few possessions, it took me several frustrating, nerve-racking trips in my compact rental car to move everything to my new temporary digs. The pressure of having to find a new job and build a new identity was weighing on me.
Little did I know that I had bigger things to worry about. I couldn’t begin to imagine how the net was beginning to close around me.
After settling in at the Friendship Inn, using my Portland State University file, I chose another temporary name: Glenn Thomas Case. Since he, like Stanfill, was a living person and so riskier to borrow an identity from,