Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [36]
The criminal charges for the SCO break-in turned out better than I could have hoped. The charges against Bonnie were dropped, and my attorney, who knew the prosecutor, Michael Barton, got me a good deal. For anyone else—for what was technically a first offense, since my juvenile records were sealed—the case would have been charged as a misdemeanor. But because I was Kevin Mitnick, with a badass reputation, the prosecutor initially insisted on charging me with a felony—even though my trespass into SCO’s network still amounted to only a misdemeanor under the law. I agreed to admit to the trespass to settle the case and get the charges against Bonnie dropped. I wouldn’t have to serve any jail time, only pay a way-modest $216 fine and be on “summary probation” for thirty-six months—meaning that I wouldn’t have to report to a Probation Officer. The only other obvious condition was that I had to promise not to “commit any crimes.”
A few days later I drove up to Santa Cruz for the return of the stuff that had been seized. The cops gave me back my computer terminal but not the disks, which worried me because those incriminating disks contained evidence of my hacks into Pacific Bell, among other interesting places. Another box that they did return, though, they must not have looked at very carefully or cared: it held Bonnie’s pot stash and bong pipe. Then again, this was Santa Cruz, with a small-town police department.
There was an aftermath to the Santa Cruz story. As I had feared, the Santa Cruz detectives apparently got around to looking at those computer disks, and turned information over to Pacific Bell about what I had been doing with its systems. Pacific Bell Security was alarmed enough to generate an internal memo to all managers, which I found out about in a most unlikely way: a Pacific Bell employee named Bill Cook, also a ham operator who frequently used the infamous 147.435 megahertz repeater in Los Angeles, read the memo on the air, just to antagonize me.
Of course, I had to see the memo for myself. How could I get it?
I contacted Lewis De Payne at work and asked him to temporarily reprogram the fax machine there so incoming calls would be answered by a machine that said it belonged to Pacific Bell Security.
Then I dialed into the phone company switch that handled the telephone service for Pacific Bell Security, and reprogrammed the phone line for its fax machine so it would call-forward to the phone number for the machine at Lewis’s work. That took care of the preparations.
I then called the office of Pacific Bell vice president Frank Spiller. His executive secretary answered. I said I was calling from Pacific Bell Security and gave the name of one of the actual security investigators—maybe I said I was Steve Dougherty.
I asked, “Did Frank get the memo on the Kevin Mitnick case?”
“What’s it about?” she asked.
“A hacker who’s been breaking into our computers.”
“Oh, yes, right. I’ve got it right here.”
I said, “I think we sent you an older revision that has since been updated. Can you fax the version you have to me?” I gave her the internal fax number for Pacific Bell Security in Northern California.
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll do it right now.” As soon as Lewis got the fax, he refaxed it to me, then he and I both undid our setup steps.
Here’s the list of things the memo said had been found on my floppy disks:
Mitnick’s compromise of all Southern California SCC/ESAC computers. On file were the names, log-ins, passwords, and home telephone numbers for northern and southern ESAC employees.
The dial-up numbers and circuit identification documents for SCC computers and data kits.
The commands for testing and seizing