Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [42]
Across town, at the office of my friend Dave Harrison, I would connect to a VMS system called “ramoth” over a dial-up modem that had Lewis’s tape mounted on the drive. I would fill up the tape with as much VMS source code as would fit. Lewis would then hand the operator another blank one and pass the written tape to Lenny DiCicco. At the end of each session, Lenny would take all the new tapes to hide in a rented storage locker. We repeated this cycle until, eventually, we had thirty to forty tapes containing the full VMS Version 5 source code.
While I was spending so much time at Harrison’s, it occurred to me that a company called GTE Telenet, which had offices in the same building, operated one of the largest “X25” networks, serving some of the biggest customers in the world. Maybe I could gain administrative access to their network and monitor customer traffic. Dave had previously picked the lock to the firemen’s box and lifted the master key to the building. Late one night, Dave and I used the key to walk into the GTE Telenet offices, just to look around. When I saw they used VMS, I was elated; I felt right at home.
I discovered a VMS system with a node-name of “Snoopy.” After poking around for a bit, I discovered that Snoopy was already logged in to a privileged account, giving me full access to the system. The temptation was too great. Even though Telenet people were in and out of the offices twenty-four hours a day, I sat down at the terminal and started to explore, looking at scripts and third-party applications to figure out what tools they had and how those tools could be used to monitor the network. Within a very short time, I figured out how to eavesdrop on customer network traffic. Then it hit me. The node had been named Snoopy because it allowed the technicians to monitor traffic on customer networks: it allowed them to snoop.
I already had the X25 address to connect to the VMS system at the organic chemistry department at Leeds University, where Neill Clift studied, so I connected. I didn’t have any log-in credentials; none of my guesses were correct. He was already logged in to the system because of the time difference, saw my log-in attempts, and emailed the administrator of Snoopy to say that someone was trying to get into his university’s system; of course I deleted the email.
Though I didn’t get into Leeds University that night, my efforts had laid the groundwork for targeting Clift later on that would prove to be a goldmine.
Lenny and I fell into a battle of wits against each other. He was a computer operator at a company called VPA, and I had joined a company called CK Technologies, in Newbury Park. We kept making bets on whether we could break into each other’s computer systems that we managed for our employers. Whoever could hack into the VMS system at the other’s company would get the prize. It was like a game of “capture the flag,” designed to test our skill at defending our systems against each other.
Lenny wasn’t astute enough to keep me out. I kept getting into his systems. The bet was always $150, the cost of dinner for two at Spago, the Beverly Hills restaurant of celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck. I had won this ongoing bet enough times that Lenny was starting to feel annoyed.
During one of our all-night hacking sessions, Lenny started complaining that he never won the bet. I told him he could quit anytime he wanted. But he wanted to win.
His company had just installed a digital lock on the door to its computer room; Lenny challenged me to bypass the lock by guessing the code, knowing it would be almost impossible to do. “If you can’t get in,” he said, “you have to pay me a hundred and fifty bucks right now, tonight.”
I told him I didn’t want to take his money because it would be too easy. And then I added that he’d be upset with himself afterward since I was always going to win, no matter what. These taunts made him even more anxious for me to accept the bet.
Actually, it would have been difficult for me to win it straight up. But dumb luck came to my rescue.