Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [75]
Eric started paging through the document on-screen and could see that it also had all the functional specifications and requirements. He saw it was a rich source of information that would grant any phone phreaker powers he could only dream of.
This was something like a month after he had first mentioned SAS to me in a phone conversation. Even more perplexing, what we were showing him wasn’t a photocopy but an electronic file. I could see the wheels turning: he could not have had any idea of how to do what I had done—getting hold of the developer’s design notes, and, no less, an electronic version of them, which probably didn’t exist anywhere within PacBell.
He demanded again, “How… the… fuck… did you get this?”
I told him what we had already said several times: “When you start sharing stuff with us, we’ll start sharing stuff with you.” As I said that, Lewis reached over, ejected the disk from the computer, and pocketed it.
Eric warned us, “The FBI knows about SAS because they know Poulsen was using it. They’re watching it real closely. They probably have traps on all the numbers.”
In a tone that was almost hostile, he said, “Stay away from it. You’ll get caught if you use it.” If that was just a friendly warning, why so much emotion?
At this point, Eric said he had to take a leak, got up, and headed for the men’s room. It was standard operating procedure for any hacker worthy of the name to possess all kinds of files and passwords on his computer that could get him thrown into jail. If he went out somewhere carrying his laptop, he would never let it out of his sight, not even when leaving the table for a minute or two to hit the men’s. Yet here was Eric, casually walking away and leaving his laptop not only sitting on the table but turned on, like an invitation to check out what we could find while he was gone. Lewis whipped out his frequency counter and waved it slowly back and forth, searching for transmissions. Nothing. The computer was not radioing our conversation to any team of flatfoots or Feds lurking nearby, ready to pounce on us.
I leaned over the laptop and announced to Lewis, “Man, that guy really knows his shit!” What a laugh—I only said it because I was sure there was some kind of tiny recorder planted in it, recording every word. Otherwise he would never have left it on the table. Here was a guy so paranoid that for weeks he wouldn’t give us his pager number, and now all of a sudden he was trusting us with his laptop? No way.
I figured he probably had some confederate at another table, watching us to make sure we didn’t just snatch the thing and run. Otherwise he wouldn’t have dared leaving a computer with a ton of information on it that could incriminate him under the control of a pair of guys he was only just meeting for the first time.
When we were finished with dinner and starting to leave, Eric asked, “If you’ve got a car, can you drop me off? It’s not very far.” Sure, I said, why not?
He started out friendly, telling me about the time not long before when he was tooling along Sunset Boulevard on his motorcycle and a car turned left directly across his path. The impact sent him flying over the car; he hit the ground so hard that his leg broke halfway between knee and ankle, with the lower part bent backward at a ninety-degree angle. The doctors and therapists worked on restoring his leg for five months, until finally Eric told them to go ahead and amputate it. But the prosthesis was so good that after physical therapy in rehab, he was able to walk without a noticeable limp.
The story was probably meant to put me in a sympathetic mood. Now he shifted gears and said, “I’m angry about your getting into SAS. After four weeks, you’ve got more information than I do about it.”
I used this to needle him: “We know a lot more than you think, Eric.”
But I was still being cautious, so I told him,