Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [85]
So whom else had Martinez called, and who had called him?
I ran a search on PacTel’s CDRs to find out. It wasn’t any revelation that he was calling the FBI, since I had stumbled on that information after I got his phone number from Eric’s rental application. Quite a few of his calls were to and from other cell phones provisioned by PacTel; on my notepad, I jotted down the numbers. Then I started examining the phone records for each of those accounts.
All of the numbers on my list belonged to people who were in frequent contact with one another, as well as with the FBI’s Los Angeles office and other law enforcement agencies.
Oh, shit. I knew too many of these phone numbers. The office number and cell phone of Pacific Bell Security’s Terry Atchley. A manager of Pacific Bell Security based in Northern California, John Venn. Also Eric’s pager, voicemail, and home phone numbers. And the numbers of various FBI agents (their direct phone numbers all began with the same area code, exchange, and first extension digit: 310 996-3XXX). This last group made it pretty certain that Martinez was an agent himself, and helped me put together a list of the other agents probably on the same team.
The other call to Eric’s pager that jumped out at me had come from 213 500-6418. My search of that phone number proved to be a goldmine. There were quite a few short calls in the evenings to a single, internal FBI phone number. Likely explanation? The guy was checking his voicemail.
I dialed the number.
“This is Ken McGuire, please leave a message.”
Who the hell is Ken McGuire, and why the hell is he after me?
I hit the “0” button, expecting it would take me to a receptionist.
Instead a lady came on the line and answered, “White Collar Crime, Squad Three.” A couple of innocent-sounding questions and I had another piece of the puzzle: Agent Ken McGuire was on the Los Angeles FBI squad referred to as WCC3. He was probably Eric’s handler.
This had become a fascinating adventure. By the end of my lengthy traffic analysis, I had put together a list of people at the Bureau who were in regular close contact with the agents and support people I now figured were trying to take me down.
Shit!
Who else would’ve had the balls to investigate the FBI at the same time the FBI was investigating him?
It was all coming together, and it was looking like stormy weather ahead. I felt I was past the point of no return, but I wasn’t going to give up without a struggle.
NINETEEN
Revelations
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We’re told that our medical records are confidential, shared only when we give specific permission. But the truth is that any federal agent, cop, or prosecutor who can convince a judge he has legitimate reason can walk into your pharmacy and have them print out all of your prescriptions and the date of every refill. Scary.
We’re also told that the records kept on us by government agencies—Internal Revenue Service, Social Security Administration, the DMV of any particular state, and so on—are safe from prying eyes. Maybe they’re a little safer now than they used to be—though I doubt it—but in my day, getting any information I wanted was a pushover.
I compromised the Social Security Administration, for example, through an elaborate social-engineering attack. It began with my usual research—the various departments of the agency, where they were located, who the supervisors and managers were for each, standard internal lingo, and so on. Claims were processed by special groups called “Mods,” which I think stood for “modules,” each one perhaps covering a series of Social Security numbers. I social-engineered the phone number for a Mod and eventually reached a staff member who told me her name was Ann. I told her