Terminal Compromise - Winn Schwartau (fiction book recommendations TXT) 📗

on. Summer finals are over. Everyone still there?

BOOM’S STILL AT UCLA, I JUST TALKED TO CRACKER, MAD MAX, ALPHA,

SCROLLER, MR. MAGIC . . .WE MISSED YOU. LOOKING FORWARD TO A

GOOD VACATE?

Yeah, 4 days before next term starts . . .Has anyone got the key

to the NPPS NASA node?

THEY CLOSED IT AGAIN. WE’RE STILL LOOKING. WE WERE BACK INTO

AMEX, THOUGH. CLEANED UP A FEW DEBTS FOR UNSUSPECTING CARD

MEMBERS. HAPPY LABOR DAY TO THEM. GOOD FUN.

And CHAOS? Anyone?

BEST I’VE EVER HEARD. 4 NEW VIRUSES SET TO GO OFF. HIGHLY POTENT

VARIATIONS OF JERUSALEM-B. THEN SOME RUMORS ABOUT COLUMBUS DAY,

BUT NOTHING HARD.

When you get the code send me a copy, OK?

SURE. HEY, REMEMBER SPOOK? STILL ASKING TO JOIN NEMO. SEEMS HE

BEEN UP TO A LOT OF SUCCESSFUL NO GOOD. WE’RE ABOUT READY TO LET

HIM IN. HE BROUGHT A LOT TO THE PARTY.

Careful! Remember 401

YEAH, I KNOW. HE’S CLEAN. GOOD GOVT STUFF . HE BROUGHT US THE

NEWEST IRS X.25 SIGN-ONS, 2 MILNET SUPERUSER PASSWORDS AND, DIG

THIS, VETERAN’S BENEFIT AND ADMINISTRATION, OFFICE OF POLICY AT

THE VA.

What you gonna do, boy? In them thar computers?

I FIGURE I’D GIVE A FEW EXTRA BENEFITS TO SOME NEEDY GI’S WHO’VE

BEEN ON THE SHORT END.

Excellent! Hey, Lori’s on the line. gotta go.

TA

<<<<<< CONNECTION TERMINATED >>>>>>

The screen of his communications program returned to a list of

names and phone numbers. Lori said she’d be over in an hour and

Steven Billings was tempted to dial another couple of numbers

before his date with Lori. But if he found something interesting

it might force him to be late, and Lori could not tolerate play-

ing second fiddle to a computer.

Steven Billings, known as “KIRK, where no man has gone before”,

by fellow hackers, had finished his midterms at San Diego State

University. The ritual labors were over and he looked forward to

some relax time. Serious relax time.

The one recreation he craved, but downplayed to Lori, was spend-

ing time with his computer. She was jealous in some respects, in

that it received as much attention from Steve as she did. Yet,

she also understood that computers were his first love, and they

were part of his life long before she was. So, they came with the

territory. Steve attended, upon occasion, classes at SDSU, La

Jolla. For a 21 year old transplant from Darien, Connecticut, he

lived in paradise.

Steve’s single largest expense in life was his phone bill, and

instead of working a regular job to earn spending money, Steve

tutored other students in their computer courses. Rather than

flaunt his skills to his teachers and risk extra assignments, he

was more technically qualified than they were, he kept his mouth

shut, sailed through classes, rarely studied and became a full

time computer hacker. He translated his every wish into a com-

mand that the computer obeyed.

Steve Billings did not fill the picture of a computer nerd. He

was almost dashing with a firm golden tanned 175 pound body, and

dark blond hair that caused the girls to turn their heads. He

loved the outdoors, the hot warmth of the summer to the cooler

warmth of the winter, surfing at the Cardiff Reef and betting on

fixed jai-alai games in Tijuana. He played soccer and OTL, a San

Diego specific version of gloveless and topless co-ed beach

softball. In short, he was a guy. A regular guy.

The spotlessly groomed image of Steve Billings in white tennis

shorts and a “Save the Whales” tank-top eclectically co-existed

with the sterile surroundings of the mammoth super computer

center. The Cray Y-MP is about as big and bad a computer as

money can buy, and despite Steve’s well known skills, the head of

the Super Computing Department couldn’t help but cringe when

Steve leaned his surf board against the helium cooled memory

banks of the twelve million dollar computer.

He ran his shift at the computer lab so efficiently and effort-

lessly that over time he spent more and more of his hours there

perusing through other people’s computers. Now there was a feel-

ing. Hacking through somebody else’s computer without their

knowledge. The ultimate challenge, an infinity of possibilities,

an infinity of answers.

The San Diego Union was an awful paper, Steve thought, and the

evening paper was even worse. So he got copies of the New York

City Times when possible, either at a newsstand, borrowed from

yesterday’s Times reader or from the library. Nice to get a real

perspective on the world. This Sunday he spent the $4.00 to get

his own new, uncrumpled and unread copy of his revered paper, all

thirty four pounds of it. Alone. Peace.

Reading by the condo pool an article caught his eye. Steve

remembered a story he had heard about a hacker who had invaded

and single handedly stopped INTERNET, a computer network that

connected together tens of thousands of computers around the

country.

Government Defense Network Halted by Hacker by Scott Mason, New York City Times

Vaughn Chase, a 17 year old high school student Galbraith High

School in Ann Arbor, Michigan was indicted today on charges that

he infected the nationwide INTERNET network with a computer

virus. This latest attack upon INTERNET is reminiscent of a

similar incident launched by Robert Morris of Cornell University

in November, 1988.

According to the Computer Emergency Response Team, a DARPA spon-

sored group, if Mr. Chase had not left his name in the source

code of his virus, there would have been no way to track down the

culprit.

A computer virus is a small software program that is secretly put

into a computer, generally designed to cause damage. A virus

attaches itself to other computer programs secretively. At some

time after the parasite virus program is ‘glued’ into the comput-

er, it is reawakened on a specific date or by a particular se-

quence of events.

Chase, though, actually infected INTERNET with a Worm. A Worm is

a program that copies itself, over and over and over, either

filling the computer’s memory to capacity or slowing down its

operation to a snail’s pace. In either case, the results are

devastating – effectively, the computer stops working.

Chase, a math wizard according to his high school officials,

released the Worm into Internet in early August with a detonation

date of September 1, which brought thousands of computers to a

grinding halt.

INTERNET ties together tens of thousands of computers from the

Government, private industry, universities and defense contrac-

tors all over the country. Chase said he learned how to access

the unclassified computer network from passwords and keys dis-

tributed on computer Bulletin Boards.

Computer security experts worked for 3 days hours to first deter-

mine the cause of the network slowdown and then to restore the

network to normal operation. It has been estimated that almost

$100 Million in damage was caused by Mr. Chase’s Worm. Mr. Chase

said the Worm was experimental, and was accidentally released

into INTERNET when a piece of software he had written malfunc-

tioned. He apologized for any inconvenience he caused.

The Attorney General of the State of Michigan is examining the

legal aspects of the case and it is expected that Mr. Chase will

be tried within in a year. Mr. Chase was released on his own

recognizance.

This is Scott Mason wondering why the Pentagon doesn’t shoot

worms instead of bombs at enemy computers.

*

The next day Steve Billings signed on to the SDSU/BBS from his

small Mission Beach apartment. It was a local university Bulletin

Board Service or BBS. A BBS is like a library. There are li-

braries of software which are free, and as a user you are recip-

rocally expected to donate software into the Public Domain. Con-

ference Halls or Conversation Pits on the BBS are free-for-all

discussions where people at their keyboards can all have a ‘live’

conversation. Anyone, using any computer, anywhere in the world

can call up any BBS using regular phone lines. No one cared or

knew if you were skinny, fat, pimpled, blind, a double for

Christy Brinkley or too chicken shit to talk to girls in person.

Here, everyone was equal.

Billings 234 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

There was a brief pause.

WELCOME TO THE SDSU/BBS. STEVE BILLINGS, YOU ARE USER #109

Steve Chose (12) for SERVICES:

The menu changed to a list of further options. Each option would

permit the user to gain access to other networks around the

country. From one single entry point with a small computer,

anyone could ‘dial up’ as it’s called, almost any of over

20,000,000 computers in the country tied into any of ten thousand

different networks.

SDSU/BBS WINDOW ON THE WORLD NETWORK SERVICES MENU

Steve selected CALNET, a network at Cal Tech in Los Angeles.

Many of the Universities have permanent connections between their

computers.

LOGON: Billings014