Breaking into The Realm

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: Darren Reed <darrenr () reed wattle id au>

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/19/1053196515084.html

Breaking into The Realm
By Nathan Cochrane
May 20 2003

Those who were part of the computer underground in the early to
mid-'80s will feel nostalgic pangs as they watch In the Realm of the
Hackers, a documentary that chronicles the rise and fall of
Australia's most notorious hackers.

It tells the story of two Melbourne Generation-X hackers - Electron
and Phoenix - who, as part of hacker crew "The Realm", were
responsible in the '80s and '90s for attacking many high-profile
computer systems here and in the United States. Their exploits were
responsible for the US Government putting pressure on the Hawke
government to enact Australia's first federal cyber-crime legislation
in 1989.

The story is told from the perspective of Electron, who was
interviewed for the documentary but is represented on camera by an
actor in re-creations of events so as to protect his new identity as a
solid member of the IT professional community.

Realm, to be shown on the ABC on May 29, was inspired by the book
Underground, by Melbourne-based writer and academic Suelette Dreyfus.  
Dreyfus has been praised by hackers and reviewers for her keen ability
to report accurately on the sub-culture that, by its clandestine and
macho nature, is difficult for outsiders to understand or crack. She
lends her imprimatur as associate producer and as an expert
interviewed on camera.

In many ways, Realm is similar in feel to Steven Levy's classic 1984
book on the culture, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. And
there are echoes of Lawrence Lasker's and Walter Parkes's 1983 film,
WarGames, in the attitudes of the young hackers. But Realm is unique
because, for the first time, it chronicles the emerging international
underground, which lived on remote electronic bulletin boards and the
nascent internet, from the perspective of Australians. For good or
ill, depending on your point of view, Australians were once again
pioneering another of the information society's byways - hacking and
the search for hackers by law enforcement.

The producers went to great lengths to capture the thoughts of others
who were held in The Realm's thrall, including New York Times
technology journalist John Markoff and Purdue University professor of
computer sciences and philosophy Eugene Spafford.

Markoff, probably influenced by his earlier breaking story that
exposed Robert Tappan Morris as the creator of the Arpanet (Morris)  
Worm, had written a story claiming that a new worm was loose on
computer networks. This angered Phoenix because he felt his skills
were being maligned. So he brashly called Markoff and set him to
rights. It was the beginning of the end for the hackers.

Markoff's resulting front page follow-up story in the Times, turned up
the blowtorch on Australian Federal Police to track down the hackers.

The producers paid careful attention to what was displayed on screens,
including the dump of the ``WANK'' worm that invaded NASA on the eve
of the nuclear-powered Galileo space probe launch - and whose creator
was never found.

The documentary captures the feeling of the time, although this could
have been done better by providing some more contextual historical
information, instead of limiting it to just what was necessary for the
telling of the story. Some more retro '80s background music would have
been good, too.

However, the motivations of the people under discussion are clear -
the sense of estrangement from broader society, while bonding through
their exploits with others in the hacker underground.

The actor playing Electron provides a voice-over to a somewhat campy
dance scene in a suburban kitchen, explaining the exhilaration he felt
after hacking a particularly tough target. At the other end of the
manic-depressive cycle, Electron begs his father to hide the boxy
300-baud modem, only for it to be ferreted out several hours later.

"Dad got so good at hiding the modem that not even the Federal Police
could find it," Electron says in the movie.

Interviews with the Federal Police who worked on the case show how
difficult it was for them to deal with the new cyber threat. None had
any deep computer skills at the outset and they were clearly
outclassed by the errant teens.

The new computer crimes unit in Melbourne had to beg and borrow
discards from business while inventing world-first methods of storing
intercepted data transmissions using existing equipment geared for the
analog age, such as reel-to-reel tape recorders. And they faced the
scorn of colleagues in other branches of the force who thought they
should be out fighting "real crime".

You can feel the sense of despair they must have had when their
three-year investigation of The Realm came to nothing.

It is worrying that many of the police have since left for the
lucrative private sector, and there is a concern expressed in the film
that Australia lacks the punch to adequately tackle future
cyber-crime.

As much as it is a historical work, Realm also approaches issues of
class divides, mental illness, drugs, addiction, and the loss of and
separation from parents.

Electron tells us, through his actor avatar, that he only dealt with
Phoenix because he had a fast modem to download files with details of
security vulnerabilities. We see Electron struggling in the '90s with
an antiquated Commodore 64 and 1541 5.25-inch disk drive, while
Phoenix had a high-powered and expensive Commodore Amiga. Phoenix is
introduced to us as he walks home from his private school in a leafy
Melbourne suburb while Electron's home is a neat weatherboard house in
a working-class area.

The death of Electron's mother - and the later death of his father
from cancer while Electron awaited prosecution - may have brought on
his escape into drugs, which led to his conviction and suspended
sentence.

Although there is often criticism of lenient sentences for hackers,
many teenagers grow out of their hacking phase. Realm shows that
hacking is a lot like drugs: there is an addictive high, a need to
belong to a community (however remotely) and many of the same
precursors and behaviours.

It may be better for those prosecuting and persecuting hackers to
consider harm-minimisation strategies, like those developed for drugs,
while never forgetting the damage that can be done by kids wielding
PCs with malicious intent.



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