Good evening from CNN Headline NEWS.
Attorney General Janet Reno is putting
cyber vandals on notice. She says the FBI
will do everything it can to catch them
and bring them to justice.
A FILM BY
STIG-LENNART SØRENSEN
So how much are these
cyber vandals costing us?
well according to Lloyds of London last
year, hacking cost companies 20 billion
dollars in lost revenues and repair
costs. Sounds incredible but its true...
NEW YORK CITY
HACKERS
You've been hearing about whiter
whites and brighter colors for years
so which detergents really deliver?
Find out!
"Off the hook"
The Hacker Radio Show
Emmanuel Goldstein:
Well somebody who certainly
knows something about the difference
between criminals and hackers is
someone we've been talking about
for many years here on this program.
He's the center of the whole FREEKEVIN
movement. And of course that would be
Kevin Mitnick himself...
-Kevin, are you there?
-I am here!
-How are you doing?
-Doing a lot better than I was a few
-weeks ago
-or a couple of years ago even!
When your first went in, the Net was a
completely different place wasn't it?
Yeah, I think the Mosaic was version
1.0 and people were using Lynx.
I mean the Internet has completely
boomed while I was in custody.
I remember seeing that article five
years ago, the front page article
I am not talking about that one on July
4'th 1994, we'll get to that one in a little
bit but the one on February 15'th 1995
by John Markoff that basically was
giving the details of your arrest in
North Carolina. In the first paragraph
they said that you were caught with
20.000 credit cards numbers, and I
think it was 19 paragraphs later that
they mentioned, he mentioned, that
there was no indication that you'd
ever use any of them...
You just don't go blaming
somebody without evidence!
-They say 'oh hackers did this'
-But sure you can!
-Well they did obviously...
-It just happened!
But how do you know hackers did it?
I mean somebody going out there and
turning on an OC12 or whatever
and aiming it at somebody and
overwhelming them with all kinds of
nonsensical packets and bringing them
down to their knees and taking them off
the Net entirely, that turns them into a
hacker just because they do that?
I mean you know anybody with the
access could have done it, and not
everybody with access is a hacker!
And this is Emmanuel Goldstein and
we'll be back again next week with
another exciting edition of "Off The
Hook". For Izaac...
have yourself a good night!
Fall 1999:
Emmanuel and his magazine
2600: The Hackers Quarterly
publish the DeCSS code
on their website
DeCSS is a program
used to copy DVD's
DeCSS was made in 1999 by a
group of European hackers.
Now everyone is able to copy
their own DVD's
For their private use
Or other uses
January 2000:
Motion Picture Association of
America (MPAA)
sues web sites that link or
publishes DeCSS.
2600:The Hackers Quarterly
is set to go to trial in July
Meanwhile in an empty office
building in Manhattan
Eugene E. Kashpureff
-I am Eugene E. Kashpureff
-What do you do?
That's really a good question. I've
done a lot of things
I've driven a tow truck. Got very good at
driving tow trucks at one point in my life.
I am probably better known for the
work that I do with computers.
I built my first computer when I was
ten years old.
I played a lot with computers when I
was a teenager.
In my early twenties I did some
work in medical billings systems.
I did some work for the United
States Government.
Then I went back to driving tow
trucks!
It is widely held that mankind has
got basic rights
For the most part those basic rights that
are represented in the Bill of Rights
and the US Constitution, and copied
by constitutions around the world
Of those rights, two of the ones that
I feel are the most important
are the freedom of speech, and the
freedom to privacy
Both of these rights are the
freedoms of communication
And I believe strongly in those
rights
The Internet has been a societal
revolution.
The reason the Internet been a societal
revolution is that it has changed
the way fundamentally that we as a
world wide society communicate
Many people feel that the Internet
is a free
international communication medium
when in fact it's not.
The Internet as we know it today is
controlled by the U.S. Government.
And I am opposed to this.
The United States Government,
through its contracts and programs,
controls everything from IP-address
allocations to who has overriding
authority over the domain name
space.
In addition they govern how
the TR1 internet providers can do
business
Ultimately this ends up translating
into total control of the Internet
You see, if we got rid of this switch,
these two tracks, three tracks
including the pink one, rose two and
a half inches, then we could duck
underneath them here only half an
inch down ... so the different city
approach rises to here and then
falls again not to let this guy get
through but let the Alvary cut off get
through under this edge.
Rights, that's right yeah
Andy Miller
A lot of electrical engineering
hackers joined the club to work
this or its predecessor. This is an
electrical-mechanical system.
Suffice it to say this control system
was an attraction to the sort of people
Who liked logic problems and
switching circuits and the same kind
who liked logic problems and
switching circuits and the same kind
of people who were attracted to
computers when they first became
available. So a great deal of
computer hacking, that is to say
independent research as it were, by
students originated out of the MIT
club where the students were
already here working on the system
and also on our own telephone
system.
John E. McNamara
There was a computer available.
One of the buildings next door to the
original club that had a nice big
round display on it and this was used
to make a program called
Spacewar. This was sort of an early
video game. It had a little rocket
ship and a sun ... this was fairly
sophisticated in terms of one version
of it had a real-time diagram
of the solar system where all the
stars were and so forth and the sun
had gravity and if you fired a
projectile from your rocket it would
curve inwards towards the sun due
to the gravity and so forth
So it had all these basically high-tech
features and it was considered an
intellectual challenge I think to add
these features and other people
involved would say 'oh that's neat',
you know, 'could you make it do
such and such' so it was always the
case of ...
Peter Sampson actually added the
entire celestial filament; all the stars
all in the correct places slowly
preceding across the background
So you know, this was considered a
very admirable thing to do, to do
something that was intellectually
challenging.
Alan Kotok
I came to MIT in 1958.
Actually the first thing I did when I
came to MIT after checking in
was to go to the freshman Activities
Midway and found the
Tech Model Railroad Club and sort of
never left.
Computer hacking at TMRC started
with the TX-0
We just had this very capable
computer of its day.
The telephone system security was
mostly security by obscurity, that is
The assumption that people wouldnít
understand it well enough to exploit it
and so you get a bunch of MIT students
who for whom understanding how
things work is a major goal in life.
You're describing sort of the principle
of the attractive nuisance
You have some complex system out
there, be it the phone system, be it in
later days computer networks and
certainly there's a grand temptation
to demonstrate your understanding
and mastery of the system by getting
it to do things it wasn't intended to do
Four or five years ago I got my first
computer; it was an used 486sx33
Didn't even come with a CD-ROM
drive, I had a little 13 inch monitor
I paid about $800 for it. I loved it, I
really did. And the first thing I did
when I got it home; I took the thing
apart and put in a CD-ROM drive
I was like 11-12 years old, it was
the first thing I did before I even
turned it on and I just fell in love
with them, I mean, it's something
that I absolutely love to do. After
that my computer eventually broke
my mother got a computer, a Dell
Pentium 200 with all of 32 megs of
RAM and Windows98. And I started
playing with it, and I started
changing literally everything. She
would wake me up in the middle of
night and yell at me because her
computer wasn't working
Mike Hudack
-I am Mike Hudack
-What do you do?
Right now I am working at a
computer security company doing
research into new products. I am
chief scientist over here, I do a lot
of computer security research and
development. In the past I've
maintained a computer security
website and was frequently known
as a hacker
The monthly 2600 meeting
There's a definite community, but I
think the community is more made
up of people who wish to be
hackers, than it is of actual hackers
the public community at least. When
you see these people at 2600
meetings and the like, they tend not
to have the skill that someone
who'd legitimally be called a
hacker would have
Talked to a lot of people in the area,
lot of people I can't really talk
about who have done things they
shouldn't have done, whether they
they be grey hat, black hat, or white
hat. Some of whom have been
arrested, some of whom have not.
It's a difficult area to be in
especially because more often than
not, the FBI will assume you're
guilty before proven innocent and
therefore a lot of these people keep
very low profiles. You won't see
most of the more skilled people at a
2600 meeting for instance and there
is good reason for that it's because
they're not ... there is a saying that
the best hacker is the one you've
never heard about and it's very
true
The hackers tend to be loners but
only in society in general, when
they are with other hackers, not
loners at all
That's what it is! A pencil, you
wedge a piece in there so that it
doesn't reset. You're holding down
the button, holding down the pen
-so it won't do a hardware reset...
-Yeah when you buy that mod chip
that like the one you just were
talking about, they come with a
-a little spring in this hole ...
-Yeah!
I think the case against Emmanuel
and against the others who've
released the DVD-crack is
ridiculous. You don't sue people
when they post a vulnerability to
bug track, you thank them
When a vulnerability is discovered
public disclosure is the way
that everyone has always traditionally
gone in the computer industry.
...might otherwise cause trouble,
of the governments back, on a
ridiculous intellectual trail, I don't
know!
Let's see what we got here...
July 14'th:
3.000 hackers attend
the H2K conference
Spudz
I consider most of the people here
in one shape, way or form hackers
because hackers doesn't just apply
to computers. I think it applies to
everything, it applies to people who
can talk their way out of situations,
it applies to people who can take
two different pieces of equipment
apart that have nothing to do with
one another and make a different
piece of equipment out of them.
I got my first computer, an IBM PC,
when I was seven years old.
And the first thing I did was to take
it apart and made my grandparents
heart jump out of their rib-cage
because they just paid $750 for this
thing. So they were miffed and I said
'Hey look, I can put it back together
I promise', and I did and from that
time until the time I was able to buy
my own PC, they never denied me a
new PC, because they knew, you know
that was going to be it for me.
'Share the knowledge' has always
been the watchword of TAP, the
Technological American Party,
which was a newsletter I published
for many years. It died out in 1984,
just as 2600 Magazine, the Hackers
Quarterly started up. And so the torch
has been handed off and carried as it
were by 2600 Magazine
You're in New York, which is an
activist center because you have a
large population to draw from, can
get together from the various
boroughs and it's just a subway ride
away. But mostly because New York
is the communications capital of
America. All the TV-networks are
here, the news organizations are
here and if it's going to make noise
anywhere, it's going to make noise
in New York. And because its a
communications capital, we got all
these political activists and they
happen to come to the technology
convention of ours, they get up
and bring their politics into our
technical sessions and so it seems
like it's a more political convention.
Ask people running it, they'll go
'Politics? Huh? What?'
Lately we had to get into political
issues because the politics are
invading the technology. Ordinarily
we don't really like to mess with
politics because that kind of
adversarial relationship has nothing
to do with the pure technical
operations and the technical
specifications of what we like to
play with, the hardware!
All hacking is hacking away at a
computer keyboard until it does
what you want it to do. That's all!
Our proper title has been usurped
by the press and handed off to these
14 year old twerps that crack into
system security and we call these
people crackers because they crack
system security.
Some of the things that they are
planning to do on the hacktivism
front are great, such as providing
Internet access for the Chinese.
It's almost like they are closed off
on a local network rather than a
huge global network. They don't
know whatís out there, they have no idea
they haven's seen the tip of the
iceberg yet and what the hacktivists
are planning to do is punch some
holes in their defenses if you will
where they keep the Chinese inside
and letting them out so that they can
see what's out there on that whole
Internet, the whole global Internet.
I think that's a good thing, I think
it's time that the Chinese got their
eyes open beyond what's given to
them by their government so that
they can see what's really going on
out there and let the citizens of that
country decide for themselves
whether or not they should be
granted that access and a
revolution will occur.
Jon Johansen - DeCSS entrepreneur
District attorney has said that I am
probably at most just facing a fine.
And in Norway, fines are based on
income the previous year
and I didn't have any income last
year so ...
Sometimes a guy is screwed and
I am terribly afraid that Emmanuel
might get screwed. But when you
look at the solid facts behind the
case, the technology behind the
case, I think Emmanuel is going to
come out on top, and I think the
MPAA is just running scared; they
started something, they did not
understand what they were starting
because they don't understand the
bits and bytes of the technology
and I think its going back to bite
them!
Mr. Ohm
If you are wondering why this kid is
up here talking about computers
that were made ten, five years
before he was born...
The answer is I was always interested
in computers when I was
very small and the type of
computers that I am to talk about
here were the computers that were
around then so I just became very
interested in finding out what was
around before me and around when
I was born. So in the process of
kind of having that history lesson
I became very interested in these
computers
July 17'th 2000:
MPAA versus 2600
trial begins
Robin D. Gross, 2600 lawyer
We've gotten involved in this case
because we really see it as
a fundamental threat to our most
basic civil liberties in this country.
MPAA lawyer
It's not protected speech
It's an act in international computer
theft
And that I don't think is free speech
but this is - and they're absolutely
entitled to their opinions
and I wish some of them had better
voices but
they are doing a good job!
I don't necessarily think it's a
counter-culture
I think it's part of culture.
I believe in socially responsible
hacking.
Technology in the deployment of
technology is a great force that is
affecting the daily lives of
everybody in our society today
more and more everyday as
technology speeds forward.
The employment of this technology
in our daily lives brings up real
issues, issues that pertain to those
basic human rights we hold,
those basic human rights of
communication.
Now on the one hand the
development of the laws
the acceptable societal norms which
control that technology is driven
largely by commercial interest.
The hackers largely are the people's
voice that can be raised up to have
an effect on the development of
those rules those laws which
govern the deployment of the
technology, for the people
not for the commercial interest.
THE END
YOU HAVE MET:
[in order of appearance]
Emmanuel Goldstein
Eugene E. Kashpureff
Andy Miller
John E. McNamara
Alan Kotok
Mike Hudack
and
Spudz
Cheshire Catalyst
Jon Johansen
Mr. Ohm
Robin D. Gross
Film supervisor:
Rossella Ragazzi
Technical supervisor / online:
Marit Gjertsen
Transcription assistance:
Sigurd Leithe
MUSIC:
Ludwig van Beethoven - 9'th Symphony, Presto [excerpt]
Dave Seaman/Underworld - Jumbo
Aphex Twin - Grass
Thomas Newman - Bloodless Freak
Pete Namlook - Field
Ultraviolet - Exit
TV FOOTAGE:
Time Warner Manhattan Cable Networks
CNN Headline News
MSNBC
Channel 4
Fox Networks
Manhattan Neighborhood Network
["Miss Kitty's Best of '99, part two]
OTHER FOOTAGE:
"Warriors of the net"
[Internet animation sequence]
Courtesy of Ericsson Medialab, Sweden
"Grandson of Cab's Eye View"
[RealVideo TMRC Model Train footage]
Courtesy of Jared Jonas and Ben Frantzdale, TMRC
Newspaper scans by Mark Schupak, TMRC
THANKS TO:
Shana Kaletsky
Izaac
2600 community
#md 2600
TMRC
VA class of '99
Frode Lien
Erling Paulsen
Telenor FoU, avd. Sikkerhet
A film by
Stig-Lennart Sørensen
[University of Tromsø - logo]
Visual Anthropology
University of Tromsø
20@00
