CONNECTICUT LIBRARIES
1998, Vol. 40, No. 4
CONNECTICUT LIBRARIES
1998, Vol. 40, No. 4
At Large: The Strange Case of the World's Biggest Internet Invasion
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts . . . A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding. . . .
--- William Gibson, Neuromancer, 1984
William Gibson coined the term cyberspace in his science fiction novel Neuromancer. The book is set in a not-too-distant future like that of Blade Runner, Tek Wars, or Max Headroom. It's a paradoxical future where high technology is omnipresent, but so are greed, drug abuse, and crime. Gibson's cyberspace is a complex universe that embraces virtual reality, abstract representations, and deceptive links to the gritty, amoral real world. His protagonist is a "cowboy," what we today call a "hacker," or "cracker." The cowboy's high-level skills and low-level life-style give him the opportunity to enrich himself by stealing information from the ultimate computer system.
In the not-too-distant past of the early 1990's, a cowboy- "wanna-be" actually launched a massive assault on Internet-connected computer systems. System administrators were powerless to end his spree. Local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies were unprepared to combat his crimes. Automation giants like Sun Microsystems were victims of the relentless cracker. Passwords, firewalls, and other security measures fell to the software weaponry and persistence of "phantomd," a.k.a. "Phantom Dialer," "Infomaster" or "info."
At Large: The Strange Case of the World's Biggest Internet Invasion begins with the discovery by Portland State University students that their system has been cracked. Calls for police assistance prove futile because the police cannot understand what the students are talking about. Once the officers catch on, they can't identify which laws have been broken. The fabled FBI, new to computer crime, at first offers little assistance, though some officers see the need to set a precedent for fast action in order to discourage future lawbreakers. In time, systems throughout the country are compromised. Some, advocating total access and free software, refuse to confront the cracker. Others underestimate his abilities, and pay the price. Many demand police assistance, but refuse to cooperate with the over-matched law officers.
Leading the invasion is the unlikeliest of field marshals. Phantomd is not a criminal mastermind stealing secrets from one company to sell to another. Nor is he a programming wizard who can bend the world's most powerful machines to his will. Unlike Gibson's cowboy, phantomd does not market his cyberspace skills to improve his lot in the 3-D world. Rather, he shuns the real world, spending ever increasing amounts of time online. His only goal is "access." He lays siege with infinite patience, probing each computer on a network with his cracker tools and techniques until he finds the weak link that allows him to enter and "seize root," i.e., take control of a Unix system.
Phantomd's assaults are aided by factors that will interest anyone whose computer is on the Internet. He has the advantage over the sysadmins because the Internet has grown so fast that the average level of experience of its administrators has declined (p. 16)! Computer vendors frequently leave "back doors" into systems so that they can gain speedy access when their customers need assistance. Authorized system users, fearful of forgetting passwords, select obvious ones, use the same passwords for numerous accounts, and rarely change them. The wonderful connectivity of the Internet makes it easy to compromise, e.g., phantomd uses email, telnet, and ftp functions to gain control of system after system. When stumped, phantomd finds online help from other crackers in chat rooms and bulletin boards.
How fearful of crackers should we be? While the authors warn that most of the weaknesses exploited by phantomd still exist, they are not alarmists. Rather, they suggest we be aware of which Internet "neighborhood" we are surfing, and take the appropriate precautions, much as we do when we travel through a tough neighborhood in the 3-D world.
On the other hand, what if the ever-persistent phantomd had the hacker skills and real-world street-smarts of Gibson's cowboy? What if phantomd had a 3-D world agenda? While reading At Large, two news items caught my attention. First, crackers broke into Yahoo!, demanding the release of Kevin Mitnick who is in jail for online theft. Second, assassin and champion of international terrorism Carlos the Jackal went on trial. What if phantomd sympathized with fellow cracker Mitnick, or identified with the causes espoused by a professional revolutionary like the Jackal? Would there be an online neighborhood left that was safe to surf?
Written from the perspective of the men and women who fought in the trenches of this battle in cyberspace, At Large will entertain and fascinate most readers, and may "scare the bits" out of a few.
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