Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontierDreyfus, Suelette
Science
Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier
Dreyfus, Suelette
Computer crimes -- Australia; Computer hackers -- Australia -- Biography; Computer security -- Australia
For at that moment Tammi told Par that his house had been raided by
the Secret Service. That Scott and Ed had been pretty upset about
having guns shoved in their faces, and had made statements about him
to the police. That they thought their phone was tapped. That the
Secret Service guys were still hunting for Par, they knew his real
name, and she thought there was an all points bulletin out for him.
Scott had told the Secret Service about Par's red bag, the one with
all his hacking notes that he always carried around. The one with the
print-out of all the Citibank credit card numbers.
And so it was that Par came to gaze down at his bag with a look of
alarm. He realised instantly that the Secret Service would be looking
for that red bag. If they didn't know what he looked like, they would
simply watch for the bag.
That bag was not something Par could hide easily. The Citibank
print-out was the size of a phone book. He also had dozens of disks
loaded with the cards and other sensitive hacking information.
Par had used the cards to make a few free calls, but he hadn't been
charging up any jet skis. He fought temptation valiantly, and in the
end he had won, but others might not have been so victorious in the
same battle. Par figured that some less scrupulous hackers had
probably been charging up a storm. He was right. Someone had, for
example, tried to send a $367 bouquet of flowers to a woman in El Paso
using one of the stolen cards. The carder had unwittingly chosen a
debit card belonging to a senior Saudi bank executive who happened to
be in his office at the time the flower order was placed. Citibank
investigator Larry Wallace added notes on that incident to his growing
file.
Par figured that Citibank would probably try to pin every single
attempt at carding on him. Why not? What kind of credibility would a
seventeen-year-old hacker have in denying those sorts of allegations?
Zero. Par made a snap decision. He sidled up to a trash bin in a dark
corner. Scanning the scene warily, Par casually reached into the red
bag, pulled out the thick wad of Citibank card print-outs and stuffed
it into the bin. He fluffed a few stray pieces of garbage over the
top.
He worried about the computer disks with all his other valuable
hacking information. They represented thousands of hours of work and
he couldn't bring himself to throw it all away. The 10 megabyte
trophy. More than 4000 cards. 130000 different transactions. In the
end, he decided to hold on to the disks, regardless of the risk. At
least, without the print-out, he could crumple the bag up a bit and
make it a little less conspicuous. As Par slowly moved away from the
bin, he glanced back to check how nondescript the burial site appeared
from a distance. It looked like a pile of garbage. Trash worth
millions of dollars, headed for the dump.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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