Cyberpunks Seek Thrills In Computerized Mischief

By John Markoff
The New York Times

November 26, 1988

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A policeman patrolling after midnight in a Silicon Valley shopping mall recently witnessed an unusual sight, even for this center of high technology: two teen-agers wedged in a phone booth, laboring over the keyboard of a laptop computer clipped into the telephone line.

The youths, who were arrested for telephone fraud and computer abuse and are being held in jail here, belong to a shadowy culture of computer ''hackers'' committed to illegally entering - and frequently tampering with - the computer networks that American society has come to rely on.

The hackers in this expanding underground have broken into corporate and military computers and tampered with telephone billing and switching equipment, sometimes altering services and monitoring telephone lines. Some have even boasted of illicitly entering computers used in stock-market trading.

Obsessed With Computers

Law enforcement officials say the two young men arrested here, Jonathan O. Yanntis, 18 years old, and Mark W. Derbele, 19, both residents of Washington state, are part of this outlaw culture. Like Robert T. Morris, the Cornell University graduate student who is said to have written the rogue program that jammed computers around the country last month, they are fascinated with powerful computers and obsessed with the universe created by interconnected networks of machines.

Mr. Morris was a sophisticated student whose computer science experiment went awry, his friends have said. In contrast, Mr. Yanntis and Mr. Derbele represent the spread of high-tech mischief from college whiz kids to a broader group of teen-agers and young adults.

Dangerous New World

''A new world has opened up that is hidden, dangerous, important and explorable,'' said Stewart Brand, an author who is considered an expert on countercultures. ''The combination has got to be irresistible.''

The hackers themselves, as well as some social scientists, have begun to use a new term, ''cyberpunk,'' to describe the members of this underground. It is a reference to a popular science fiction genre that deals with an intersecting world of high technology and outlaw society.

''This is a case of art driving reality,'' said Paul Saffo, a social scientist at the Institute for the Future, a research organization in Menlo Park, Calif. ''You have a small group who is actually doing it, and a large pool that is buying into what they are doing and redefining reality.''

Computer scientists are careful to note that not all hackers are malicious. The term originally referred to researchers who were committed to designing advanced computer hardware and software.

The fate of Mr. Morris now rests in the criminal justice system, but police and prosecutors are taking an increasingly dim view of cyberpunks and other hackers who abuse their computer skills.

''We take this very seriously,'' said Kenneth S. Rosenblatt, head of the high-technology unit of the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, which is prosecuting the Washington teen-agers. ''It's a question of deterrence. We have to do something or we'll have hundreds of these yo-yos.''

Mr. Rosenblatt said his agency spends as much 30 percent of its time trying to fight computer hackers and those who tamper with the telephone system. He said that in the last year a tougher attitude toward computer hacking by law enforcement officials and corporate security officers had resulted in dozens of arrests. In a number of cases, ''sting'' operations were set up in which police and telephone company officials masqueraded as hackers to snare offenders.

Illegal Communications

The cyberpunks live in a hidden electronic world in which they do not submit to interviews in person. When they call on the telephone to describe their activities, it is often via a call placed with stolen credit cards, or with illegal technology that permits manipulation of the phone system. Sometimes the communications are via voice-mail systems, which permit storing and retrieving telephone messages, or anonymous messages posted on electronic ''bulletin boards.''

''Phreaking is moral,'' said an 18-year old California hacker who calls himself ''Frank Drake'' in messages he leaves on the bulletin boards. ''There is no theft involved. It's not theft of services, because this equipment would otherwise be idle.''

Frank Drake edits a small newsletter called ''W.O.R.M.,'' which he calls ''a magazine for cyberpunks.'' It lists a post-office box address in San Mateo, Calif. Those who want to reach him call a voice-mail system telephone number in the San Francisco Bay area, where they can leave a message.

He argues that most underground hackers are interested only in exploring the computer systems that are linked by networks, not in destroying data or tying up machines so they cannot be used.

It was Frank Drake who telephoned at midnight one day recently and set up a conference call with another person he identified as an East Coast hacker who called himself Thomas.

Stock Computer Claim

Thomas described himself as a member of a group named ''the Legion of Doom,'' and said he had recently taken an interest in computers used by banking and investment firms. He asserted that he had entered several computers used for stock trading applications. He did not describe what he did after entering the computers, nor did he identify the institutions involved.

Thomas said he had developed a formula to avoid being caught: ''I keep to myself and don't place multiple calls to the same phone number.'' He said he was not motivated by any desire to destroy or steal. ''I love to learn things,'' he explained.

As with most cyberpunks, it is difficult to verify the claims of Frank Drake and Thomas.

There are no clear estimates of how many hackers spend their time using personal computers and modems - devices that convert computer data so that it can pass over phone lines - to enter remote machines illicitly. However, both computer security experts and members of the hacker community suggest that they number in the thousands in the United States alone.

Tricking Company Officials

In many cases, special programming skills are required to enter telephone and computer systems illegally. But hackers sometimes place telephone calls to computer system operators at a target company and trick them into divulging information about the company's computer system. The hackers call this ''social engineering.''

Thomas claimed to be a skilled social engineer, saying he had successfully convinced various computer system operators to give him passwords and other information. Sometimes the social engineers pose as telecommunications or computer security investigators working on a case.

In recent months, the computer virus, a malicious program that can be passed unnoticed from computer to computer, has become the best-known manifestation of the cyberpunks' activities.

Instruction on Creating Viruses

Although virus programs are not new, they have only recently been perceived as serious threats, and cyberpunks have shown a particular interest in them. Articles describing how to write viruses have appeared in several publications that are widely circulated within the underground.

Writing in the journal 2600, which says it speaks for the computer underground, an author using the pseudonym ''The Plague'' described how to create a virus. ''If people's data is destroyed, then so be it,'' he wrote. ''If people are stupid enough to accept pirated software, then they deserve to be punished.''

Despite efforts by the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to stop its spread, copies of the Arpanet program written by Mr. Morris of Cornell have become collectors' items for hackers, say those who follow the activities of the underground.

'Misfits and Losers'

Computer experts working in the industry who have become involved with malicious hackers see them as computer addicts possessed by an anti-social obsession.

''They're misfits, losers or troubled individuals lacking a sense of duty or morals,'' said a computer researcher at a Silicon Valley research institution. In recent years this researcher has offered four underground hackers programming jobs in an effort to channel their energy away from destructive use of computers. In each case the experiment ended in failure, he said.

The researcher asked not to be identified, and his reason is revealing. He fears that the cyberpunks are so skilled at tampering with computers that they might be able to alter his credit rating or have his electricity turned off.

''Every single one of them had deep psychological problems,'' he said.

Some members of the hacker underground appear to agree with his psychological assessment.

''They have this crazed need to find the answer,'' said Eric Corley, editor of 2600. Mr. Corley, whose personal hacking resulted in three brushes with the law before he started the publication in 1984, said: ''They keep exploring where they know they shouldn't go. A true hacker won't stop just because he gets in trouble.''

Although computer experts believe the number of outlaw hackers is growing, the behavior they exhibit is not new to the high-tech world.

Recalling 'Captain Crunch'

For example, a computer programmer, John Draper, spent six months in jail during the 1970's for illegal use of the telephone network. Mr. Draper's nickname, ''Captain Crunch,'' derived from his discovery that a whistle that came as a prize in a cereal box was tuned to the correct frequency to unlawfully manipulate telephone company switching gear.

After getting out of jail Mr. Draper wrote Easy Writer, a popular word-processing program that was the first such package available for the I.B.M. PC. Despite the financial success of the program, he was charged last year with belonging to a group counterfeiting tickets of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Mr. Draper pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and is on probation.

Mr. Draper said that the underground computer culture had changed for the worse in recent years. ''It's not elite any more,'' he said. ''Computer hackers have proliferated because information is so much easier to obtain.'' 

Copyright 1988 The New York Times Company