The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (4 page)

"We won some contests together," Eric continues. "Crashed cen-
tral offices a few times a week. Poulsen could do whatever he wanted
in Pac Bell's computers. . . . But, hey, enough about me. What have
you guys done recently?"

Mitnick and De Payne don't have much to say.

Eric gets up suddenly.

"I gotta go to the John."

Mitnick looks. De Payne looks. Eric's left his laptop on the table,
facing them.

De Payne pulls out his Opto Electronics frequency counter and
waves it like a magic wand to pick up any local transmissions. The
old hacker buddies are thinking the same thought. Why'd Eric leave
his safe open?

But the frequency counter picks up no transmissions, no tiny mi-
crophone tucked inside the laptop, though there could be a hidden
tape recorder.

"He seems like such a nice guy," volunteers Mitnick to the laptop.

"Too bad we don't have as much information as he does," be-
moans De Payne.

They wink at each other, holding back their smiles as Eric saun-
ters back.

"So why didn't you get busted with Poulsen last spring?" asks De
Payne.

"They got me in Texas in June," says Eric. "I did four months on
credit card and ATM stuff. I'm on probation now."

"You ever called the FBI?" Mitnick asks.

"They contacted me on the Poulsen stuff. They didn't want to
know anything about Poulsen. They just wanted me to tell them
about the things I'd done."

Doesn't sound like the FBI I know. When the FBI talks to me,
they want to know everything.

The hackers decide it's time for a little fun. Mitnick and De Payne
have been waiting to make their next move.

De Payne pops a floppy disk in Eric's laptop.

Eric's eyes widen. The protocols for SAS flash on his screen. Mit-
nick got the program, the blueprints. In less than three weeks after
Eric's slip on the phone, Kevin Mitnick has learned more about SAS
than Eric ever knew. SAS is an automated computerized test system
that works on any Pac Bell switch in Southern California. He can use
it to wiretap anybody's phone or data line. SAS is the ultimate
hacker's tool, the power to play Big Brother whenever you want, and
never leave a trail.

De Payne ejects the disk, places it in his shirt pocket, and speaks
slowly to Eric. "As soon as you start producing information, we'll
start producing information."

Pending
Investigation

"Hi, Lew," Kevin greets his
friend in his hangdog voice.
It's January of 1992.. He's talking on the phone from his dad's apart-
ment in Calabasas, and he's got that awful pang in his gut. Kevin
Mitnick trusts his instincts. He decides he better check to see if the
line is being tapped.

Mitnick phones the remote Pac Bell central office in Calabasas, on
Las Virgenes Street.

"You have one of our boxes there," he informs the technician.

Mitnick's launching another social engineering attack.

Mitnick listens to the tech walk down the frame and then return.

"Yeah, here it is."

"And the monitor number on that box was?"

Kevin Mitnick knows exactly what questions to ask. He knows
that when Pac Bell wants to wiretap somebody they first create a
new phone line, what they call a "monitor number" in the local
central office. On the steel and wire frame where the phone lines run,
Pac Bell connects the monitor line to the target line through a special
interface box. Next, Pac Bell security personnel in Oakland phone
the monitor line and enter the touchtone security code 1-2-3-4
^to
activate the wiretap.

And Kevin Mitnick knows some other things Pac Bell would

prefer he didn't. The taps are referred to as pen registers, or Dial
Number Recorders, DNRs. All the phone numbers dialed from each
tapped line print out at the Pac Bell security office in Oakland. And
Mitnick is one of a handful of hackers who know the taps also trans-
mit voice, and can also be used to eavesdrop on conversations.

Mitnick's got the monitor number. One more phone call and he
figures he'll get the number of the actual wiretap.

His car radio's playing a familiar ad as he cruises with his cell
phone. "This is Tom Bodette for Motel Six, and we'll leave the light
on for you."

Mitnick dials Pac Bell security in San Francisco.

"Hi, this is Tom Bodette," Mitnick drawls.

Shit. I can't believe I used that name!

"We've got a box here with your name and number. I'm going to
have to disconnect it," Bodette continues.

The security investigator is being helpful. And why not? She's one
of the half dozen phone company professionals in California that
makes sure citizens are being properly wiretapped. Intercepts. That's
what Pac Bell calls them. It sounds less threatening than a wiretap.

"Do you need to do it now?" the security woman asks.

"Yeah. You ready?" primes Bodette.

"Go ahead."

"OK. Hold on a minute. I'll be right back."

This is the fun part. Mitnick cups his hand over the phone for a
couple of minutes and works himself into character.

"I, HUFF, HUFF, disconnected it. HUFF, HUFF. Can you give me
some help connecting it back to the frame?"

The Pac Bell security woman rattles off the LEN, the line equip-
ment number, of the wires the box has to be tied back into.

"I don't have Cosmos handy," Bodette casually offers, mention-
ing the Pac Bell computer database. "What's the phone number?"

Kevin Mitnick is so smooth that the security professional doesn't
even pause.

"It's 55-"

Hook, line, and sinker.

Kevin is half right. There is a wiretap out of the local Calabasas
central office, but it's on the phone of Teltec Investigations, a nearby
Calabasas private detective firm. By coincidence, Mitnick's father,
Alan, knows a private detective who works at the firm, a guy named
Mark Kasdan. Mitnick senior invites him over, Kevin fills the detec-
tive in on what he's learned, and then Kasdan brings Kevin down to
the firm's offices for a little show-and-tell.

The detectives don't believe Mitnick at first, the things he says he
knows, the things he claims he can do. But as Mitnick starts to prove
his encyclopedic knowledge of phones and computers, they take him
seriously. The detectives confide why they think their phones are
being tapped. Teltec was investigated for allegedly using stolen codes
to run TRW credit reports on individuals, and the three-year statute
of limitations on the case is about to expire. Perhaps, they tell Mit-
nick, the recent wiretap is a sign of renewed law enforcement in-
terest.

■ ■ ■

The on-ramp light turns green, and Mitnick guns it onto the
crowded 101 freeway at Sherman Oaks. His probation officer has
given him permission to take the long drive to Vegas, where his
mother and grandmother live, for his brother's funeral.

The death of his half brother has hit Mitnick hard. The facts are
sketchy. On the evening of January 7, 1992., Adam Mitnick was
found dead in Echo Park, a neighborhood notorious for gangs and
drugs. They had been close. It was Adam who arrived at the gate at
Lompoc when Mitnick's prison term was up. They were talking
about renting an apartment together. Adam had started his own
business selling miniblinds and had enrolled in college. That's what
gnawed at Kevin. His brother had sworn he'd quit heroin.

To the Los Angeles police department the death of Adam Mitnick
was just one of the hundreds of overdoses each year that clog its files.
But Kevin Mitnick had to investigate, and before long he learned
that Adam was found in the passenger seat of his own BMW,
slumped against the dash.

So who had driven his half brother to Echo Park to die? Mitnick
learned Adam had visited his uncle that same night, the same

uncle who was addicted to heroin. Suddenly, Kevin Mitnick didn't
want to know any more about how his brother ended up dead at just
twenty-one. It reminded him too much of his family.

■ ■ ■

Mitnick's parents divorced when he was three, and he lived in
a series of unmemorable apartments in the San Fernando Valley.
Although Kevin saw his father rarely, he liked him and looked up
to him. The Mitnick men were salesmen, smooth tongued, sharp
and successful. Mitnick said his dad worked for Capitol Records,
and then sold home improvement contracts.
Los Angeles Maga-
zine
would list him as one of the most successful businesses in
the San Fernando Valley, but court records told another story.
Alan Mitnick filed for bankruptcy in the mid 1980s, and Los An-
geles criminal filings included charges for forgery, grand theft,
and battery.

Crime was no stranger to the Mitnick family. Mitnick's aunt,
Chickie Leventhal, ran Chickie's Bail Bonds in Los Angeles. Mit-
nick's uncle worked in construction, but Southern California court
files were full of civil actions filed against him. By the late 1980s his
uncle's life began to unwind. There were charges for possession of
controlled substances and drug paraphernalia. In 1989, he was
charged with grand theft and sentenced to a year in county jail and
three years probation. Incredibly he served part of his term in the
same Jewish halfway house with his nephew, after Kevin's DEC
conviction. But Mitnick's uncle wasn't rehabilitated. The following
year he fled probation. He had at least three aliases: Jay Tenny
Brooks, Richard Stewart, and William Contos. And years later he
would be charged and convicted of manslaughter. During a robbery
he shot and killed a man.

Kevin was often left to fend for himself. His father was more
interested in Adam. His mother, Shelly Jaffe, was busy just trying to
make ends meet, waitressing at a couple of Jewish delicatessens on
Ventura Boulevard. Mitnick appeared eager to work, toiling as a
delivery boy and kitchen helper at one of the delis, and helping out in
the office of a local synagogue. When Kevin was ten or twelve, he'd
push carts back into the slots at the local Safeway for Blue Chip

stamps. He was proud of his Jewish faith and displayed his framed
Bar Mitzvah certificate on his dresser.

But like everything else in the Mitnick household, even Kevin's
faith was a bit off-kilter. Mitnick's stepfather was an active member
of the radical Jewish Defense League. When Mitnick was eight or ten
his stepfather would take him out into the desert near Los Angeles
and let him watch while they fired automatic weapons at posters of
Hitler.

Kevin was a loner, uninterested in sports and too shy for girls. At
thirteen he learned how to punch out his own bus transfers, and after
school he'd ride out toward San Bernardino and the desert, or down
the coast to Long Beach. His grandmother was proud of Kevin for
memorizing the routes and schedules. No one in the family would
think to scold him for tricking the transit district out of bus fare.
Kevin's little game was an ingenious system of babysitting himself, of
creating a travel opportunity for a boy whose mother rarely had the
time to take him anywhere.

One afternoon on the bus, Kevin met a fat boy. They'd ride to-
gether to Beverly Hills, eat junk food, and gawk at the homes of the
movie stars. Soon Kevin too was fat and ate almost constantly. Bob
Arkow, a bus driver, struck up a conversation with the kid on his
empty bus one day. He'd noticed his T-shirt emblazoned with "CBers
Do It on the Air." Mitnick told him he was into citizens band radio,
and the driver asked if he'd heard about ham radio. That's all it took
to get him started. Mitnick went to the ham radio outlet, picked up
some books, and in no time earned his own ham radio license.

As a ham radio operator Mitnick had his own call sign, and could
radio other ham operators around the world. The parallels to hacking
were great. Mitnick didn't have to pay for his radio messages. His call
sign was his identity, or "handle," and he was part of a worldwide
community of radio enthusiasts. Though cellular phones were years
off into the future, he was already mastering their basic principle —
radio.

To Arkow, Mitnick was just another thirteen-year-old boy with
a new toy, making on-air personal attacks on other ham radio
operators. Soon, he was able to manipulate the phone system to
harass people too. He began rummaging through phone company

dumpsters for discarded manuals and reading Bell technical journals
at the library. Just as Mitnick rode L.A.'s buses free, he could travel
the long distance lines wherever and however he pleased.

Lewis De Payne discovered Mitnick one day while listening to one
of his ham radio fights. They became fast friends, though De Payne
was several years older than the fifteen-year-old. De Payne admired
the young enthusiast's obsessive streak. Mitnick could be whoever
he wanted over the radio or on the phone. He'd call a Pac Bell
switching center and impersonate an angry supervisor, and if one
person wouldn't give him what he needed, he'd just dial someone
else.