Hack By Peter Wrenshall

Chapter 1

After the FBI announced that they had caught the

Pentagon Hacker

in a

Seattle high school, the first thing everybody wanted to know was how I did it. How

could some high school student, working alone on a home computer, get into a

classified area of the Pentagon network, and start quietly looking around?

The newspapers said that I must have been working with an insider. The

television news, which called it the

biggest military computer break-in of all time

,

said that I was probably funded by a criminal organization.

What could I say to that? I wasn’t exactly a computer criminal—more like a

computer trespasser. I mean, if you leave your door unlocked, you’ve got to expect

that sooner or later, someone is going to open it to see what’s behind it. Besides, I

never stole any secrets, I never took any money or credit card details, and I never sent

out a single virus or Trojan horse.

But try telling that to the FBI. They interrogated me for days, wanting to know

how I had managed to get a privileged user account. What could I say? That I had

phoned them and asked them for it . . .

“I.T. Services, good afternoon,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

“Hi. Can I speak to Amanda, please?”

Amanda was an older woman who had been helpful the last time I had spoken

to her, though on that occasion I had been an office manager.

“I’m not sure if she is in. Who’s calling, please?”

“It’s John Halsey.”

John Halsey was another of my alter egos: a college graduate—polite, well

dressed, and well groomed—a guy who might raise a smile among the women in the

office, a decent boy they wouldn’t mind introducing to their own daughters. He also

happened to have recently started work at the Pentagon.

“One minute, please.”

There was a click on the line as the call was patched through to Amanda.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Amanda. It’s John Halsey. I’m calling about my new user account.”

There was a pause while Amanda waited for me to explain.

“I’ve only been here a few weeks, and I’ve forgotten my password already.

Bill Harlow said you’d be able to help me out.” I used a high-level manager’s name

on purpose; it always amazes me how much of a difference a bit of insider

information and name-dropping can make.

“Okay. I’ll have to take you through security before I can reset your

password.”

“That’s the problem. My manager sent the security documents to your

department, but they didn’t go through yet. I just spoke to somebody about it ten

minutes ago.”

“Oh, I see. I’m sorry, but I can’t reset your password without going through

security.”

“I'm going to get into trouble, then. I just started here, and I can’t even log on

to my computer.”

There was a pause. Amanda, I knew, was wrestling with her conscience. That

was why I had chosen to talk to her. Middle-aged women often have children my

age—Halsey’s age—and they identify with me. They wouldn’t want me to get into

trouble.

“Who’s your manager there?”

“Ray Hollis. Please don’t say anything to him. He gave me a lecture on

Monday about security. Normally, I’m good about these things. Could you help me

out? You don’t have to change my password. Just reset it to the default?”

“Um . . .”

Of course, I was asking Amanda to do something that was against company

policy. The helpdesk policy forbids staff from ever giving out passwords over the

phone. That would be crazy. But if you go through the security process successfully,

then they will reset it to the default for that department, which I had found out the

previous week to be the current date, separated by dashes.

“It’s not like you’re giving out my password or anything, is it?” I persisted.

“Is this a new account?”

“Yeah, I just got it.”

“All right, I’ll reset the password to the default.”

“Oh, thanks. You saved me.”

“Try not to forget your password again,” Amanda said in a maternal tone.

“I won’t,” I replied meekly.

“Have a nice day.”

That was it. I had obtained the next level of security clearance. The next day, I

would switch from the phone back to the computer, and within perhaps a month or

two I would be all the way inside, with access to systems in the military that many

generals couldn’t see. I had done it at other companies, dozens of times. Why should

the Pentagon be any different?

Was this illegal? Sure, but at that point, I wasn’t worried about getting caught.

I was too careful for that, or so I thought. In the end, my closest friends sold me out.

My own crew.

I remember the day the FBI arrested me. It was a quiet and uneventful school

day—up to that point. Walking down the corridor, I was daydreaming about my next

hack, when I noticed one of my teachers, Mr. O’Meara, standing in the middle of the

corridor, looking at me. The students had nicknamed him “Dreary O’Meara,” because

his teaching style was one long monotonous drone. Looking back, I can picture him

drilling FBI recruits in that same voice, telling them the correct way to handcuff

suspects. But at that point, I didn’t know what his real job was.

I stopped walking. Just to play it safe, I turned to go back the other way, and

noticed two men in suits approaching me. I knew the day had come. They had found

me.

I hit the stairs that led upwards, at full speed. I heard O’Meara, or whatever his

real name was, shout, “Get him!”

I burst through the classroom door at the top of the stairs, and went through

one room and into another, closing the adjoining door, and wedging a chair behind it.

I had ten seconds on the FBI at the most, and had to think quickly. I opened the

window, but could see that it was too high to jump.

Every sailor has his ‘ditch kit’—the bag of food, water, and maps that he

keeps at the boat’s exit, in case of disaster. I had my own emergency escape plan, too.

You never know what you might need, on a rainy day. But since I was nowhere near

any of the exits, I knew it wasn’t going to work.

The best I could hope for was to try to hide, and pray that I had enough time to

wipe my notebook computer clean of any incriminating evidence left over from

previous hacks. I took it out of my backpack, and threw the bag out the window onto

the ground below, as a decoy—one of the oldest tricks in the book.

I left the window open, and ran to the exit door. Back in the corridor, I looked

down the stairway, and saw O’Meara coming up. He had doubled-back, looking to cut

me off. I started running again, and made it to the next set of stairs. Before I jumped

the banister, I heard someone shout, “The window!”

Moving quickly among the students, I made my way to the entrance of the

school offices. I slowed to a walking pace, and went in. Only staff were allowed past

this point, but I knew my way around. After hacking and cracking started to take up

most of my free time, I’d had to discuss my schoolwork with a counselor, Mr. Alton.

He had arranged for an IQ test, on which I had scored only 71, and he told me that I

was probably autistic. I pointed out that I had filled the answers in backwards, as a

test for him, which he had failed, and after that he stopped talking to me. But I still

knew my way around his office, which he kept unlocked at lunch time.

I went in, and crouched down under the desk. I opened the lid of my computer,

and hit the space bar, making it come out of standby mode.

I hit the function key that I had programmed to begin scrambling the RAM

disk. RAM disks are much quicker to wipe clean of any trace evidence than hard

disks. Then I opened Alton’s desk drawer, stuck the computer inside, as it continued

wiping the incriminating data, and closed the drawer.

I opened the door, and peeked out. There was nobody around. I tiptoed along

the corridor. When I got to the first corner, I peeked around it, and then moved

quickly down the stairs, to the outside door. Looking through the fireproof mesh of

glass and metal, I could see the pathway was deserted. I opened the door to leave, but

immediately someone grabbed me from behind, and shoved me to the floor, with a

knee on top of me for good measure.

“Karl Ripley, I am arresting you for computer espionage,” said a voice behind

me.

Then I heard another voice ask, “Where is it? Where is it?”

That was Agent North, wanting to know where my computer was. I wasn’t

about to tell him, or anyone else. I was counting slowly to myself: one thousand, one

thousand one, one thousand two . . .

Agent after agent turned up, but I didn’t tell them, either. They were quick to

find my computer, but not quick enough to prevent its memory from being wiped

clean thirty-five times over. They would get nothing from it. North had been counting

on getting to the hard disk in my machine. But I never used writable disks when I was

hacking. Why leave a trail of evidence? My code of practice was: take only memories.

“Get him up,” ordered North. With my hands cuffed behind my back, the

agents lifted me to face him. I could see the triumph in his eyes. He had finally

arrested the infamous Pentagon hacker. But I thought there was something else, too—

some confusion, perhaps. Two of the points on the FBI’s criminal profile had been

wrong. Perhaps it was those two little mistakes that had allowed me to avoid capture

for so long. The FBI had been looking for a man with an advanced degree in

computer science, and in his mid-twenties. But I was a high school student, and I was

only sixteen years old.

After my arrest, the papers went crazy, calling me the most notorious hacker

ever, and speculating that I had pulled off the greatest hack of all time. If they had

known about what followed—how I worked for the FBI and met Grace, and all that—

perhaps they would have had a different opinion. To my mind, that was always my

best hack. But, of course, all that was kept secret.

Until now.