The Intruders….

They are everywhere, yet most of us will never notice them. They are masters of stealth and subversion. They will cost companies millions of dollars and give individuals incalculable headaches. Many of them will go undetected, sometimes for their entire careers as hackers. We know them as hackers. Kevin Mitnick’s The Art of Intrusion brings their stories to the light of day to serve as a warning. Here are just a few of their tales.

When the Terrorists Come Calling…

Khalid. No one has ever seen him. No one knows where he is from. Rumors about him abound. He lurks in the underground channels of the Web. He offers a young American hacker, codenamed Ne0h, $1,000 to hack into the computer networks of a Chinese University—a place renown as the MIT of China. He penetrates the university’s computer security—even though Ne0h knows no Chinese—and in short order provides Khalid with the vital information he seeks. Ne0h’s next assignment? Hack his way into the computer systems of India’s Bhabha Atomic Research Center. No problem.

Khalid, meanwhile, lures a teen-age Californian hacker known as Comrade and raises the stakes. Khalid wants Comrade to penetrate deep inside government and military sites, especially one in particular: SPIRNET—the branch of the Defense Information System Network that carries classified messages and is the core of the command and control capability for the US military. Comrade takes the assignment.

Who is Khalid? Is he, as India’s armed forces identified him, a terrorist linked to the terrorist organization Harkat-ul Mujahideen, a known ally of Osama bin Laden? Or, is he just an FBI informant prowling the Web?  Then again, is he, as others think, a treacherous double agent in the employ of the FBI, penetrating FBI counterintelligence while relaying vital secrets to the terrorists?

Texas Prison Hacks…

On a blazing hot day in the desolate concrete yard of a Texas prison, two young convicts, Danny and William, each doing extended time for murder, discover they share a fascination with computers. They team up and become secret hackers right under the noses of watchful guards.

Danny’s trustee status allows him to work in a trailer assembling and repairing computers. The prison staff doesn’t even inspect the systems that he builds to determine how he configures them.
Elsewhere, William lands a job in the kitchen and finds an ancient 286 computer. It’s not much, but still more than enough. Slowly but surely they build three PC’s and load them with music files, games, and videos. Doing hard time became a little less hard.

Then, one day, they get their big break: A prison guard one day asks Danny to repair his computer and inadvertently supplies him with his username and password. The result? Danny and William now have their e-ticket to the Internet and the outside world. Taking American ingenuity to new heights, these jailbirds ultimately use their skills to achieve the American dream.

Cops and Robbers…

Matt and Costa weren’t planning an attack on Boeing Aircraft. It just turned out that way.

They weren’t bad boys. They came from good families, decent neighborhoods. Costa began writing programs when he was eleven years old. Matt finished in the top ten of his high school class.

They began as “phreakers,” hackers who gain access to telephone systems. They could phone anywhere in the world as often as they wanted, as long as they wanted. In short, they had the perfect phone plan: zero dollars a month, zero dollars a minute.

They moved on to bigger and better projects. They penetrated the computer system at Seattle’s U.S District Courthouse. Then a hotel’s reservations software package, booking themselves into the suites for free and prying into the financial information of the hotel’s guests. Shortly thereafter they managed to get the passwords needed to penetrate Boeing.

Unfortunately, Matt happened to be breaking into to Boeing’s computer system at the same time Boeing was hosting a computer security conference attended by, among others, the US Secret Service and the FBI. Not a good move.

The hunt for Matt and Coast was on.

Robin Hood Goes Digital…

“[Hacking] has always been for me less about technology and more about religion,’” says Adrian Lamo. He didn’t hide behind oddball monikers. He didn’t steal a cent from the companies he hacked into. Instead, he would let a company know that there was a flaw in their computer security. In short, he helped a company wake up before some hacker of the malicious type did it serious damage.

Lamo had racked up an impressive track record: Microsoft, Yahoo!, MCXI WorldCom, excite@home, SBC, Ameritech, Cingular, and even The New York Times are among those whose systems he had successfully penetrated.

Yet one of those companies didn’t appreciate Lamo’s good intentions even though his hard work hadn’t even cost them a dime. Instead, they called the FBI and Lamo went underground. When he turned himself him, the government’s handling of his case would prove to many that no good deed goes unpunished.

Adapted from The Art of Intrusion by Kevin Mitnick.