The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (16 page)

"Technical support, please," I ask. In a few seconds a friendly
young man picks up the line.

"Hi, how can I help you?"

"Somebody's reading my e-mail," I tell the technical support per-
son.

"How do you know?"

"Well, I'm sending e-mail to somebody, and this third person
knows everything."

"OK," responds the tech support person calmly. "Did you give
someone else your password and just forget it?"

"I don't think you understand," I say, growing impatient. "A
hacker is reading my e-mail on the Well."

"Who is this hacker?"

"I don't know," I say truthfully. I don't know if it's De Payne or
Mitnick who is reading my e-mail. For all I know they could have
put somebody else up to it. Besides, does it really matter who's hack-
ing the Well? The point is the Well isn't secure, and my mail is an
open book.

"Do you change your password frequently?" the Well tech asks.

"What?" I say, amazed he's asking this question. "No, I don't."

"Well, you know that could be the problem."

"Look, I don't think you get it! There's a hacker on the Well. He's
probably got root. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes."

"Well, if you've got root on the Well you don't need passwords.
You can read anybody's e-mail."

Root access is like having the master key to the building. You
have complete control of the computer. You can change any pass-
word, read any file, write to any file, erase everything stored on the
computer. Users are at the mercy of a hacker who has root access.

"That's not possible," the Well technician tells me.

"What's not possible?" I interject. Hackers know it's been done
countless times before. It's easy for a skilled hacker to get root access
on the Well and nearly every other Internet provider.

But the Well technician refuses to accept this possibility.

"It's not possible for a hacker to get root on the Well," he says
stubbornly.

Maybe for an average hacker. But for Kevin Mitnick it's a walk in
the park.

Two or three times a day, Ron
Austin slowly drives past the
Los Angeles Federal Building looking for the gold BMW with the
Texas plates.

He figures it's the least he can do since his trashing treasure hunts
sent Eric on the run. Special Agent Stan Ornellas phoned recently
and told him the Bureau had decided Eric's escapade had gone on
long enough. Austin suggested Ornellas talk to Phillip Lamond,
Eric's former partner in the nightclub business, and sure enough the
tip worked. Lamond gave the agent a description of Eric's car. A
little more legwork and Ornellas had the name of a stripper Eric was
seeing, recent snapshots of the couple from a jealous boyfriend, and
an address, incredibly, just a stone's throw from FBI headquarters.

But this Saturday, Austin is taking a day off from his surveillance
to drive his girlfriend to Tower Video on Sunset to pick up some new
CDs. He turns off the boulevard, down the hill to the parking lot,
and there it is, Eric's gold BMW, parked in front of the Viper Room.

Austin drops off his girlfriend and returns to take a closer look.
No dent like the FBI described, and no license plate, just a dealer's
temporary. But the handicap plaque seals it. Austin jots down the
number.

"FBI," answers the voice at Headquarters.

"Yeah, could you transfer me to Special Agent Tepper?"

"I've spotted Eric's BMW," Austin tells the agent. Tepper phones
Ornellas and the FBI agent hops in his Crown Victoria and burns up
the 405 freeway.

Austin walks back to his car, keeping the BMW in view.

What's this? The valet's strolling toward the car.

Shit! Austin thinks. Eric's leaving!

The valet tosses a brown lunch bag in the gold BMW, his BMW.
Austin confronts him just to be sure.

"I'm sorry," Austin sheepishly calls Ornellas a minute later.

"Don't be sorry," replies the special agent, a few minutes away on
his car phone. "We want to know anytime you see anything like
this."

■ ■ ■

"We've heard Eric's been hanging out at Gecko's," Ornellas tells
Austin on the phone several days later. "Ever heard of it?"

"No," Austin replies. "Where is it?"

The agent gives Austin the Huntington Beach address of the night-
club, and declares matter-of-factly, "We'll be there Sunday eve-
ning."

"Fine, I'll be there too," says the hacker.

Around ten o'clock on the appointed night, Austin pulls into the
multilevel parking lot across from Gecko's and spots Ornellas's
Crown Victoria.

"Hi, how you doing?" greets Ornellas, getting out of the big
American car.

Ornellas is dressed as he always is when he doesn't have to visit a
courtroom or an Assistant U.S. Attorney: short-sleeve shirt, blue
jeans, and tennis shoes. His partner is a perfect match; big, with a
New York accent, maybe Italian.

Austin shakes both men's hands, but he's nervous. The conspic-
uous Crown Victoria is in clear view of the club.

"Aren't you afraid Eric's going to see you here?"

"Well, how do you expect us to see him?" shrugs Ornellas. "Why
don't we get in back?"

Austin hops in, and listens with amusement to the FBI agent's

running commentary on the shapely female arrivals. It's not just the
locker room cop talk. It's the friendliness of Ornellas. Who'd believe
he once banged Austin's head against a wall?

"Does that guy look like he's limping?" wonders the other agent.

"Nope," says Ornellas.

"Hey that looks like him!"

"No," Ornellas deadpans from the backseat. "That's a girl."

■ ■ ■

Lewis De Payne is on the phone. It's August 17, 1994.

He tells me a
London Observer
reporter flew all the way from
England for a story about Mitnick. De Payne wouldn't talk, and
neither would Mitnick's ex-wife, Bonnie Vitello, until the reporter
paid her a hundred dollars.

But that's not why De Payne is calling.

"A new piece of information has come to my attention," De
Payne proudly declares. "We've got several of Eric's phone bills with
telephone calls to computers he was illegally accessing at Pac Bell
and the DMV [Department of Motor Vehicles] under the Joseph
Wernle name."

De Payne is alleging that Eric was illegally hacking while working
as an undercover FBI agent, implying that the FBI had to know
about it. And he's claiming that he's got the evidence.

"The neat part about it," De Payne continues, sounding giddy, "is
the FBI wasn't paying the bills. They let them go to collection!"

I know at least part of the story is true. I've got copies of overdue
Joseph Wernle Sprint and MCI phone bills, too. Excited, De Payne
tells me he's informed Sprint that Special Agent Ken McGuire of
the FBI ordered the now delinquent service. "Now McGuire's
started giving them excuses," De Payne laughs. "He says he's taking
care of it."

One more prank that's sure to put Mitnick on the hot seat.

■ • a

I tell De Payne that somebody's hacked into my e-mail account, and
he chuckles at the Well technician's suggestion that I change my
password. Changing a password won't stop a clever hacker like

Kevin Mitnick. Certainly not if the hacker has root capabilities over
the whole Well system.

"Have you tried putting a dead bolt lock on your door and bars
on your windows?" De Payne mocks.

"I hadn't thought of that."

"I can set you up with good PGP [Pretty Good Privacy, an encryp-
tion program]," De Payne says with a laugh. "If you're having prob-
lems, you might receive some help online."

This is an eavesdropper's inside joke, gleaned from further intru-
sions into my e-mail. Austin has been encouraging me to encrypt my
e-mail to him for months, but I struggled with the cumbersome tech-
nology and the stigma attached to encryption. What many hackers
and technophiles fail to realize, of course, is that if you encrypt your
mail, you're waving a red flag for the government and the NSA.

"So why is the Well so insecure?" I ask half of the duo I suspect of
reading my e-mail.

"The problem is the UNIX platform," De Payne declares matter-
of-factly, explaining that the Well, like most Internet providers, has
minimal security.

"I'm on Netcom, which is also a UNIX system. Half a year ago, I
didn't use it for three months. I forgot my password. I called them
and they said, 'What's your name?' They set my password to so
and so."

De Payne is implying that he could have been anyone, and Net-
com might have been handing over his password to a total stranger.

I try one more time to broach the subject of De Payne and Mit-
nick's apparent eavesdropping. "The Well didn't seem to believe it
was possible to hack my e-mail."

De Payne pauses and his voice slows. It's as if he's whispering in
my ear.

"Tell me, Jon, do you feel violated?"

This isn't what I expected, but I decide to play it out. "Well, yes,
actually, a little."

"Do you feel female?"

I'm silent.

"It's the same feeling of electronic rape that a lot of companies are
complaining about," De Payne continues. "I wish some reporter

would write about these companies that are being electronically
sodomized."

He's irritated.

"I think the whole thing is academic. These companies complain-
ing. Kathleen Carson of the FBI comparing someone [Mitnick] to a
child molester. Why not just say they're being sodomized?"

■ ■ ■

A six-inch stack of customer bills with bad charges sits next to Kevin
Pazaski's PC. Summer is nearly over and the investigator is still spin-
ning his wheels. Customers stuck with thousands of dollars of un-
authorized calls. Thousands of dollars of calls CellularOne can't
collect on.

Finally he tracks a clue, a call to a local modem. Pazaski's friend
in Information Systems tells him it's an Internet access port. The
systems guy traces it to Netcom in San Jose, California.

Pazaski drives his gray Subaru over to 45th Street in Seattle and
parks in front of the two-story mall and movie theater, the marquee
listing the summer hits. It doesn't look right, he thinks, but that's the
address the systems guy gave him.

Pazaski takes the elevator up through the glassed atrium and
walks the corridors trying to find the Netcom suite. Finally, the in-
vestigator spots a Netcom plaque on a locked door. Pazaski doesn't
get it. Where is everybody? He asks somebody in a neighboring
office.

"It's just a relay station for the Internet," explains the man to a
disappointed Pazaski. "They rent space all over the country."

I think he is out of touch with real-
ity. I think he lies very much and is
not sure when he is lying.

----DONALD PETERSEN,

Eric's father,
Los Angeles Daily News

Eric has been hacking up a
storm, cramming two-by-
three spiral mini-notepads with swiped log-ins for TRW and notes of
his latest scheme. He keeps meticulous "to do" lists: "Plan . . .
Spread rumors . . . Get U-haul ... Call Mom .. . Bring hand gun."
Notes about places to stay, eight different women in Los Angeles
alone. And personal tips to his girlfriends, such as, "Don't hate me
because I'm beautiful."

Eric is planning one last big score. If he can get away with it, and
he sees no reason why he can't, he'll leave the country for good.

He plans his heist in a letter to his co-conspirator, and signs it
XRAY. They've committed plenty of small-time crimes before. Why
not one big job for the road?

OK .. . You need $7,000 to open an account. I'm kinda short on
cash. We should both have money. The name of the system is Mellon Bank. I checked Lexus. Either it hasn't been done or banks
aren't saying. ... I'll get a telenet [tap] up and running soon....
You need two sets of log ins and passwords and I have them. ...

After we've done the transfer we'll want to buy some time to get the
money out of the bank. ...

I could:

A. Cut the lines.

B. Phone in a bomb threat.

C. Burn down the bank. I'll see you in the Rivierra.
XRAY

"I'm back in L.A. for a week," Eric awakens me after midnight on
August 9. "Nobody knows where I am. I mean nobody. I'm just
afraid somebody's going to see me and have read the articles and
drop a dime on me. So I'm extremely careful while I'm back here in
L.A. I won't go to any clubs here at all."