The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (27 page)

and anytime they had a long distance call I attached the bill to Ed. I
think it was
thirty thousand dollars!"
Mitnick chuckles like a
naughty boy. "Is that
bad?"

"Why'd you do it?"

"He was fucking with me over the air.... I just went to the L.A.
switch. All the billing is done at the actual switch. It's the most direct
way. It takes effect immediately.

"The old stuff, the Rhode Island directory stuff," Mitnick con-
tinues, describing another of his infamous hacks, when he and his
friends hacked into a telephone switch and intercepted people calling
directory assistance. "They'd ask for somebody and we'd say, 'Is
that person black or white?'

"I consider them pranks, like the stuff you hear about at Cal Tech,
where they'll take someone's car, take it apart, and put it back to-
gether. Or they'll rewire the scoreboard at the Rose Bowl. They do
the same thing and the government doesn't care."

■ a •

"I'm
always
successful. A guy asked me recently, 'Can you
really
do
this?' I
can!"

Mitnick's voice is bouncing with emotion.

"I three-wayed us to an office. I got
everybody's
password.
Six people's passwords!" Mitnick chuckles. "I was laughing."

"What was the office?"

"It was a phone company office. I did them all in a row — I'm
very good at convincing people."

"When did you do this?" I ask.

"Two weeks ago."

I can't believe Mitnick's just told me of another one of his recent
hacks. I try to not let it show in my voice.

"Who was this guy?"

"It's a new friend."

"He has no idea who you are?" I ask.

"
Nooooooooo
idea!"

The call ends a few minutes later. It's been a bizarre few days. In my
mind, I play back the sequence of events.

First, John Markoff, the reporter who put Kevin Mitnick on the
front page of the
New York Times,
recommends me to write a story
in
Playboy.
Then, the assignment editor at
Playboy,
probably think-
ing it's the cool thing to do with a cyberspace story, doesn't phone
me or write me a letter — he e-mails me. A couple of days later I
agree to write the story, and within the hour, this electronic fugitive
reads my e-mail and phones me up.

I can see why Mitnick's angry. Plastering his photo in
Playboy
for
millions of Americans may impress the hacker's friends, but it's only
likely to make it easier for him to get caught. Sure, he knew I was
going to write about him in a book. But an article in
Playboy?
Well,
that could be out a lot faster, in just a few months. And it might
pressure the FBI to step up its efforts.

January 8,1995

Mitnick phones me again at
home on Sunday afternoon,
January 8. A little over a week has passed, and he seems to have
resigned himself to the prospect of my
Playboy
story, and decided
that he might as well cooperate. Mitnick seems suddenly lax on secu-
rity, not bothering to call me at a pay phone, talking far longer than
the few minutes he once told me was all he dared on a line that might
be trapped. But I don't bring up the subject. It's none of my business.
Only once, last spring, when I put my initial request through to De
Payne, have I asked Mitnick to phone me.

I tell him I'm thinking of interviewing a host of players: Mit-
nick's hacker associates, the old detective agency he worked for
in L.A., and the cellular companies he's allegedly hacked. He
tells me they may have their own agendas. Mitnick says the de-
tective firm is trying to talk him "into meeting so they can pay
me big money on a big case to entrap me. I believe they got
scared or something turned them completely because they were
afraid for their own skins."

The story about one of the alleged cellular victims is more compli-
cated. "One of the companies accusing me of stealing their cellular
software — I saw it on electronic mail, on the Net, so it's no big
secret — one of them is Qualcomm out of San Diego. I guess they

got hit by a social engineering attack. Somebody called them up and
I don't know exactly the details of what was done.

"And so one of the guys there knows Markoff pretty well. And
when this whole thing came down, he called Markoff and told
Markoff about it because he read the
Cyberpunk
book and the
method of attack was exactly like my MO. He called Markoff and
then Markoff started his own investigation and that's how the whole
thing leaped off."

"Who really was doing the social engineering at Qualcomm?"
I ask.

"I'm not going to talk about anything more about that," Mitnick
snaps. "I'm just showing you how Markoff got notified, because
that's in the last five years."

Why the five-year disclaimer? Did Mitnick have something to do
with the Qualcomm attack?

"Now, were they also claiming that something happened in Sili-
con Valley?" I fish.

"What
company in Silicon Valley???" Mitnick screeches.

"I don't know."

"I know Qualcomm is one of them because in Tsutomu Shimo-
mura's mail somebody sent him a fucking message that I just saw
that says something like, 'I wonder what so and so is up to.' Talking
about me. And, 'I'm wondering if he's enjoying the source he stole
from Qualcomm.' Something like that. So I go, uh-oh. The son of a
bitch, you know, accusing me of stuff. You know, I've already been
tried and convicted in their eyes."

What's Mitnick been up to? Has he or one of his cohorts been into
Shimomura's e-mail? How could a self-taught hacker like Mitnick
break the security of a world-class NSA hacker?

"What about in foreign companies?" I continue. "Is there any-
thing I should look at there?"

"What Neil told me is that Nokia, the biggest cellular manufacturing
firm in Europe, their office of federal investigations has been contacting
Neil because they're sure that I'd gotten into their systems as well."

"Do you know who that person would be?"

"No. But Neil does. He told me his name but I didn't write it
down. It wasn't like I was going to call the guy."

"So when you say 'office of federal investigators,' that's like their
FBI?"

"Yeah. Neil told me that they want somebody's ass
really
bad.
And they're trying to get the help of a whole bunch of other coun-
tries, like the UK and the USA."

"Why would they be trying to get the help of the UK?"

"Apparently after I contacted him [Neil], he contacted all the au-
thorities and the Finland authorities found out I was talking to him
in the UK, so they were trying to get the UK's help to find me. He still
thinks I'm in the UK right now."

"He knows you're after him!" I joke.

"He's disillusioned," Mitnick says derisively. "The only thing I
wanted from him is his bugs and I got them. I
got
what I wanted."

"His what? His bugs?"

"His security holes. This guy has a great talent for finding security
holes within the VAX [Digital Equipment Corporation] operating
system. And instead of figuring them out myself, I knew he had a
whole shitload of them and I successfully got them from him and he
was very angry." Mitnick has intercepted Clift's e-mail by electron-
ically impersonating DEC.

"Why was he discovering them?"

"That's what he does for a hobby. He breaks security on VAXs.
Figures out the security flaws. Where do bank robbers go? The bank.
Well, the holes were with Neil. Where are the UNIX [security] holes?
There's three people in the world, well four, that have the UNIX
holes...."

■ ■ a

A few minutes later Mitnick says good night for the evening. It was a
relatively short call, but I learned quite a bit, especially that parting
insight into Mitnick's method.

By his own admisssion, Kevin Mitnick's been swiping security
bugs from a talented security expert in England, Neil Clift. He's fig-
ured out a shortcut, and isn't that what smart people do? Why read
the book if you can steal the Cliff Notes?

Mitnick just swipes the best work from the world's top security
experts. It's brazen, it's direct; his goal, after all, isn't to be the

world's best programmer. That's for the drones at Microsoft. Mit-
nick wants information. And if he's clever enough to target who has
the secrets, why plod through the drudgery of the original work?

As usual, Mitnick isn't entirely consistent when it comes to his
predicament. He's got a love-hate relationship with his crimes. He
panicked when I mentioned rumors that the investigation might
spread to Silicon Valley, but then he volunteered that he's apparently
the subject of an international manhunt that includes Finland and
the United Kingdom. And I thought I heard a little tinge of pride
when Mitnick blurted out "they want somebody's ass
really
bad."

But Mitnick's most fascinating disclosure was about the e-mail of
the guy from Japan. If Tsutomu Shimomura's a spook for the NSA,
as Mitnick claims, how in the world could Mitnick pickpocket his
e-mail?

January 17,1995

Late the morning of Tuesday,
January 17, I drive over the
Golden Gate Bridge toward the beautiful pastel houses of San Fran-
cisco. I've invited John Markoff to lunch to thank him for recom-
mending me for the
Playboy
magazine article.

I meet him at his choice highrise office. From his desk, Markoff's
got an executive view of the San Francisco skyline and the bay. In the
five years since we last saw one another, like the best of his genera-
tion, he's ridden the high-technology wave to the top.

"Goodfellow suggested a dim sum place," I say, knowing this will
intrigue him. Geoffrey Goodfellow is one of Markoff's best sources,
an innovator in cellular phones and radio, and a former employee of
SRI International who has held high security clearances. The night
before, on Martin Luther King Day, I interviewed Goodfellow about
Kevin Poulsen. "We had dinner and he said he always eats at the dim
sum place when he meets you."

"He's a character," Markoff chuckles about the outspoken Good-
fellow, and then agrees with his recommendation. As we walk toward
Chinatown, I ask Markoff about his upcoming story on Microsoft's
troubled version of Word for the Macintosh. It's well known that
Markoff is about to publish a piece on the flawed program, and it's just
as well known that Bill Gates himself fears what he may write.

"They really screwed it up!" Markoff exclaims, relishing his role as
spoiler to the world's most powerful corporation.

As I pour us some tea, I ask Markoff if he's read a recent hacker
book by a
Time
magazine reporter. He did, and he hated it. "He's a
phony," Markoff dismisses the featured hacker, and then lashes into
the book. For John Markoff, there's only one hacker story worth
telling.

Markoff eagerly recounts a few of Mitnick's exploits, chuckling at
his most outrageous hacks. We agree that his escapades make for
good copy, and I thank him again for his recent recommendation. He
shrugs it off. He says he passed on the story because he couldn't figure
out what to write. With Mitnick on the run, and no end to his fugitive
days in sight, the story had no ending. "So how are you going to tell
the story?"

We've been chatting for a good half hour by now. Markoff is
smooth and confident. He has sources in the Justice Department and
intelligence agencies. If I want some of Markoff's information, I
have to share some of mine. That's how journalism works.

Mitnick warned me Markoff has a vendetta, but I haven't bought
into his conspiracy theory. Sure, Markoff is obsessed with Mitnick,
but he's also a journalist. That's his job. I figure he's already sensed
I've had some telephone contact with Mitnick.

"I'd like to tell you something, but I can only tell you if you prom-
ise to tell no one. Not the FBI. Not anyone."

"I don't talk to the FBI," Markoff says, agreeing to my conditions.

"Mitnick phoned me a few times last spring," I say, watching
Markoff's reaction. "He placed the calls through an elaborate series
of people and pay phones. He told me a lot. Then, the calls just
stopped."

Markoff's face lights up. He's impressed and intrigued, and he
quickly asks more about Mitnick. He's not grilling me. This is, after all,
just a friendly chat. I tell him nothing that might be a clue to Mitnick's
methods or whereabouts. Instead, I talk more about De Payne. I'm
curious to know if Markoff suspects that De Payne may have played
some role in some of the hacks for which Mitnick is ultimately blamed.
And I warn Markoff that De Payne threatened to slander his ex-wife
with personal secrets uncovered through his hacking.

Markoff appreciates the confidence, and seems to agree with my
theory about De Payne. Just as I'd hoped, he begins to reveal more.
He tells me of an extraordinary deal he cut with Qualcomm, the
alleged cellular phone company victim. Franklin Antonio, Qual-
comm's head of engineering, told Markoff that he and his employees
would only reveal the full story if the
Times
reporter agreed to two
conditions. First, that he not publish the company's name. Markoff
would later say he agreed not to use the name in an article that he
was preparing at the time. Second, that Markoff fly to San Diego and
give an hour talk on computer security to the company's employees.