CRYPT NEWSLETTER 35
Excerpt from
CRYPT NEWSLETTER 35
January-February 1996
- Editor: Urnst Kouch (George Smith, Ph.D.)
- Media Critic: Mr. Badger (Andy Lopez)
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SEX, LIES & COMPUTER TAPE: ON THE TRAIL OF KEVIN MITNICK IN TSUTOMU SHIMOMURA'S PAEAN TO HIMSELF AND JON LITTMAN'S "THE FUGITIVE GAME"
At least two volumes will catch your eye this month as US publishers gear up for the Kevin Mitnick-money chase: Tsutomu Shimomura's "Takedown," an auto-hagiography of the author that only incidentally deals with the dark-side hacker, and writer John Littman's "The Fugitive Game" which holds up much better than "Takedown" in terms of human interest, computer shenanigans and controversy.
"Takedown" (Hyperion) is an unpleasant, tedious read revolving around the reality that while Shimomura may have been able to track Kevin Mitnick, he can barely write an interesting story even with New York Times reporter John Markoff to prop him up.
"Takedown's" turgid quality is magnified by Shimomura's intent to sing a paean to himself and his computer feats. He's so hell-bent on it, in fact, he comes off unselfconsciously repellent. In "Takedown," everyone but Shimomura and his cohort, John Markoff, are criminal worms, in the way, or country bumpkins and dolts.
The reader will feel particularly sorry for the FBI's Levord Burns. As written up in "Takedown," Burns is a fossilized piece of wood, intermittently described as either always home in bed fast asleep when the game's afoot, baffled to the point of silence by the technical nature of the pursuit of Mitnick, or falling into a doze on the telephone while being badgered to perform some minor duty connected with the chase. The Computer Emergency Response Team is a vague, inefficient, slow-moving bureaucracy. The NSA is another big, dumb government institution to Shimomura, even though he's trying to squeeze funding from it at the beginning of the tale. Andrew Gross, Shimomura's Renfield, is always screwing things up, tampering with files, messing up evidence or being a stumblebum for our cyber-Poirot. Julia Menapace, the girlfriend, is a co-dependent who can't decide to throw over her ex-paramour - John Gilmore of Sun Microsystems - fast enough for our hacker tracker, even while Shimomura's being a cad with her in Gilmore's home.
At least fifty percent of the book is devoted to Shimomura explaining his life of privilege in the same detail he uses to describe the names of his computers. Eventually, the battle is joined and our cyber-sleuth and his entourage light out on the trail of Mitnick, blamed for invading Shimomura's computer over Christmas. It would be exaggerating to say this is interesting. The details of the Mitnick-hysteria and Shimomura chase have been repeated so often in the media already none of the story is fresh except for parts near the end where Shimomura grudgingly admits that it might not have been Mitnick who was into his computers in the first place, but an unknown collaborator who finally panicked and begged him off the chase in a message on his answering service after Mitnick was in custody. Yes, but Mitnick and his collaborator called Shimomura names and made dirty jokes about our hero on an Internet talk channel, dammnit!! That made it personal! Nyahh, nyahh, nyahh! And Mitnick was reading other people's mail on the Well and into Netcom! Of course, Kevin Mitnick is no hero but Shimomura's a thin, thin choice for a celebrity cybersavior. Ultimately, "Takedown" is completely lacking in the kind of humanity, self-effacing wit and style of Cliff Stoll's "The Cuckoo's Egg," a prior classic on hacker takedown, mostly because its author can't help being a boor.
However, there is a choice on bookshelves. Jonathan Littman's "The Fugitive Game" (Little, Brown) is better. For reasons probably having to do with the general knowledge that Littman was writing a book about hackers, Mitnick started calling the reporter regularly during the same period of time Shimomura was on his case. And unless Littman's making everything up, the result makes Shimomura and John Markoff look like turds.
Littman's book bolsters the idea that it wasn't Mitnick who was into Shimomura's system and that what the San Diego scientist did wasn't particularly special -- a Seattle man, Todd Young, had tracked and spotted the hacker in that city long before Shimomura came along but allowed him to escape through a combination of ignorance, bad luck and disinterest in the gravity of Mitnick's alleged criminal doings.
In "The Fugitive Game," Littman accuses Markoff and Shimomura of a cozy relationship stemming from an old article in WIRED magazine on cellular phone crime. Markoff's original article anonymized the identities of the cell phone hackers because they were playing around with illegality. Littman insists they were Shimomura and Mark Lottor, an acquaintance of the author and hacker Kevin Poulsen. The story goes that Shimomura reverse-engineered code designed to program an Oki cellular phone for the purpose of reprogramming it into a transmission snooper, or something like that. When Shimomura's computer was broken into, the material was copied off it. Littman draws the conclusion in "The Fugitive Game" that Shimomura, in addition to being fired up over the invasion of his system, was also embarrassed by the loss of this software, software he engineered, the author implies, under quasi-legal circumstances. Indirectly, "Takedown" supports this argument. Shimomura obsesses over the loss of a file which a reader of both books might guess contained the Oki software.
Throughout "The Fugitive Game," for the first time in book, Mitnick is portrayed as a real human being, not a caricature. He has a sense of humor, regrets, weaknesses, and a pack of serious neuroses stemming from his jail-time and uncontrollable cyber-fame. But the author isn't easy on him: Mitnick also comes off as a hardened con-man who relishes snooping other people's privates, cruel treachery, and duping the unwitting into compromising themselves or their places of employment.
At one point Mitnick indicates something very interesting about users of Pretty Good Privacy. Some users of it on the 'Net, particularly those running services hooked directly to it, keep their PGP software on the public host. Mitnick laughs at the lapse - he implies it's been a simple matter for him to put a backdoor into the PGP source which deliver the keys and passphrase of the user to another spot on the host he's invaded, compile it and replace the original host copies. From here, it's simple, he maintains, to read their encrypted mail -- this in a conversation on Mark Lottor in which the hacker says he's read Lottor's electronic correspondence.
If there's a need for a bona fide, hiss-able villain in "The Fugitive Game," Littman produces one: Justin Petersen. Petersen aka Agent Steal, is a side-plot in the book: a pathological liar, car thief, and con-man who portrays himself as a combination cyberpunk/heavy metal rock 'n' roller. Fond of artificially busty stripper/hookers from the sleazy end of Sunset in Hollywood, Littman paints Petersen as the maximum disinformer and criminal -- a squealer for the FBI who embarrassed the agency by embezzling Social Security funds and then going on the lam when lawmen tried to reel him in. "The Fugitive Game" has him bargaining with the FBI for tidbits on Mitnick's whereabouts.
Littman wraps up "The Fugitive Game" with broadsides at Shimomura and Markoff. With Markoff playing Mitnick as the enemy of all computerized civilization on the front page of the New York Times, the stage was set to ensure maximum hysteria and the subsequent introduction of the reporter's friend, Tsutomu Shimomura, into a carefully arranged media spotlight. Behind the scenes, Markoff's agent was negotiating a big money deal - approximately $2 million, says Littman - for the reporter and Shimomura, three days _before_ Markoff put the physicist on the front page of the New York Times.
Ironically, the increasing cynicism which is the natural crop sown and cultivated by this type of media rigging for the benefit of men of privilege is a tale of treachery and contempt, too, but one that goes well beyond hacker Kevin Mitnick.
Additional notes
(From July - August - October 1995)
Both the government and Kevin Mitnick's attorneys appeared to be working privately to settle the case against him without a trial in late 1995.
In August, Mitnick appeared in court dressed in a conservative suit and tie for arraignment on a 1989 probation violation. Mitnick was on probation for an earlier hacking case when he fled California in November, 1992.
Although no one was talking, it was believed Mitnick's representation and authorities "were trying to reach an agreement under which Mitnick would plead guilty to a number of charges in order to avoid going to trial in all the jurisdictions across the country where he may [or may not] have committed electronic crimes during his flight."
"We're looking for him to take responsibility for the entirety of his conduct," said Assistant U.S. Atty. David Schindler. At the time, Schindler would not say what type of sentence he was driving for.
In various articles printed throughout the news media, Mitnick was reported able to plea-bargain his infamous early-1995 cross-country hacking and media jaunt into a sentence that commits him to about eight months in prison, according to John Yzurdiaga, his attorney.
Mitnick, for part of the plea, will concede guilt in possession of stolen cellular phone numbers, one of twenty three federal charges - all concerning cellular phone fraud - against him.
