Computer Savvy, With an Attitude:
Young Working-Class Hackers Accused of High-Tech Crime
By Mary B. W. Tabor with Anthony Ramirez
July 23, 1992
Late into the night, in working-class neighborhoods around New
York City, young men with code names like Acid Phreak and Outlaw
sat hunched before their glowing computer screens, exchanging
electronic keys to complex data-processing systems. They called
themselves the Masters of Deception. Their mission: to prove their
prowess in the shadowy computer underworld.
Compulsive and competitive, they played out a cybernetic version of
"West Side Story," trading boasts, tapping into telephone systems,
even pulling up confidential credit reports to prove their
derring-do and taunt other hackers. Their frequent target was the
Legion of Doom, a hacker group named after a gang of comic-book
villains. The rivalry seemed to take on class and ethnic overtones,
too, as the diverse New York group defied the traditional image of
the young suburban computer whiz.
But Federal prosecutors say the members of M.O.D., as the group
called itself, went far beyond harmless pranks.
Facing Federal Charges
On July 16, five young men identified by prosecutors as M.O.D.
members pleaded not guilty to Federal charges including breaking
into some of the nation's most powerful computers and stealing
confidential data like credit reports, some of which were later
sold to private investigators. Prosecutors call it one of the most
extensive thefts of computer information ever reported.
The indictment says the men entered the computer systems of
Southwestern Bell, TRW Information Services and others "to enhance
their image and prestige among other computer hackers; to harass
and intimidate rival hackers and other people they did not like; to
obtain telephone, credit, information and other services without
paying for them; and to obtain passwords, account numbers and other
things of value which they could sell to others."
With modems that link their terminals to other computers over
ordinary telephone lines, young hackers have been making mischief
for years. But as the nation relies more and more on vast networks
of powerful computers and as personal computers become faster and
cheaper, the potential for trouble has soared. For example, Robert
Tappan Morris, a Cornell student, unleashed a program in 1988 that
jammed several thousand computers across the country.
A Polyglot Group
But the world of computer hackers has been changing. Unlike the
typical hackers of old -- well-to-do suburban youths whose parents
could afford costly equipment -- the Masters of Deception are a
polyglot representation of blue-collar New York: black, Hispanic,
Greek, Lithuanian and Italian. They work their mischief often using
the least expensive computers.
One of the young men, 21-year-old John Lee, who goes by the name
Corrupt, has dreadlocks chopped back into stubby "twists," and
lives with his mother in a dilapidated walk-up in
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He bounced around programs for gifted
students before dropping out of school in the 11th grade. Scorpion
-- 22-year-old Paul Stira of Queens -- was his class valedictorian
at Thomas A. Edison High School in Queens. Outlaw -- Julio
Fernandez, 18, of the Bronx -- first studied computers in grade
school.
They met not on street corners, but via computer bulletin boards
used to swap messages and programs.
With nothing to identify them on the boards except their nicknames
and uncanny abilities, the young men found the computer the great
democratic leveler.
Questions of Profit
There may be another difference in the new wave of hackers. While
the traditional hacker ethic forbids cruising computer systems for
profit, some new hackers are less idealistic. "People who say
that," said one former hacker, a friend of the M.O.D. who insisted
on anonymity, "must have rich parents. When you get something of
value, you've got to make money."
Mr. Lee, Mr. Fernandez, Mr. Stira and two others described as
M.O.D. members -- 20-year-old Mark Abene (Phiber Optik), and
22-year-old Elias Ladopoulos (Acid Phreak), both of Queens -- were
charged with crimes including computer tampering, computer and wire
fraud, illegal wiretapping and conspiracy. They face huge fines and
up to five years in prison on each of 11 counts.
The youths, on advice of their lawyers, declined to be interviewed.
Prosecutors say they do not know just how and when youthful pranks
turned to serious crime. Other hackers said the trouble began,
perhaps innocently enough, as a computer war with ethnic and class
overtones.
The Masters of Deception were born in a conflict with the Legion of
Doom, which had been formed by 1984 and ultimately included among
its ranks three Texans, one of whom, Kenyon Shulman, is the son of
a Houston socialite, Carolyn Farb.
Banished From the Legion
Mr. Abene had been voted into the Legion at one point. But when he
began to annoy others in the group with his New York braggadocio
and refusal to share information, he was banished, Legion members
said.
Meanwhile, a hacker using a computer party line based in Texas had
insulted Mr. Lee, who is black, with a racial epithet.
By 1989, both New Yorkers had turned to a new group, M.O.D.,
founded by Mr. Ladopoulos. They vowed to replace their Legion
rivals as the "new elite."
"It's like every other 18- or 19-year-old who walks around knowing
he can do something better than anyone else can," said Michael
Godwin, who knows several of the accused and is a lawyer for the
Electronic Frontier Foundation of Cambridge, Mass., which provides
legal aid for hackers. "They are offensively arrogant."
Hacker groups tend to rise and fall within six months or so as
members leave for college, meet girls or, as one former hacker put
it, "get a life." But the M.O.D. continued to gather new members
from monthly meetings in the atrium of the Citicorp Building in
Manhattan and a computer bulletin board called Kaos. According to a
history the group kept on the computer network, they enjoyed
"mischievous pranks," often aimed at their Texas rivals, and the
two groups began sparring.
Texas-New York Sparring
But in June 1990, the three Texas-based Legion members, including
Mr. Shulman, Chris Goggans and Scott Chasin, formed Comsec Data
Security, a business intended to help companies prevent break-ins
by other hackers.
Worried that the Texans were acting as police informers, the M.O.D.
members accused their rivals of defaming them on the network
bulletin boards. Several members, including Mr. Abene, had become
targets of raids by the Secret Service, and M.O.D. members believed
the Texans were responsible, a contention the Texans respond to
with "no comment."
But the sparring took on racial overtones as well. When Mr. Lee
wrote a history of the M.O.D. and left it in the network, Mr.
Goggans rewrote it in a jive parody.
The text that read, "In the early part of 1987, there were numerous
amounts of busts in the U.S. and in New York in particular" became
"In de early time part uh 1987, dere wuz numerous amounts uh busts
in de U.S. and in New Yo'k in particular."
Mr. Goggans said that it was not meant as a racist attack on Mr.
Lee. "It was just a good way to get under his skin," he said.
Exposing Identities
M.O.D.'s activities, according to the indictment and other hackers,
began to proliferate.
Unlike most of the "old generation" of hackers who liked to joyride
through the systems, the New Yorkers began using the file
information to harass and intimidate others, according to
prosecutors. Everything from home addresses to credit card numbers
to places of employment to hackers' real names -- perhaps the
biggest taboo of all -- hit the network.
In the indictment, Mr. Lee and Mr. Fernandez are accused of having
a conversation last fall in which they talked about getting
information on how to alter TRW credit reports to "destroy people's
lives or make them look like ssaints."
The prosecutors say the youths also went after information they
could sell, though the indictment is not specific about what, if
anything, was sold. The only such information comes from another
case earlier this month in which two other New York City hackers,
Morton Rosenfeld, 21, of Brooklyn, and Alfredo de la Fe, 18, of
Manhattan, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to use passwords and
other access devices obtained from M.O.D. They said they had paid
"several hundred dollars" to the computer group for passwords to
obtain credit reports and then resold the information for "several
thousand dollars" to private investigators.
News Media Attention
Competition for attention from the news media also heated up. The
former Legion members in Comsec had become media darlings, with
articles about them appearing in Time and Newsweek. Mr. Abene and
Mr. Ladopoulos also appeared on television or in magazines,
proclaiming their right to probe computer systems, as long as they
did no damage.
In one highly publicized incident, during a 1989 forum on computers
and privacy sponsored by Harper's magazine, John Perry Barlow, a
freelance journalist and lyricist for the Grateful Dead, went head
to head with Mr. Abene, or Phiber Optik. Mr. Barlow called the
young hacker a "punk."
According to an article by Mr. Barlow -- an account that Mr. Abene
will not confirm or deny -- Mr. Abene then retaliated by
"downloading" Mr. Barlow's credit history, displaying it on the
computer screens of Mr. Barlow and other network users.
Skirmishes Subside
"I've been in redneck bars wearing shoulder-length curls, police
custody while on acid, and Harlem after midnight, but no one has
ever put the spook in me quite as Phiber Optik did at that moment,"
Mr. Barlow wrote. "To a middle-class American, one's credit rating
has become nearly identical to his freedom."
In recent months, hackers say, the war has calmed down. Comsec went
out of business, and several Masters of Deception were left without
computers after the Secret Service raids.
Mr. Abene pleaded guilty last year to misdemeanor charges resulting
from the raids. On the night before his arrest this month, he gave
a guest lecture on computers at the New School for Social Research.
Mr. Lee says he works part time as a stand-up comic and is enrolled
at Brooklyn College studying film production.
Mr. Stira is three credits shy of a degree in computer science at
Polytechnic University in Brooklyn. Mr. Fernandez hopes to enroll
this fall in the Technical Computer Institute in Manhattan. Mr.
Ladopoulos is studying at Queens Community College.
No trial date has been set.
But the battles are apparently not over yet. A couple of days after
the charges were handed up, one Legion member said, he received a
message on his computer from Mr. Abene. It was sarcastic as usual,
he said, and it closed, "Kissy, kissy."