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And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening,
Join tonight by Kyle over here and over in Skype land. We have Rob T firefly
Good evening. We have Gila. Good evening, and we have a very special guest for tonight's space rogue. Welcome
And space rogue I think you're muted
Hang on. I think maybe we muted you
Somebody muted me. Okay. I don't know. I'm unmuted now. Thank you for having me here. Glad to be here unmuted unshackled
That's the way you like it. So before we get started tonight
I just wanted to reassure some listeners because we're getting a lot of panicky emails and some phone calls of one visit and
People really seem to be thinking this is it
This is the end of civilization and you know what it might be it might very well be but it's not because of chat GPT
So let's calm down now what I did right before the show
I had a little conference with chat GPT and I asked a question
How can I tell the difference between a human and a chat bot and this is what?
The source says so, please listen, it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between a human and a chat bot
Especially if the chat bot is programmed to simulate human like conversation
However, there are a few things you can look for to help you distinguish between the two response time
Chatbots typically respond much faster than humans as they are able to process and generate responses instantly if you receive a response
Almost immediately after sending a message
It's likely you're talking to a chat bot
Whereas if it takes a day for somebody to get back to you, yeah, pretty sure that's a human. All right
Consistency chatbots tend to be consistent in their responses both in terms of the tone and language
They use as well as the information they provide humans on the other hand may vary in their responses depending on factors such as mood
Context and personal experience that's sort of that's kind of like a dis isn't it kind of saying that we're inconsistent
We don't really say the same thing all the time. Yeah, the the asymmetry the imperfections the nuance and
Long pauses so they're quick they're consistent
All right, but we make up for it in complexity while chatbots are getting increasingly sophisticated
They may still struggle with more complex conversations
Or responding to unexpected questions
If you're asking a question that requires a lot of context or knowledge and the response you get is overly simplistic or generic
It's possible. You're talking to a chatbot
Emotion while chatbots can be programmed to simulate emotion
They are not able to experience emotions in the same way that humans do
If you're having a conversation that involves strong emotions or personal experiences and the responses you're receiving feel detached or robotic
It's possible. You're talking to a chatbot
or
one of us
That meets the definition of so many people I know
Ultimately the best way to tell whether you're talking to a human or chatbot is to ask them directly. Oh, yeah, right
That's gonna work. Are you a chatbot humans? Don't tell the truth. We know that by now
Many chatbots will identify themselves as such if asked and humans will typically respond in a way that confirms their identity
I don't know about this
Chatbot here doesn't seem very experienced with the ways of either chatbots or humans, but you know what?
We just have to calm down. It's technology. It's a tool. It's something new
It's something fun to play with and yes, eventually we will be buried by it, but that's down the road
Space rogue welcome and congratulations. You have a book out called
Space rogue how the the hackers known as loft changed the world
And you guys you guys most definitely did change the world both of you who
Who don't know the loft was one of the first ever hacker spaces in the Boston area
these guys
pretty much
Where superstars of the time and still are to this day?
still making headlines
In various manners you testified in front of Congress in in 1998
I'd like to sort of set the tone just by reading a brief excerpt from your book, which just came out
Fairly recently, this is all about
Something that every hacker knows a little bit about and that's choosing a handle
You know that that that rite of passage that we all go through
so this this comes from from the book shortly after I left Boston University in the spring of
1991 and was working as a rent-a-cop at the Lafayette Place Mall
I called up a new online bulletin board or BBS for the first time. I think it was simply called M
They requested that users create a unique username something totally new that had not been used on any other system
The goal was to foster open communication without the baggage and existing identity would bring with it
I thought anonymity was an intriguing idea
No one would know who anyone else was elite or lamer old-timer or newbie. It wouldn't matter
Everyone on this new BBS would start out at the same level. I thought really hard about a new handle
Your handle became your identity
It was the only unique item you you took with you online
Your handle was linked to your reputation your hacking capabilities and your previous exploits
It was essentially a full resume summed up in one word or phrase
BBS's were all text all the time. No graphics
No icons or avatars to go along with your post and musings
The only thing that set your messages apart from everyone else's was your username
Your status was based on what you wrote and it was all attached to your handle early systems could only accommodate eight character usernames
Often not enough for a full first or last name
So people started to get creative and handles became the norm
I wanted something cool for this new BBS when the only thing separating your electronic bytes from someone else's bytes
Was your name or handle that moniker takes on a greater significance?
I started looking around my bedroom for inspiration and I hit upon the book that I was reading
Cyberpunk outlaws and hackers on the computer frontier by Katie Hafner and John Markov
The book was over-the-top full of exaggeration and inaccuracies, but still enthralling
While I didn't know it at the time the book had a significant influence on me
I began freely associating with the title, especially the cyber part even at that point
I knew using any handle with the word cyber in it would not be a wise choice and in these early days of the Internet
Cyber was considered an almost dirty word, but cyber led me to cyber space
So I started working with space instead and somehow hit on space rogue. I
Spent maybe all of ten minutes coming up with it. There was a new BBS. I don't want to get into
I didn't have time to stand around trying to pick the perfect handle. I just needed something new that was good enough for right now
I thought it would be a throwaway one-time use. I would use it on this board and that would be it
I had no idea the space rug would stick so well that I would still be using it nearly 30 years later
And with that space rogue an official welcome to the show and how's how's the handle holding out?
Yeah, well, it's interesting because I'm now if you notice like the book actually has my given name on the cover
As opposed to just space rogue. I wanted to ask okay to use that
So I can it's on the cover of the book. So I wanted to ask first though. So well, thank you
Welcome Chris everybody does Thomas. Okay. Yeah, Chris Thomas is the is the given name and that is the author name of the book
So I've been using space rogue, you know
Professionally for 30 years basically and have only recently started to use the given name in professional settings
It's hard to get paid as space rogue
Which kind of you know, you kind of can't go to the bank and show ideas space rogue to open a bank account anymore
I'm not that you ever could
But so, you know if I wanted to get paid I had to start using a given name
but even then I still tried to use the handle all the time because every that's what everybody knew me as I didn't want to
I still wanted to take advantage of that historical nature of the handle
But when I came to the book, I was like I thought about publishing it just as space rogue
But I also realized that was gonna cause a lot of a few hurdles that I might have to jump over that
I probably might not want to jump over
So I put the given name on the book as well
Wow, and of course, you know, that's sorry, too
Yeah, so people call me SR space. Mr. Rogue
Rouge some people mispronounce it as space Rouge
You know think I'm all red or something. I don't know. But yeah, I answer to most anything these days
Wow, well, no, I think probably the thing that people are most aware of
With the loft in general. We'll talk about a bunch of your other projects as well
But so the thing that the loft was known for was that testimony in that that spring day in 1998
I believe it was yes in May and
You guys went down to the Senate and you?
basically
schooled them on security and
I don't know. Do you think they listened back then?
Yes, and no, I mean it's taken a long time. I mean here we are 25 years later the 25th anniversary comes up this May
And it's been 25 years and in some ways not much has changed
In some ways a lot has changed. I mean, I'm I look at some of the
The initiatives taking place in government now, and I'm cautiously optimistic
CESA the computer information security cyber information security security agency
I think is the appropriate title is doing great great things under Jan Easterly and
It's sort of making things be very aware
Getting the word out there
Biden has a new
Cyber policy out which seems to be making some waves as well
I mean, I think it's still early to say whether or not these initiatives are going to stick
We've seen a lot of different initiatives over the years
But hopefully these current ones are actually going to make some difference and whether or not loft had some influence on those current activities or not
You know I like to think we did
But either way, it's good to see the progress
Can you describe the setting when you guys went down there?
How was it intimidating and I testified in front of Congress myself, but you guys had a much bigger platform
You were actually you had a full room. I had two senators and neither one of them really knew much
What they were talking about yeah, there's actually video of your testimony out there
And I mean I well I remember seeing it
I don't know where the link is now
But I I did mention your testimony in the book because I think a lot of people think that loft was first
And we were not like you predated us and then Susan Thunder actually predated you
As having testified at Congress, but the scene for us was we weren't really sure what to expect
We were aware of your previous testimony, and that it wasn't probably the most positive experience
And we were kind of concerned like what was gonna happen when we got in the room
I mean once you're in the room
Cameras are there people are there like they can ask you whatever you want so we didn't really advertise that we were going to Congress
You know tune in on C-SPAN
We figured if it goes badly. We just won't tell anybody and we'll pretend it didn't happen
But thankfully it was it was a more positive experience for us
So we went down
We testified under our handles
which was a big thing for us because we wanted to make sure that we were trying to protect ourselves from lawsuits by using our
handles and somehow we convinced the
Senate and Congress that too that was okay
That was the only time they allowed that for people that weren't in witness relocation
So that's what we were told in fact
You know one of the ways that we knew that it was serious was that we had to get reimbursed for our travel expenses in
cash
And to do that
we had to go down in the basement of the Capitol and talk to like this little guy in a closet who had all the
Petty cash for Congress and give them additional fake names
Because you can't you know put space rogue in the ledger as to who you paid off
For his $23 and gas money or whatever it was
So we had additional fake names that signed the ledger with so we could actually get our cash wait wait wait wait
We mean additional you mean you made up names on the spot. Yeah, yeah
Fake name they told you to do this or did they not know you were doing that no
They knew we were doing it ahead of time. They assigned us the names. Did you do you remember the name?
They were they all started with the same first and last the same letter of the first and last name and they were baseball related
I don't remember exactly what they were
Kingpin knows and it were used to know but it was interesting we go down. We give our fake name. We give him our receipts
He totaled them up put a ledger in the book entry in the books
They signed here. We'd sign the fake name and give us the cash
So that was that was interesting. That's kind of how we knew like, okay
They were really serious about this whole handle thing and we appreciated that because like I said, you know
We're trying to protect ourselves from lawsuits from companies trying to sue us for releasing information about their security vulnerabilities
You know, I want to hear the story of that guy in the basement. Somebody has to tell his story
That is incredible. Okay, so
The the testimony itself was was that intense? I think it went on for what about an hour or so
Yeah, it was a little over an hour a little under an hour. It was it was intense and very stressful at least for me
We got we got together ahead of time and we had a written testimony that's published in the congressional record
And then we had a verbal testimony as well
We wrote out the written testimony wrote out the introductions like the the written testimony was like a week before the introductions
We did the night before in the hotel room
So we each had like a paragraph that we said is our introduction and then we took questions from the senators
But it's it was really like for the first half an hour
I'm just sitting there like I don't know what to say
And if you look there's a there's a famous picture of us testifying like I'm looking down at the table in the picture
Like because I can't I can't even bring myself to look up in the room because it's you know
It's it's a very stately room. The senators are up on a raised bench in front of you
There's oak or cherry paneling everywhere
Very very intimidating to sit there and it wasn't until like the second half of the testimony where I start to like
Oh, I should probably say something and I start to try to answer some of the questions
So if you watch the testimony, like I don't say much for the first half and it's not until the second half, right?
I'm able to get in a few answers. Well, something was said and we were up in New York. We were doing radio
I remember I think we did a show the day you guys
Testified and we only heard
Rumors of that famous quote the week after we it certainly hit all the newspapers. We have a clip
We actually have a clip from our show
from May of
1998 let's just listen to the the initial reaction that that that we had
Boy yeah, we talked about the the loft thing for just a couple of minutes last week
You know that that that that quote
That everybody's been like quoting. What's up? I don't know. It's really a quote because I haven't seen it in context yet
We haven't been successful getting a hold of those people because I imagine they're they're in demand after
after things like that got out
basically the
The the idea was that hackers could take down the entire internet in 30 minutes or less
That's right a band of seven hackers from Boston told the Senate committee last Tuesday
they could bring down the foundation of the internet in 30 minutes and
One of the people is much who was on our radio show a few a few months ago actually and
You know, it's it's it's an interesting thing. I mean you're there in front of Congress
They can be kind of intimidating and I guess you know things come out that maybe you don't want them to be
interpreted in just that way I
Can tell you right now hackers are not going to take down the internet and I mean
I've been getting calls from reporters now for the past
Couple of days ever since I got back
Wanting responses to this threat that the loft poses to the internet, of course, you know
It doesn't take a a rocket scientist to realize that saying I can take down the internet in 30 minutes
Is going to be perceived as a threat by some dim-minded
media people
but there are certainly
Security problems that could result in somebody with the proper access
And access to a lot of different things and
knowledge
To achieve a desired effect
And the desire
To do something bad all that wrapped together. And yes, somebody could cause significant mayhem
And that's never really been an issue
Thing is
Is it a threat from hackers? The answer is no. Hackers are not going to take down the internet in 30 minutes
So no need to panic but definite need to increase security because
There are all kinds of technical problems all kinds of security issues
That are definitely relevant and things are stupid as as you know satellites that don't have any backup
Same mentality goes into some aspects of the internet
And that's what you have to take into consideration
Is that a failure in one way can lead to a failure somewhere else and it just keeps
Multiplying until you have a complete breakdown of communication
That's what you have to watch out for
And that's I think what the people at the loft were
Trying to warn congress about of course, you know, i've been there i've been in front of congress
I know that
You say certain things and it doesn't exactly get interpreted the way you want it to be interpreted
So I think we we know what the interpretation was meant to be
The boneheads in the media, of course will get it wrong every time
All right, that's an excerpt from 1998
Reacting to the testimony of the loft where in fact you can see the testimony of the loft
1998 reacting to the testimony of the loft where in fact you guys
Did sort of say something like that?
Mudge, I believe was the one who said that we have actually the exact excerpt we'll play in a moment
uh, but um, uh was was that a correct interpretation that it wasn't intended to cause panic or to
Be interpreted as a threat from hackers
Oh, absolutely not. No, um, and and it
Media did take it that way and and we have a collection of headlines
I think kingpin still has a collection of headlines of you know, hackers threaten internet, you know, mayhem, etc
Uh, but the the issue specifically was had already been disclosed and had already been patched
Uh when it was announced during that testimony basically was an issue with bgp
Where it would cause a castating failure of routers?
Uh, and the only way to fix it would be to turn everything off and turn it back on again
Like the entire internet, right? Uh, but it had already been disclosed. It had already a patch had already been issued
Uh, it wasn't really a major concern at the time. We announced it
Uh, but it was a possibility. I think I think we're going to play this excerpt from mudge
I think he was um, maybe theorizing about other potential ways where this could actually still be a threat
Uh, if if certain things weren't taken seriously and and that's something I would even say to this day
If security is not taken seriously, then then there will definitely be catastrophic
Um, um occurrences and that's not a threat. That's a fact, you know, you have to absolutely have decent security and back then
It really was um, and it's in its early days
Um, let's listen to the actual quote from mudge
i'm informed that
You uh
Think that within 30 minutes the seven of you could make the internet unusable for the entire nation
Is that correct? That's correct. Actually one of us with just a few packets
Um
I
we've told a few agencies about this, uh, it's kind of funny because
We think that this is something that the various government agencies should be actively going after we know the department of defense just did a
very large uh
Investigation into what's known as denial of service attacks against the infrastructure
In our various day jobs, we contributed a large portion of the information to that
actual
investigation
much to our chagrin the
Learnings from it were instantly classified
Which we were giving them largely public information
It
It is very trivial with the old protocols
to segregate and separate
The different major long-haul providers, uh, which would then be the national access points the metropolitan area ether
Sections at&t can't talk to mci can't talk to psi net can't talk to alternate
Etc etc and keep it down that way as long as we really wanted to
It would definitely take a few days for people to figure out what was going on
And that's from the congressional testimony of the loft back in 1998. I think that's that's pretty clear
that's pretty succinct as to uh, what exactly was meant there and if the
If the newspapers and the politicians have been a little less hysterical
I think they they would have learned a lot more more quickly how to deal with the situation
Yeah, no, I agree. And as you mentioned, I mean it was still dealing with an internet and a network that is very fragile
We still have issues with bgp today
where routing issues, uh
You know take down large sections of the internet for short periods of time
thankfully or major providers that just basically go offline because somebody pushed a button that was
Sent to configuration that was wrong. So yeah, the whole internet is still built on bubble gum and bailing twine
I I think you're right. I think you're right about that
Uh, well, we've been focusing on on this one, uh instance. It's only one day in in the world of the loft. Um,
Tell us how did the loft?
begin in the first place
Um, so the loft, uh arose out of a group of hackers in boston, uh who basically came together to store computer equipment
Uh in an old warehouse artist loft space in south boston
uh, the building still exists, uh, and but now it is, uh,
high-priced condos
It's no longer the derelict
Factory warehouse building that it was
Uh, but we basically just stored our equipment there
And then eventually we started plugging it in
And then we bought a modem and got online and built the website and the rest is history
well
Is there a truth to the rumor that i've heard that somehow?
This is related to a hat business. Yes
yeah, so count zero and uh, brian oblivion's wives, uh were
Basically, we're going to design hats like the kind you wear on your head
uh, and uh
They were gonna they had half of this space that they because it was a pretty decent size space
And so brian and count zero had the other half, but even that was too much for brian and count zero
So they invited white knight gogo13
A couple other folks to share this space with them while the the wives did the hat business on the other side
Well, the hat business did not take off and failed, uh within a couple of months
And so they still had now they had all this more space
Uh, and that's when they invited myself and kingpin and wild pond
Uh and to help share the rent basically, uh and store some equipment in this space
Wow, yeah
I was reading some of the accounts and um, I didn't realize you guys some of you guys met at a 2600 meeting and then
Went to the loft afterwards for the maybe the first time to to yeah
Wow, so yeah 2600 was was uh, one of the uh,
Communal gathering places. I think in boston. We had a bulletin board called the works and the works had gatherings
Infrequently they weren't scheduled that happened every now and then
Uh, but then 2600 came along and put a little bit of structure into it
And so we'd have 2600 meetings in harvard square every month, uh, first friday of the month
Have auburn pan i'd go get my large iced coffee americano chocolate frothy drink thing, which I don't drink anymore
but i'd sit outside with the old man and the chess tables and uh,
all the hackers would show up and we'd kind of sit there and and
Do a 2600 meeting and then the weather would get cold and we'd go to the pizza shop around the corner
Uh until they got uh realized that we weren't buying any pizza and kicked us out
Uh, and then we ended up at the prudential center in boston
Which I think is where the meetings still are i'd have to check the listing, you know
The web page 2600.com slash meetings. I don't know where they are myself
I do know they exist in boston, but i'm not sure where exactly they are
I think they're at the proof. They may have gone back to harvard square. I'm not sure either but yeah check the website
Uh, but that was the ineptest of this pretty much where we all met
Uh, brian oblivion ran a bulletin board called black crawling systems
And he would only let people on the board who he had actually met in person
Um, so there wasn't a lot of a lot of people on the board
Uh, but that's also where the the loft came from from membership from that board
Which is from people he met at 2600 meetings
Gila the expression on your face tells me that you just found out where the meetings are
Um, I did actually, uh boston the garage at harvard square in the food court area
That's where we used to that's where we got kicked out of uh, 25 years ago and now
And now the hackers are the hackers are back for round two
Indelible, you know what's amazing about that is I realize you guys were just kids back then and uh, you know looked upon with suspicion
By the mainstream
But look what you went on to do
I I just hope people are listening to this that are our kids now that are going to meetings that are
Uh, you know just trying to fit in or figure out how technology works or how to manipulate things
And realizing that yeah, you can you can become amazing too
You can be writing books in in a couple of decades and um, and and maybe even testifying in front of congress in a good way
Yeah, I mean kingpin was was still in high school at the time when he joined the loft
Uh, I think I was in my early 30s
Uh, so we had a wide range of ages, uh, so yeah, there isn't any one particular age
It's good or bad that like oh i'm too old. I'm too young whatever
Uh, there's definitely any time you can jump in and get started
You in your 30s then you look like you're in your 30s now
Yeah, I age slowly I guess some kind of time traveler. Okay. Well, that's that's that's pretty amazing
Um, so, uh, tell us tell us about the book. What where'd the idea for the book come from?
And uh, what did you hope to capture?
Um, well i've been thinking about writing the book for a while, uh,
The the story of the loft is has kind of reached mythological status
I think and it's sort of been retold and retold and
I've heard different versions of some of the stories and i'm like that's not what I remember
Uh, not to say that somebody else's version isn't accurate either
But i was like I was there and I remember things a little bit differently
So I felt it was important to record my version, uh and write the story
but I had a problem like writing like i'm not a writer and so
Getting the the the stuff down was difficult and I would start and I would write a page and i'll be like
Oh, I can't do this and I would write another page and i'll be like, oh, this is terrible
And then I don't know somehow at some point something clicked and I ended up doing an outline and that's what
That's what did it for me. I did outlines like I want to do this story. I want to do that story
I'll put this story in and I just listed the stories then I organized the stories
And then I filled in all the blanks and when I was done I was like I got a book
Uh, and so I think I really wanted to just capture
Uh, you know some of the big important aspects of what loft did and what loft was
And some of the impact that we had
Uh, not just directly but indirectly and the people that we influenced over the years
Wow
that's uh, that's pretty incredible and and uh, you were able to to uh,
Find interest in publishing the book without uh, not too much of a challenge
Yeah, yes and no as as i'm sure you know publishing is is a whole
Yes, uh, yes
I sent out so the basically if you write a book or before you write a book the
Traditional publishing says you need an agent to get an agent
You send out query letters, which is basically nowadays emails and you format an email you mail it off
And if you're lucky you'll hear something back
Generally, you hear nothing and that's normal for this industry
Like it just goes into a black hole and you don't hear nothing back. I sent out about maybe
200 250 query letters to different agents
Uh, I probably heard back from maybe 75 of them like the rest of them are just lost and gone forever
Although 75 I had like four I think who were very interested in the story
Wanted to do something with the idea but like oh, this is really important
I want to publish this but I want you to change all this stuff and do it different
I'm, like well i've written a book. It's a memoir. I don't want to go and do a total non-fiction
treatment
like i've this is the book I wrote this is the book I want to publish and
After like the fourth agent telling me that i'm like, you know, I'm just gonna do it myself
um, but this took like two years to go through and you know go through all these agents and these query letters and whatnot and
People think oh you self-publish it's real easy. You just upload it click a button. Yeah, it's great
If you just want to do amazon and have a kind of a you know, crappy book
uh, so I ended up having to hire editors and uh proofreaders and a
Book designer and get the cover done
And all that sort of things just took months and months and months as well to do
And then I was able to upload it and push a button for amazon
But I also wanted a hardcover because you know
It's not really a book to me if you unless you have a hardcover
Which meant a whole nother website called ingram spark which you have to upload and then you have to have an ebook on top
Of that because everybody buys ebook. So yeah, there's a lot involved in the actual publishing of the the book yourself
What kinds of things do they want you to change?
Well, mostly they since it's a memoir people didn't want it as a memoir the idea was that memoirs don't sell so they wanted a full
regular non-fiction
interview
footnote treatment
Uh, very dry, very boring very matter of fact type book and i'm like that's that's that's what sells
That's not gonna sell like a historian
would make
Okay, like really
Academic and oh wow. Wow. Yeah, and I was I just I was like, well, you know
I know you're the expert and you probably know the market better than I do
But one I ain't got time to write that like that's a lot of work
Um, and like I'd have to interview at least seven people not to mention
You know everybody else, uh, and I was like I the book is you know, 80 percent done
I just needed some help with the editing and stuff and like oh no
No, we got to change all this and do this and do that and like yeah. No, thanks
Uh, i'll just do it myself good for you. And so I did wow that that is awesome
We're speaking with uh, chris thomas known as space rogue
The book is called space rogue how the hacker hackers known as loft changed the world
Um, and guess what for you listeners? We're offering a special, uh deal for the first two people who call in
um, or or connect and become bai buddies
You will get an autographed copy of this book from space rogue himself
um
Rob, uh, gila, would you tell us how people can connect and become bai buddies and you have to email us?
um
Before eight o'clock tonight to tell us that you did that if you do it after eight o'clock
It's not going to count not for this. Anyway, it'll count for the radio station, but to get these two books
You got to do that now
Well, certainly, um how you do that is you go to give to wbai.org
That's give the numeral to
Wbai.org
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um, I had a question, uh, what were some of the uh,
Fall-on impacts and and uh things that happened as the loft. Um had sort of this renown
uh after the uh hearing of course and then um
progressed as an as a space and people went on uh to
Do different projects how was their impact felt and and what kinds of reaction?
Did the group continue to get and influence might you say?
Uh, i'm not sure that we really felt an impact right away, uh, I mean, yeah, everybody was surprised
Oh, wow, loft was at congress, you know, and then we got into some press
But after a little while it seemed to that all sort of died down and went back to normal for us
uh
we just kind of went back to hacking things and publishing things and went back to our day jobs and
Uh, we didn't like become overnight rich or anything and and suddenly retired to miami or something. Uh,
So it didn't seem like that much changed immediately
Uh, and maybe it did and it was just the subtle ways that we didn't realize and I think but now looking back
you know, it was it was kind of a watershed moment, uh, and it is a moment that that is
You know one of those time marks in history is like pre-loft testimony and then after loft testimony
uh
and for loft like we just kind of kept on doing what our thing was and kept hacking things and publishing things and trying to
make a
Loft pay for itself, which was our initial goal. We just wanted it to to earn enough money so we could quit our jobs
uh, and
You know and then two thousand y2k bug came along and uh, the dot com boom came along kind of at the same time
And we're looking around seeing all our friends getting rich off vc money
And we're like we're still sitting here trying to barely pay the internet bill and we're like, you know
Be nice to get uh, get a piece of that
So we started went out and started looking for some venture capital and ended up forming at stake
Yeah, tell us about the at stake days because that that pretty much was how loft finished, right?
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. That was how loft finished. Um
so I uh
There was a venture capital company that had a company
Internet security company that they had already founded called at stake
uh had you know had a handful of employees and was trying to make a go of it and
Um mudge was shopping us around to some of the vc and this particular venture capital was like, you know
We already got a company
But maybe we can we can buy you and and merge you into together and make one big company
We're like, you know, it sounds like a good idea
uh, and and we sort of knew that loft had reached a point where
If we had kept on doing what we were doing, we would eventually get to our goal slowly
But it would have been slow and painful and a lot of road bumps along the road along the way
uh, and now here is sort of a
instant
Instant out just add water and boom. We're where we want to be. We've got the credibility or we got more people
Um, we're able to hack on stuff all day
Uh, and so we're like, yeah, let's do this and it's kind of what we wanted to do what we were looking for anyway
Uh, but of course, you know as what happens with a lot of good things once you add money it becomes a bad thing
uh, so, uh
Shortly after at stake and loft kind of merged or at stake bought loft technically, um the venture capital were like, you know
We kind of want our money back. Uh, that's kind of why we invented in you in the first place
And so they put some uh management in place
Uh, they brought in a ceo
They got a cfo and whatnot and they started making some some rather big changes
One of those changes was to get rid of me and the hacker news network
Uh, and so I had to exit stage left and then a year two years later they sold what was left to uh,
semantic
And then semantic kind of shut everything down and and that was the end of everything. Why did they come after you right away?
Well, I go into this in the book
I think that there was the ceo and and the the management that was brought in needed to make an example of
Uh the rank and file that nobody was protected
I just happened to be the one person that they really didn't know what to do with the hacker news network
They weren't interested in at the time, which was a website that I had created that was getting some moderate traffic
But they didn't really know what to do with it as a consulting company. It didn't fit their business model
They weren't really interested. They were going to close it down
They were probably worried about what I would say when they did
so they're like, you know, we'll just get rid of space rogue and his hnn and
um, so they got they fired me and they fired one other person in the uh,
Uh in the virginia office or at the same time, uh, the research triangle park, which is in north carolina. I don't remember
Wow, I don't know. It's virginia, right? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway
So, uh, they fired me and one of the person in the other office sort of as a as a token
I think to say okay, not everybody's untouchable like there's nobody untouchable
Uh, and I think that was that was kind of why uh, I was let go
Um, but that was it was a big shock to me. Did you guys still have the space the loft space?
No, um, the lease had gotten up a few months earlier
Uh, and so it was it had been closed down and cleaned out and weren't using it anymore at all
Um, I think I went there
Uh by the time the day I got fired, of course by the time I got home
My loft email was turned off which is shocking because I wasn't expecting my loft email to get turned off
I was expecting my at stake email to go away, of course
But not my loft email that I'd had for seven years
And so I lost all that mail spool all that history was gone
when it came time to write the book, I wasn't able to refer to that which was kind of a
A pain made it difficult, uh, but the loft space itself
The lease had been up and we had moved most of the stuff out of there into the at stake office
Um, and so there wasn't really anything there
Uh to go back to wow, that's that's a sad ending as far as uh,
Especially losing your mail you would think that you know a hacker space
Um, that would never happen to but when corporations get involved, I guess I guess anything's possible. Wow
Had no had no idea
Tell us. I don't know if you remember you had another uh show about at stake with uh fiber fiber optic
I do remember I do remember that. In fact, if I can recall, uh, he had tried to get a job there
And they rejected him because he had been arrested for being a hacker because he was a hacker
Was the ultimate irony and and something, uh that started as the loft. Yeah, basically rejecting somebody for being a hacker
Um, yeah, so that that that definitely was something. Um
Being the first one out, uh, were there others who who uh left afterwards is
Did were you able to stay on good terms with the original members?
so, uh
At stake it also hired a uh, not a hacker type but a luminary and cyber security even then dan gear
Uh and dan ended up co-authoring a paper on um, uh homogeneous networks basically windows networks
Uh and saying that that such networks were not a good idea and not very secure
Uh, and he was uh, pretty much let go shortly thereafter
um for
He they didn't say it was for his writing of the paper
But i'm fairly positive it was but there's more dan's story to tell than mine
Um, but yeah, so there were some other and then there was the fiber optic incident. Um,
Management I think didn't really understand what loft was or what we did or what we stood for or
Uh any of that, um, unfortunately, so like I said when you add money things money to things it often goes bad
Uh, sorry just wanted to jump in for a second and
Speaking of a good way to add money to things that will not go bad
We do want to thank our first recipient of a signed copy of space rogues book one left 15 minutes to go
Um, just know that there's one more so if you're going to do it do it quick. Yes
You have to email us before eight o'clock
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You won't be eligible for this particular offer
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Yes, and if you are one of the first two people, um this person or the next one to uh,
Get your info to us about your new bai buddy ship
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Now we've mentioned hacker news network and uh, can you tell us something about how that got started what it was all about and and uh,
Did it relaunch?
Yeah, so hacker news network was an idea I had years ago of trying to
Basically earn some money for the loft to pay our rent and our electric bill
Um, we had this, you know loft.com was one of the probably one of the first 10 000 websites on the internet
Um, so it was a very early website
and so we published all our advisories and all our other information and it became very very popular and
Uh, it got a you know back in the day. We call them hits right?
A lot of web hits on on that site
But we didn't want to put web ads on the site web ads were huge
a lot of people were making a lot of money on banner ads from their websites, but
we didn't want to be beholden to add be beholden to advertisers or or
Have them influence anything that we'd say so we didn't want to put ads on loft.com
But at the same time i'm like looking at all these other websites with tons of banner ads making tons of money
And i'm like, you know
There's got to be a way that we can get a small slice of that
So I came up with this idea to create an entirely new website called hacker news network
And I was just going to put links on it of
news stories related to
Hackers, right?
Uh, and that's what I did. Uh, and after about a year or two, it got to be pretty popular
I'd post the i'd wake up every morning. I'd
scour the my list of bookmarks for
Relevant news stories. I'd write a small blurb for each one and i'd post it try to have it posted up by 9 a.m
Eastern every day, uh, so I was waking up early in the morning gathering the news
Posting it online, uh, and it came to be a pretty good, uh de facto source for you know hacker related news
Yeah, we use it all the time for the for the radio show. We always used it. Oh nice
That's great. I'm, sorry if we never gave credit, but we did use it
Well, you're not the only ones if you watch there's a video out of uh from the fbi about solar sunrise, which was an active
a uh
Mission that the fbi did years ago about hacking and whatnot and in the background
On several of the shots in that video, there's a hacker news network on the computer monitor
So that was that was a nice thing, too
But then uh, you know as stake happened and the venture capital didn't want hacker news network
And after they fired me they they kind of killed the website pretty quickly
wow, and so like
15 years later 10 years later, uh tan one of the loft guys calls me up out of the blue and he's like dude
I'm, like what and he's like we gotta we gotta bring hnn back. I'm like, no, we don't he's like, yeah
Yeah, yeah, we'll do it as video. I'm like, I don't know nothing about video me neither. And so
He convinced me. I borrowed a camera from my job
And
I filmed a pilot episode and I was like, yeah, I get get right back into this
So, uh, we brought it back for a couple years as video. I did a weekly news show
Of uh hacker news network of me in front of the camera reading the news
And we had a bunch of different segments in the show
But it was about a half hour long
Uh, so I couldn't really upload it to youtube because at the time youtube had a 10 minute limit. That's right
Yeah, yeah
So we were kind of like ahead of the time, uh ahead of the curve as it were
I think if I had held on for like another six months or so and waited for youtube get rid of their 10 minute limit
You know the sky would have been in the limit
But as it was I was putting 40 hours a week into doing the hnn video show and then still trying to work 40 hours
A week at my regular job, uh, and so after two years of that
It was just it was too much and I just I couldn't keep it up anymore. I was burnt out so I shut it down
Um, and that was the end of the second incarnation of hacker news network
Wow had a really fun vibe to it
Um, though I loved the production design of it and the sunglasses everywhere. It was a lot of fun
Yeah, so the show had a max hedron motif and all that was basically thanks to tan. Um,
I would film the show in front of a green screen
and uh
I would
Write the whole copy and I would read the copy for the show
And I would upload my green screen video and he would edit it and put the backgrounds in and the sound effects and the
The logos and all that funny stuff. Uh, so big. Thanks to tan for for that
Space rug, we're out of time. I'm, sorry. That was quick. I hope I hope you can stick around for overtime
Uh, I can stick around for a little while. Okay, that'd be great
So the conversation will continue on channel 2600 on youtube at eight o'clock for anybody who wants to maybe even call in as well
And for those of you who are still looking for an autographed copy of space rogues book space rogue
How the hackers known as loft changed the world actually chris thomas is the author's name space rogue is the handle
please
Go to give to wbai.org
And become a bai buddy and email us at oth at 2600.com by eight o'clock
And if it's a tie, you know what we'll uh, we'll we'll pitch in and donate and get an extra book
so people, uh, don't do that and and not get a book, uh, but for those of you who are listening in the future or
Don't want to do it that way the book is available on amazon, uh
Everywhere else, uh, are there other everywhere else? Okay, wherever you get your books. There you go
And it's um, it's really such a great thing. I I really look forward to reading the rest of it myself
Uh, and we'll be continuing the conversation over on youtube
Um
Excellent. Um before we go. I uh, just want to say a quick a couple of words the hacker community
Very sadly has just had to say goodbye to uh,
Luminary among their ranks, uh, kelly lum who was known as a laurea
um passed away
um due to uh complications from an illness and uh
She was known by so many in this community. She was a regular presence at uh at conferences and everything and
Basically, nobody has a negative thing to say about her
She was a wonderful person very welcoming very helpful
And uh, we're going to close with a piece of music that she once tweeted about
Enjoying while complaining that she has terrible taste in music. So, uh, yes a laurea will be missed
Thank you, rob
We'll see you in two weeks
oth at 2600.com and on youtube
at eight o'clock channel 2600
Why don't we
Sit right here for half an hour i will speak of what a waste I am
Just to stay
Move on
That's right, we're dead and gone
We're taking back all the things that's said
We're taking back all the things that's said
You are the substance
You're the substance
And I swear on you
We walk alone
We walk alone
We walk alone
We walk alone
We walk alone
Back home
Alone
Back home
You're almost gone, almost gone I still see your shadow
So don't you dare to be afraid I'll never hear your voice again
I remember your presence
I hope to God you come down
I hope to God you feel this now
I hope to God you come down
I hope to God you feel this now
I know there must be someone out of here
That God himself will be waiting to hear
And welcome everybody on YouTube for off-the-hook overtime
Emmanuel's here Kyle. I think you made it as well. Yes. I'm here. Sounds like our friends in Skype land Rob Gila
Good evening. Yes and space road gear with us as well. I'm still here. I was okay
I keep calling you space rogue and that Chris that's absolutely fine because that's how I know you and that's that's who I am
Yeah, that's that's exactly who you are that that that handle you picked in a few minutes. That's stuck with you
There's no getting rid of it now during during the break Kyle was telling me some some history of his own
You want to share this? Well, I I happened upon the lofts website
When I was very young in like middle school just out of curiosity and some of the news stories
I no doubt from perhaps listening to the radio or
Osmosis who knows how but happened upon the lofts website and one thing I remember from it
I don't know if this is actually something that existed there or if I just imagined it
but the loft I
That was I don't think it was video, but it was pre
Streaming and it was some kind of image every couple of minutes or something
and I remember that that was really magical because there was no such thing as I was
Fascinated with online like radio real real audio. Of course the the radio shows that again
2600 was pretty ahead of their time
But how how ahead of the time was loft by just doing that?
Can you describe it a little bit because we had a pre stream at Hope 2020 and it was sort of inspired by that
Like we did a little bit of a video feed
Before the event in anticipation and it was very much from seeing that in my early days
So that's that's how loft changed the world right there for me
Loft I was an interesting thing. We had a video capture card
I think it was in like a Mac to or something like one of those big old
Huge old Macs on a new bus card awesome. We had a video camera from a fleet from the flea market in Boston
We have the MIT ham radio flea market. We find all kinds of junk there
so we had an old video camera and we had this video capture card and the software we had would grab a
capture off the video like every
Three seconds or something every two seconds. So it wasn't actually streaming but it would update the
The picture every now and then, you know constantly but and if you were lucky you would see one of us walking in front of
The camera like it wasn't actually pointed at anybody's desks not or anything
but you know
we'd look at the web traffic and the the traffic that was coming into our network and be like
Pretty popular thing this loft died. It has a static image on it. Basically, right? It's just updating every second of the same
Area in the loft but a lot of people visited the loft
I I guess trying to hope hopefully catch a a glimpse of us walking by or something
I don't know if anybody ever did but it was there and that's what it was
How how does a kid in middle school find out about the loft? I I don't know
That's what I that's what happens. You know, you start reading about these things you hear about groups. I don't know search engines
I don't honestly remember how but I was on that site and very much
I think the mystery it just captivated me and and
And just was inspiring that people were out there and it was kind of like something that's popular now
I guess be real or whatever like seeing a clip of something or like the very streaming site
We're on now with YouTube, but it was so early on and and digital
Photos were just emerging. So having this sense that something through the internet was going on
Live like it was so new and it felt
Like just another one of the things you did getting online to realize
This information age that was out there and the magic of technology new technology. We see that today with chat GPT
All kinds of fun toys to play with and abuse in one way or another but that's that's one I had forgotten about
Thanks for sharing. I never got to know more about it, but I didn't know and I'm I'm thrilled to hear that it was popular
Yeah, I remember this too and this was an era like that very early
Era of online webcams where I I remember there was one famous one
That was just like the coffee machine in I think I might see somewhere and there was another one
There were ones pointed at aquariums and somebody pointed one at like some rotting meat and it was just like watch this meat rot
and
And and the left eye was another one and if you were part of hacker culture back then and you knew who the left were
You're like I want to see what's going on on their webcam
Didn't they just have a rotting meat cam and in in the uk where one of the prime ministers was going to resign cabbage
Cabbage of totally different. All right
But a little bit a little bit of trivia for you for loft. I uh,
the video card that we used in that mac2 was actually the same video card that was used to process the
Uh video or the the pictures for people that got went to the first hope conference
That's right. Yeah, I remember that
I remember that
1994, uh, you guys you guys came down and you were running the the um, the id
System that we were going to use until we realized that each id took what about three minutes to print
Forever and we had a thousand people waiting for for ids. They were so patient
They really were patient but it turned into us basically having to take cash from people
I think it was robbed from amsterdam was walking around with a big bag of cash and we were just taking people out there
Were that they paid and then we just gave them some piece of paper that said yeah, this is the ticket
Or like I think it was a string or something
It was it was amazing. Uh, by the way, it was the same video card. Awesome
That video card is uh, I hope it's enshrined somewhere
But in 1997 at beyond hope the second conference you guys had a had a panel. Um, it was uh,
You was mudge, uh, brian at livian kingpin
Um stefan, uh weld pond and john tan I believe according to this summary here
and for about an hour you just talked about all kinds of projects and accomplishments and
It was just you saw how much fun it was. You saw how much fun you guys were having
This was one year before the congressional testimony
And um, it was it was it was uh contagious your enthusiasm
Well, thanks. That was a that was kind of a big moment for me. Um, it was really the first time I had been around
Out in public as loft around people that knew kind of what loft was
Uh, and people were coming up to me. It's like oh you're loft. Oh, you're space rogue and i'm like so and something clicked like
Okay loft is kind of just more than just some random website where we're kind of messing around
Uh, and it just sort of and the fact if you remember you had we had a live video feed from that hope conference
in new york
to
Chaos in germany, actually it was to um, um
Hack, what was it called hip hacking in progress in the net in the netherlands netherlands and it was overseas. It was in europe
It was all I remember. Yeah
We couldn't wait that this was to save our lives. We couldn't establish a connection with them
It's kind of similar to our most recent conference where we tried the same thing
With another conference in in the netherlands and we couldn't connect with them either for some reason
but it was just the fact that it was up for a little bit like for a few minutes and it was just uh,
That was kind of a an eye-opening moment for me about just everything in general and that that conference was really
Cemented in my memory. I write about it in the book a little bit
um
and we have all of us on the stage and we're kind of all talking and i'm like
All these people are sitting here listening to us talk about nonsense with what it felt like to me
Um, so it was just really a big important event in my my life
As as it was for for all of us in attendance and uh, you can see that in fact on the very channel that people
Are on right now channel 2600. There's another section where uh, there's early hope conferences
Just go to beyond hope look for the loft talk and you can see the whole thing. It's it's really fascinating to watch
I was looking at it a little bit earlier. Um now the space road tell us something about the whacked mac archives
What's that all about whacked mac archive? So yeah, that was another one of my little projects that I put together. Um
So before the internet, uh
I would dial around to various bulletin board systems and I was a mac user and I would basically download hacking utilities
You know things like I don't know
uh war dialers and and credit card number checkers and
um
You know, whatever doodads that you really couldn't find and most shareware sites
Uh, and I had a pretty decent collection of of various hacking utilities little small mac programs
Uh, and so when the loft had this permanent internet access, uh, it was dial up still it was 57
K dial up. It wasn't super fast or anything at the start, but I was like, you know
I'm gonna share all this with everybody else
And so I started a little ftp site called the whack mac archives
And I built a little website to go with it that cataloged all the all the different files that we had
uh, and
It was very popular. Uh
So much so that it would saturate our little dial up line with people trying to get the files and download them all
And so unbeknownst to me, uh, weld and the other folks in the loft
Created a script that they would run on the main loft box
Up whacked down whacked so when they would come in to use the the the internet and it was saturated with people downloading whack mac
Archives, they'd be like down whacked then they'd do their work or whatever and when they'd leave they'd type up whacked and and it
Would come back online. Well, a lot of times they would forget to put type up whacked
And so sometimes it would be down for days and I had no idea what was going on and I would
I would come into the loft and I checked the site and i'm like, oh, yeah, everything's still working
But there's nobody on I wonder why nobody's on I guess it's not that popular
uh, and it was like months would go by before I realized what was going on with this up whack down whack thing and
We all got a good laugh out of this. Wow, that that's that's really awesome. Um,
you've also been involved in um, uh,
Speaking out about voting machines security and that kind of thing. What tell us about that?
uh, yeah, so i've i've uh
Back before it got to be a super political issue
Uh, I did a little bit of research and speaking and and uh press releases stuff about uh,
voting machines and the insecurity of electronic voting, uh, and uh,
The the risks and hazards to our democracy that that take place by by a lot of having a lot of those machines
um for me though, I think that the
the rhetoric got to be extremely strong and uh, so I kind of stepped back from
being a public figure in that area because it was just
Uh became too much of a charged atmosphere and uh, the rhetoric on both sides became very very
Thick if you will, um, but yeah, it's still a problem. It's still an issue
It's not a solved problem by any means, uh, and it's still something we need to watch out for
interesting
uh
i'm just going through the list of uh of various things that
Either you or loft have been involved in and one thing that got my attention was uh pogsack, dakota
Oh, yeah, so that that's for those that don't know that's a paging, uh software so you guys were able to decode
um a pager traffic
Yeah, so poxag or post I forget what it stands for p-o-c-s-a-g poxag
Um, anyway, it's it's as you said it's pager traffic, uh for those of you remember that beepers that would you know, you'd beep
Uh, and the really high-end beepers would have a small little digital display that you could put a message into
Uh, and that gets sent over the air over the radio waves in the clear
Uh, and so the protocol is very well known. It's easily, uh
Captured over the air and it's easily, uh transcribed back into regular text
And so, uh kingpin actually designed a small little circuit that would do this
Uh, and uh, we we put the circuit, uh, we got some circuit boards made
We built the circuits
Soldered them together and put them inside of a db25
Uh connector, uh, which is for those of you i'm familiar
It's basically a big wide printer cable that has the end of it
Uh, and so you could then plug that into the back of your pc
Run a piece of software and capture all this pager traffic and just read all the pages that everybody's sending back and forth
to each other
I mean, you really don't have any idea of who sent what to who but it was kind of interesting to see anyway
uh, all kinds of weird stuff that you would uh,
Get over the airs over the radio waves via pagers
Wow anything you remember
Uh, not specifically a lot of you know, I love yous or you know
I'm coming home on the way and a lot of 9-1-1, you know people dialing 9-1-1 in the number
Meaning oh, it's an emergency call home right away, you know that sort of thing. Uh,
But it it's interesting to look at for a little while. It kind of for me it lost its interest pretty quickly
Well, it's funny. I just remember having a pager and of course back then that was pre-cell phone
Uh, and if you wanted to call somebody you'd say you were driving
You'd have to pull over to the side of the road and find a pay phone and call them that way
uh, and I remember just I was um
Communicating with a friend of mine. I did this with several people actually and it was one way obviously
But you know, I didn't have a text pager
I had just a numeric pager, but we would send text messages by sending the equivalent, uh numerical touch tone
Key, so if I wanted to uh, you know say hello, I would type four three
Uh, was it five five six would spell out hello on a touchtone phone, but i'd have to figure it out
There's no way to figure it out
So i'd be driving in in my car in my head
Uh looking at the touchtone pad saying what could this person have meant and then figuring it out and it made the time go by
but it was it was those initial steps into into that little bit of technology and it was uh,
It was it was a bit of fun
Well, it's interesting. I mean sometimes people or even businesses would have codes, you know, okay
You know five through seven means this or whatever, right?
Uh, and then you would be able to just text those numbers back and forth and be able to communicate that way
Through a certain series of numbers. Wow. That was amazing reminds me also. Um,
We had mudge on the show once um back at I think in the 90s. In fact, I think it was 1998
um, and somehow our connection got lost where the voice part got lost and we actually started communicating by
I think pressing keys
And we we both realized that we could still hear each other
We just couldn't hear our voices and we were starting to communicate that way
So it's it's just these great hacker adventures that we somehow always get thrust into
Uh, and that's that's the magic that exists to this day
Um, and on that subject, what do you have to say to people of today?
Maybe people were just starting out in the hacker world who don't have the same things that we had back in the 90s
They have far more sophisticated tools now
A lot of people say oh hacking is just not the same the spirit's not the same. What do you think about that?
Uh, I mean the the spirit's there the the hacking is still there
Uh, it's different, right? It's not the same tech. I'd actually say it's easier
I mean you got google you got all the answers right there in front of you
Uh, just type them enter your query. You got chat gpt to find stuff for you. Uh, you have much more sophisticated technology
Uh raspberry pies raspberry pi w's well when you can get them, right? There's kind of a shortage right now
Uh, but there's still dumpsters
Dumpsters are still out there
There's flea markets. I remember going trashing with you guys in boston
It was so much fun just finding all kinds of things and and then the fleas afterwards the flea markets
The mit do they still go on? Yeah, the flea markets the third sunday of every month at the mit on vassar street
Uh, you just in the summer you just did people show up and sell whatever junk they have
Uh, or you go and buy more junk we went there with the 2600 van once and it was a lot of fun
And yeah, I don't know why we didn't do that again
Well, they're still there. They're waiting for you and we still have the van. So so maybe maybe I think a trip is due
Yeah, absolutely
We have some junk actually we could bring have you ever played with a flipper zero?
I have not i've read a lot about it so far. But that's yeah speaking of uh, you know technology and hacking it's a
Pretty amazing piece of kit that you can get for inexpensive money and do some really really neat tricks with
Mm-hmm. Yeah a lot of exploring to do that. We're hoping to do that. Uh, the first hack is getting one
They're very hard to get your hands on but uh, they they are in fact
I think brazil just outlawed them because they they're afraid of what they can do
Uh for those who don't know they're uh, how would you describe them?
It is like a electronic multi-tool
and it it is um designed to test and to
Uh log and do a myriad of different things for very specific
protocols typically things used for like access control, but it also goes into
um different radio frequency bands like near
uh field communication nfc as people might understand it and then um
That kind of goes into things. Um, if you imagine, uh, like contactless payment and of course, uh, it has
Uh gpio, uh, someone someone told me they could steal my car with one. Is that true?
I i'm not gonna say that it's that it's for that
But it could definitely tell you a lot about how your car works. I think
Wow, and and someone else said you could just wave it over your credit card and it'll capture that somehow
I think it can see credit cards. Yeah, of course
I can just take a picture of the credit card too and get the same information, but whatever
but there's a lot of these types of tools much like
Uh space space hard was talking about like raspberry pi. Um, uh, the microcontrollers the just the uh kits
And breakout and uh tools that you can assemble
um, they're great fun little exercises building little computers or or building, um,
Onto these kinds of multi-tools
And um, so we're really excited about what people get into and and other uh stuff like this space
Rogue, did you ever make it to a maker fair before they stopped having them?
No, I probably have the the makings of a maker fair here in my office
But I never actually made it to an actual maker fair
Uh, I mean i've got the 3d printer and the soldering iron not much more you need I guess
um, I do make a lot of stuff that never ever sees the light of day, but I mean
There are opportunities abound for for anyone who wants to sort of, you know
Get into it and to think that the golden age of hacking is over as I think is, you know, a lot of poppycock
Yeah, I agree with that but the thing is the maker fairs the ones that I saw in in queens in new york city
um, they they basically illustrated that really well because you just had thousands of people tens of thousands of people showing up all
interested in technology and all
willing to learn
Uh not filled with preconceived notions as to what hacking was about the people who ran the maker fairs certainly got it
And it was just it was incredible to see just an endless number of kids just being enthusiastic
about learning technology
and it was a real shame when they when they uh,
Stopped having those and I hope they come back someday because that really is the spirit
The hacker spirit was right there in those in those maker fairs
Yeah, they didn't use the hacker evil hacker word
Uh, and so people weren't scared away from it. Well, they they when we were there they used it for us
They said, you know, these are hackers and it was it was used in the right way
Uh, but I mean, you know as far as uh, um calling themselves makers, that's perfectly fine
uh, there's different ways of um of describing the enthusiasm that people have and and uh,
There was a lot of crossover. They were learning to solder, uh tents where people would would spend hours learning how to solder
And and just uh cracking security and things like that lock picking was a big deal there
So I hope it returns someday. I really do and I hope we see more
hacker
Events, have you uh continue going to hacker conferences?
Yeah, I still go to as many conferences as I can. Uh last couple years have been difficult
But I have been able to still participate in schmoo con which is fairly
Nearby for me in dc
Uh besides philly. I'm now in philadelphia. I've moved out of boston. So i'm down in philadelphia now
Uh, so I try to do besides philly when I can
besides delaware
Uh, I haven't made it up to new york as much as I would like
Um, but I know new york has a couple of good conferences as well. Yes, we we've heard of one called hope
And oh, yes, there's hope. Yes. We're at saint john's university now. So that's completely
They tore down the old venue. Yeah, they that was the only way to get us out of there
and uh
But now we're in a university setting instead of a hotel setting and it's completely different
It's basically they're a lot more open to what hackers are all about and uh, and things work too
Imagine that it's always good technology that works
Wow, um getting back to congress 20 years afterwards you guys reassembled you tell us something about that
So yeah, the 20th anniversary, uh, which is five years ago. We had ended up doing two events
Uh one we had a panel at defcon that year
Uh where we got I think five of us on stage of seven, which is uh, pretty good
uh, and we had a great moderator, uh, and
It was very well attended and a lot of people asked some great questions and uh, I think it was a
a great
Uh thing to get us sort of all together again, which hadn't really happened
Uh, the other event that we did we actually went back to washington dc
Uh, it wasn't congress, uh, but it was uh in the capitol building, uh in one of the senate office buildings
Uh, and we did a q a and talked about the history and and where we are today versus where we were then
And we had myself mudge weld and kingpin, uh with katie massaurus moderating
Uh, and so, uh that went very well as well
I think there's video of that online somewhere as well as the defcon
Uh talk as well, which is probably on somebody's youtube channel someplace
And of course your original testimony in 1998. I saw that on kingpin's youtube page
Yes, that's that's it
Hey, uh, we're gonna open up uh phone lines if people want to call in, uh 802-321-4225
Ask a couple questions of space rogue, please. Let's try to keep it on topic and uh, go ahead gila
I do have a question before our inevitable first caller calls
um about the
uh
Senate hearing because rob did find that picture of you guys all at the table, which is fantastic
And my question is did you get to keep the name plates? Oh
uh
I don't think so
Uh, yeah, because they are actually engraved name plates plastic name plates that somebody somewhere in the capitol building was tasked to make
Uh and actually engrave them, but I don't have mine
I don't know if anybody else has theirs
But it's interesting that you bring up the picture. There's a little bit of a story about that
Uh for those that don't know there's a famous picture of us all sitting at the table
There's seven of us there, uh, and we refer to it as the loft supper, uh photo
Um because mudge is in the middle with the long hair
Wow, and we're all kind of flanking him on the sides and I wanted to use that photo on the cover of the book
Uh, and but it's a copyrighted photo
of course
I didn't take the photo and I go to the
The the stock photo place and I look up the price for using on a cover and it's like fifteen hundred dollars
I'm like, I ain't gonna fuck i'm not spending that kind of money
But I tell my I tell my book designer i'm like look this is my idea for the cover
But I can't use this photo. I don't know if you have any other ideas
And she's like, you know, I can just make a line art drawing of the photo and then you're fine
It's an original work. I'm like really?
Yeah, go ahead. So that's why there's a line art drawing of the photo on the cover instead of the actual
photo
Wow, that that's pretty amazing, you know, um, especially you mentioned, um the testimony that I had
Whatever year that was that there was video i've never even known that there was video of that
So if that it really exists, please let me know and if you can I will look for it again
I know I swear I saw it because you were wearing a uh, american flag bandana I was
Yes, does that sound like me? Wow? Okay
To congress I did that
Yes, I had a t-shirt a bandana
Okay, it wasn't a suit. I know that. Okay, that's true. I'll look for the video again
I I'm sure I I know i've seen it. I just don't know where it is
Uh-huh, because there's this thing called the mandela effect, you know where people swear they were somewhere
That people think mandela died like in the 90s when actually he died recently
But a lot of people think that it's really kind of weird and I didn't think there were any cameras in that room
So i'd love to maybe maybe you know, i'm maybe it is the mandela effect
It sounds interesting whatever whatever it was. All right. I'll I will look for it for you. Okay, are we gonna take this call?
I I should warn you. Uh, some of our callers have a tendency to
Wander off topic and hopefully that's not the case here. Yeah, some of them like to be first too. Okay
um
Good evening. You're on off the hook over time
Yes, emmanuel. Let me just stop you right there. Hold on a second
And let me tell a special this is rebel who is always the first caller has been since the 1990s
So I guess it's appropriate that he's the first caller now rebel if I might ask you to please try and keep things on topic
Yeah, I remember I remember hearing about the lost. I remember, you know, you know seeing I never really were
Uh went to their site or anything, but I did I haven't heard of them
But anyway, being that you're talking to people from the 90s remember computed i'm going to ask this question to the lost people
remember computed terminals like um
you know, you know computed like colleges had them and like their libraries and uh,
Like different entities had you know, I remember in college they had digital equipment corporation computer mainframes and they had vt
Was it 230 or vt 220s is what I used
220 I think we had the later version
But um, have you ever heard of a computer company called informer? They're from like the 70. I think they're from like 79 or
I am not familiar with informer. I used vt
110s vt 220s from deck and weiss terminals and I don't remember the model numbers of the weiss
I think the informals are the precursor to that. They were they were they were they were from california
But uh, yeah, I think they went out of business in the 90s. Yeah, i'm not familiar with them at all
Um, well, all right now, let me um mention that um, uh,
Remember in the 90s, we never heard commercials in supermarkets
Um, uh, yeah, we had muzak, uh in supermarkets, I don't remember
I don't remember hearing commercial. I don't think I have commercials in my supermarket today
But i'm sure some supermarkets do you have announcements you have announcements, yeah, like, you know breakage in aisle three
That's sort of like a commercial I guess. Well, yeah, but that's not a commercial but when you hear the commercials on tv
You now hear them in the supermarket
You know what?
Well, there's commercials everywhere. They're in movie theaters now, too. So yeah, that's uh, I was in a restaurant and I heard commercials
Really?
Okay, that's kind of weird if you're actually at a table and you're hearing commercials
I I would are you sure somebody wasn't playing something?
I don't you can always put in your headphones and listen to your iphone and and listen to off the hook on a podcast
That's what he does. He does that
Yeah, well, let me let me demonstrate them the two two five
Let me uh, remember, uh when I was told I was going to demonstrate what two two five nine nine zero one
Didn't we ask you not to all right? You know what? Go ahead. Please do it quickly. Let me connect you one moment
This is what happens. This is we have no control
And he puts us on hold
Although your call cannot be completed to the number you dialed I can
Help you find similar businesses in the area for no additional charge. I'm searching now. That's what two two five nine nine zero one does now
But why did you call that number
because
Two two five nine nine zero one used to tell you what central office it is. Okay now it it
It tries to connect you with similar businesses, but what business were you looking for to start with?
I wasn't looking for a business. So all right. What does it connect you to?
It didn't get it. Well, all right. Well, it's two two five the bayside queen central office has two two five two two nine
Four two eight and all but if it called two two nine nine nine zero one it's big
Welcome to the bayside central office. Okay, like like they used to say
All right. So my question to you then is does it it doesn't give you any information just says that
it says that but um, but it says
Um, it says
It does connect you with it doesn't connect you with anything. But let's let's just hear it again
Yeah, but rebel what i'm trying to tell you is I think what you're calling is just the recording like they used to be
All kinds of numbers you'd call and one would say please insert 25 cents
It didn't actually want you to insert 25 cents, but that's that's the number they kept that recording at for some reason
So I think that's what you're but that's not a phone company recording. It doesn't sound like a phone company recording
I'm, not saying it belongs to the phone company. It belongs to somebody and they're just keeping that recording there
It doesn't actually do anything
Maybe because 9901. I don't know i've i've called uh, uh spacework for in case you don't know a 9901 suffix in new york
Oftentimes identifies the central office of the phone company and tells you what other exchanges are linked to that particular exchange
Uh, but lately i've noticed that 9901 is used for almost anything
In fact, i've even called people at 9901. So it's not necessarily what it used to be
Just like well, I would assume they would it was historically for phone company workers to figure out what exchange went to one co
But phone company workers don't need that number anymore because they can just look it up so they don't need to call
So what else you're going to use the number for if the phone company doesn't need it?
Yeah, they're just going to give it out. They just repurpose it to something else. It's a good sounding number
997
997 used to be all busy 9971 used to be fast busy 9979 was a sweep tone. There were all kinds of cool numbers
And it's all digital now. So the phone company workers don't need those numbers anymore. That's true
That's true down to like quality of service unless like they're they could do with uh instruments and so forth
They're less reliant on on communicating rebel. What else you got and then we're going to move on
Then the 917 exchange area code used to be just for like cellular phones and
Now it's now it's you know, 718 could be a cell phone 917 could be
I've had 212 cell phone numbers. Yeah
Anything is possible area codes don't mean anything anymore
It's sad because I I like being able to identify where things are coming from but that's just uh, a decision that was made
Okay, hold on for long distance
Hold on for long distance
You know, they don't even do that anymore because there is no long distance
Everything's local. Yeah, but no no there is but uh, when you ask the 18th the uh, the nine at the uh,
What do they call them? You don't even know the name of the phone company
Verizon, can you ask the zero operator for long distance? She said
Yeah, you'll have to call information to find out your long distance. They used to connect you with the one distance carrying
Anymore
What's crazy is that I still get bell atlantic recordings sometimes like if I if I get if I get a busy, uh signal and
It wants me to uh use their service where it calls me back. It says bell atlantic will call you back and
It still says that and that's what two phone companies ago. They lost track of the recording I guess
But you can find things like that
Yeah, when you call information there's may I have information and she said oh you'll have to dial 411
They don't even connect you with things anymore
Unless you've asked to be connected with a phone number sign of our times, which is not connected anymore
Um lost people lost people. Do you remember when zero operators used to do things like that?
But anyway, do you know anything about tops how tops works like not not modern ones now?
But no, no, I mean everything's digital but i'm talking about everything's digital. Yeah. Yeah
Like remember gsps and then then they had terminals and all this
It was a pleasure as always, uh, please stay in touch we're going to open up the phone lines for more people and um, okay
and um
Take care. See you next time. Okay. All right
802-321-4225. That's 802-321-hack
We have space rogue here from the loft. It's still technically from the loft not formally of the loft
Yeah, it's the law
The loft is former not me. Uh-huh
I'm, but you guys existed before hacker spaces as a concept existed
Uh, pretty much we were one of the very first if not the first hacker space. Yeah, absolutely
Yeah, I I remember um at the time I think there was new hack city in boston
There was new hack city. There was sin house. There was a lot of different
Uh houses where people kind of lived and were kind of hacker-ish
Uh, but I wouldn't call them hacker spaces
I think there was a difference there between a shared livings quarters and what a hacker space is, right?
But there was you know a lot of crossover, too
Well, it just it was an amazing environment, uh, it was unique nobody else had that I think it just inspired so many other people
To try something similar
uh, are you aware of anything like this in boston now or um, there there is a a couple of uh,
hacker spaces in boston now, I don't know if they really want their name mentioned in public, but uh,
Uh, they do exist. Some of the old folks are there and some new folks, um in in at least two different
Organizations I know of uh in boston. I'm sure there are some there's one here in philadelphia called hive 76 and there's one called
the hacktory
Um, which are sort of hacker slash maker spaces, uh, and i'm sure there are ones in other cities as well
Wow
And other countries all around the world. Yes. Have you have you guys had much?
contact with international
hacker community
We did, uh, you know as loft, uh, there was uh access for all out of the netherlands and of course chaos in europe
uh, and
There was goroa hacker club in brazil, I think I'm going to get these countries wrong. I'm, sorry
Um, and a couple other ones scattered around the world, but uh since then not as much
Uh recently mostly because i've been sort of out of touch as opposed to them not existing
Uh
All right, 802-321-4225 any calls carl
Uh, no lines are open lines are wide open
Okay, operators are standing by. All right
sometimes sometimes we have to beg for calls just for people to uh call in and uh
Ask questions. Well, there's a little delay after you give the and there's also a delay. Um
but now uh to get back to the um, the reunion, uh, um
Meeting and uh in the congressional bill. It wasn't a a congress thing. It was
Um something that happened in washington dc
Yeah, I forget the name of the group, uh that sponsored it like the cyber caucus or something
Congressional internet caucus academy. There you go and the senate cyber security caucus. It's great to have notes in front of you
I've never heard of those before. Wow, that's amazing
Yeah, so they sponsored it. Uh, they got a room, uh in the in the in one of the office buildings and uh
Mudge and I and weld and kingpin were there
Uh, we had the lovely katie masuris who moderated for us and we had a room of maybe 50 75 people
It was also filmed. It's up on youtube
Um, I don't think it's as as interesting as the original testimony personally
but uh, we both had a we all had a few things to say about
Uh, then and how things had progressed into to now or now of five years ago
Um for and that's what we did for the 20th anniversary
Well, one thing that mudge said that really struck me was he was talking about the computer fraud and abuse act
Uh saying how it was used selectively. It's used unevenly
Uh saying that the anti-circumvention provisions of the digital millennium copyright act
Which is intended to stop digital intellectual property infringement also suppresses security research
And kingpin, uh chimed in we live in a very litigious society
Uh, the risk of lawsuits has made security research in some ways, uh riskier than it was in 1998 when every member of loft
Felt compelled to testify under their hacker handles instead of their real names
He said now that I have kids and I don't want to go to jail. I'm very nervous
and I think that that uh, that kind of uh is a feeling many people have because of
all these um, um laws and rules that are in effect now
Made by people who don't necessarily understand the technology. They're regulating a lot of good things are are quelled
absolutely, uh, I mean
you can look at numerous cases under the cfaa where uh,
People were threatened with large sentences of for ostensibly
very minor crimes
dmca is another sledgehammer that's used uh to great effect by those that uh, hold the copyright and
To against those who don't uh, and so and a lot of these cases
sometimes these laws are tweaked over time cfaa is one of those that's had a lot of
Minor changes to it over the years and so it's not as bad as it was
uh, but uh the cfaa specifically, uh is because of the guidance out of the doj that says, you know
We can selectively prosecute this or that or we should not look at this so strongly or we look at this stronger
But that changes with every administration, uh, or even less
so those guidance is uh can be
Come down again as different guidance and the cfaa becomes a much bigger threat than it is right now today
uh, and so
There's still a lot of effort underway to actually change the wording
Of the laws so that they become a little bit more clear and not as ambiguous as they currently are
because would you be able to say like the fall on is that there are gaps then for periods when
different types of activities for for security and and
um
people
Looking into this stuff. They they periods where people were more reluctant and sort of ebbs and flows then
Wouldn't it have that kind of impact in a commercial scenario?
yeah, there is an ebb and flow to the laws absolutely, um because of the
Again because of the ambiguity in the wording and the selectiveness in the prosecutions
Uh, and who can and cannot take advantage of some of those laws
Uh, and so because we have the department of justice coming down and saying, okay, we're not going to look at cfaa violations this strongly this year
Uh next year they may come down and say okay
We're really going to step on on on this aspect of the law and really prosecute this section
Unfortunately, the laws are written these particular laws, especially
I mean the cfaa was originally written in 1986
It's been I think it actually may be even older than that
Um
And it has been modified since then there has been tweaks to it, but it's still a lot of terms are not uh,
Defined very well unauthorized access. What actually is authorized if I visit a web page have I been?
Authorized, uh, or do I need specific permission from the company to visit their web page?
That isn't really defined in the law and it isn't defined anywhere else. What is an access control device?
Uh, i'm sure
Well, I won't go there. Uh, so those are you know where I was going to go
Yes, you know being in philly and all that. But anyway, so those are parts of the law that are not uh,
adequately defined, uh, and so those definitions can
Be at the whim of the prosecutor to figure out
What's going to happen there?
um, so
you know, this is one of the reasons why i'm sort of involved in policy and try to meet with lawmakers and educate them and
And and talk to them and sort of say this is what's happening out here on my side of the world
Uh with these laws and and why we need to make some changes or modify the wording in them
We have a phone call. Yeah, we do and good evening. You're on off the cover time
Hi there guys. Hey, how's it going?
And and the one lady
It's good to talk to you, this is johnny fusion again. Oh, hey, how you doing welcome?
Well, i've been better i'm in the hospital, but you know i'm tuning in
Oh, i'm sorry to hear that
Yeah, it's been a rough month I caught covid at the beginning of the month recovered from that now I got the neurovirus
Oh boy
Well, yeah, well, you know because I am on those transplant meds i'm immunocompromised
So it's really easy for me to catch stuff
and
Yeah
And sometimes hospitals are are bad places for that too, uh, hopefully you're well in a good one
I'm still yeah, i'm still seeing in a nursing facility and that's probably where I pick these things up
I see
Well, you sound good. If that's any any consolation
Well, i'm a bit better today, you know, but i'm here to talk about the loft
And space rogues I did buy the book during the break. I mean the radio. Thank you
Off the hook
Thank you, you know, I got you know, I have my kindle with me here in the hospital
And so I just went on went on amazon and bought the ebook and i'm looking forward to reading that
As I have a lot of time on my hands as you can imagine
I've been following the loft for a long time
You know
When they testified before congress
I thought that was amazing
You know, I actually re-watched the whole testimony
um just a few months ago
and um
It was really, you know, it was a watershed moment for
Hackerdom and just basically how clueless
government is with tech, you know kind of like uh
What I said in my last call with when I was talking with the guy from the eff
About just
How behind people in government in the legislature and in the judiciary especially
are behind on
Just the tech scene and the realities of what tech is
Well, I like to think that they're catching up sometimes, uh, and then of course technology takes another giant leap forward
Uh, so it's going to take a while think for for example, as you mentioned at the beginning of the show chat gpt
How are we going to handle these chatbots? Right? What's the legal ramifications of these chatbots?
And what's what's ethical and what's not right?
And so those are the things that we need to look at and try to decide on and and educate lawmakers on now
So that when they go to write the laws and they will because that's what they do
Uh that they write them correctly and appropriately so that they're they actually are effective laws that go into the future
We now have issues that we have with some of the older laws
Yeah, actually I addressed this in an upcoming article that's going to be published in the magazine
I actually oh great acceptance email in the emergency department
Well, they they ran they they gave it to you
I didn't know. No, I was checking my email on my phone and I and I got and I got the email
Oh, I thought it was like a telegram. They ran it through
Sir, you must see this
Because we we do that sometimes
No, but yeah, you know and i'm very grateful for for you publish me publishing me again
This will be my uh fifth article for the magazine
Well, we're the ones who are grateful for people who write because believe it or not
It's a rarity these days and I I just i'm afraid that people are going to use these artificial intelligence
Applications as crutches and never learn how to write. So it's it's always good when people actually take the time
Well, i've been writing a long time, you know, and I take pride in my craft and that's what the article is about
About not being replaced by ai
Because every human being is unique. It has a unique voice
And can't really be replaced because human beings aren't really replaceable or interchangeable
Yes, well said well said any any other questions, uh for space rug
yeah, um
I remember I think it was
Oh, well time is wonky during the pandemic, but sometime during the pandemic
Didn't uh, lost crack go open source
Yeah, loft crack has had a long and storied history
I'm, not sure i'm the best person to tell the loft crack story, but i'll try to give you a brief synopsis
Uh the current status I believe it is open source
um
So loft crack was a product that loft had
Which audited windows nt passwords for those that aren't familiar with it back in?
1997
When it first came out, uh, and it's gone through several iterations and versions over the years, uh at stake
When at stake bought loft they didn't really know what to do with loft crack again
That didn't fit in their business model either
uh, so they kind of
They made it they had to rechange the name from loft crack to lc
uh lc5
I think was the release version and then when semantic bought, uh at stake
They didn't know what to do with it all and they shelved it somehow mudge and weld and dildog
Got loft crack back from semantic and re-released the product
And then they realized it's too much work for us to do. We got day jobs
We can't really keep up with this anymore. And so they
Gave or sold or licensed the product to another company
And they kind of just let it flounder
For a couple of years and so weld and mudge and dildog were like
I don't know what you're doing over there with this thing, but we're taking it back
And so they somehow got it back from this other company and then released it as open source
And so now loft crack is open source, uh, and anybody can use it for free
Uh, and i'm not sure the website to point you to maybe loftcrack.com. Uh, you can google it i'm sure
And it's l0phd. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, i'd just say uh being open source
Wouldn't that uh also mean that anyone can develop it themselves?
Yes in addition
I'm, not sure what the license it was released under
It's not my project but sure it still exists
It's still out there and you can go find it and do what you will with it. It's awesome
It's under a combination. It's i'm sorry to jump in but it's under a combination of licenses all open source
Okay, great. It's just awesome that they care enough about it to keep looking after making sure it's being treated with the respect it deserves
Yeah, I mean they could have sold it off or whatever the deal was they made with this other company
And I just totally forgot about it
but it was important to make sure that it stayed alive and was useful and
Uh, it's really I think loft crack is a is another influential part of the loft story
In the fact that it was really one of the very first widely available windows, uh, nt password auditors
Uh, and it influenced a large number of other programs that came after it
Uh jack the ripper actually jack might have been first with the as a unix program
but the nt part was influenced by loft crack, so
Um, and then there's off crack without the l
Uh didn't know about that one
Yeah, it's off crack
There's a couple other ones too that were uh similarly named that are out there and when loft crack kind of went on hiatus
They kind of took over and now loft crack. I haven't really been keeping up. I don't really know
Um, but it's out there if you want it
Wow
Yeah, and I just I just want to thank the loft and you know for being pioneers
You talked about a little bit earlier before I called about being pioneers
in the hacker space
You know, uh a few years ago. I moved to a new community
And that was one of the first things like that. I was able to get plugged into
And build, you know, my social wellness in a new community was going to the local hacker space
You know, this was sonora, california
very small rural
Uh town in the foothills in the sierra nevadas
And they had the mother load maker lab
and you know, I met a group of friends and
I just was able to go there and hack, you know learned
3d prints and I started working with microcontrollers
and
got better at my linux skills and
And I think the genesis
Of all hacker spaces really began with the loft and because of the impact it had on my life
I'm, just really grateful for the genesis
of
just I mean, i'm sure it happened just organically, but
It was repeated and that model
Has repeated, you know, just kind of like as hackers do we take?
What works and we repeat it and we share it?
And we grow it
Well, thank you very much for the kind words and i'm glad that loft was there and was able to
Assist you in your journey
Uh, and and and further of your education and well-being, uh in social makeup
uh
you know, those are really impactful things to hear that that we sort of played a part in I don't know how to
Handle that people tell me that sometimes i'm like, you know, we were just a bunch of guys in a warehouse really
Uh, and and people tell me that the you know loft had a major impact on their life so
Um, thank you for that. I appreciate appreciate those words
Yes, thank you so much
for for all the words that that you uh share with us both on the radio in the magazine and uh, just uh in
appreciation of what we have in the hacker community because
It's it's unique. It's precious. It's it's something that's so worth preserving
Yeah, definitely and when i'm medically cleared to live independently again
after this transplant journey
You know, I plan to be going to the san francisco 2600 meetings
and finding another local, uh hacker maker space
You know, you know that you know and putting down roots close to my transplant center because when I get sick
I don't want to go to any other hospital. No, that's uh, you gotta take care of yourself. That's that's the important thing
It was great hearing from you and I I really hope next time we hear from you
You'll be in a much better place and um and thriving
Thank you emmanuel it was good to talk to you and talk to everyone and please keep writing doing well
Please keep writing. What's that? Keep writing. We need more more writers
Okay, i'll work on i'll get to work on my next article. Okay. Be well. Thanks for calling. Bye
Uh, pretty pretty awesome there
Um, you know while we were speaking with him I was just looking over um something on your wikipedia page just really jumped out at me
concerning a
2016 us government accountability office report
uh, this is about the nation's nuclear weapons and how
Uh, they're under the control of computers that rely on outdated eight-inch floppy disks
I remember seeing this on 60 minutes
And um, I I believe you argued that the older computers data storage systems programming languages and lack of internet connectivity
Actually makes it more difficult for them to be broken into effectively reducing
the vulnerability of the weapons control systems to hacking whereas most people would say oh my god, this is so outdated we
uh, we have to replace this with the most modern thing right now, and I think
You you saw for what it was as actually
Uh through through its um its antiquity
Uh, actually being a level of security that many systems today can't achieve
Security through obscurity sometimes it's referred to. Um, I think in that particular case, uh, the argument was that oh my god
It's old. We have to make it new like and that was it like that was the argument
Uh, and it would say yeah, we're talking about systems that were controlling nuclear weapons
We're talking about eight inch floppy drives like really old ancient stuff and
My argument is this stuff isn't connected to the internet like you would need physical access to it
Anyway, so as long as you have spare parts and a source of eight inch floppy disks and backups
Who cares how old it is? It works. Don't fix it, right?
uh, and so
You know if it was if this was an internet connected system, uh, if there was other
Uh, you know
Variables that we need to take into account then yeah, maybe upgrading it would would be wise but in this particular case
None of that really applied the fact that it was old didn't really matter it worked
So let it continue to work. Isn't that the answer to so many of our problems though?
Does everything have to be connected to the internet?
I actually got a gift of a connected rubik's cube today
really
It's actually kind of neat and I I am enjoying it immensely
But it's just the fact that I have a rubik's cube like the actual toy the rubik's cube has bluetooth in it
Uh is kind of amazing
I mean as a gimmick. Yeah, it's great. But um, you don't need your refrigerator to be on the internet. Do you I mean, uh,
No, I don't need my refrigerator
in fact, I do actually have a
Wi-fi enabled washing machine dryer and oven in my house
But none of them I have connected even though I have an iot network on my home network
I have not connected them to it because I don't need to
But what they're starting to do and i've noticed this the hard way is there are certain features that you cannot access unless it's
through the app
Uh, so I cannot for example, uh, there is a certain dryer setting on my dryer and I forget what the setting is
But every now and then I want to use it
Uh, I can't access it because it's it's only via the app
And I just like so I have to use some other setting on the dryers kind of frustrated
Does the app have to go through the internet or can the app connect directly?
uh
I'm assuming it well it has to go onto my it's not a local ad hoc network
So it has to go onto my network somehow. I don't know if it needs to phone home to the home servers
I hope not because i'm sure that company's not going to be here 30 years from now
They're not going to keep those servers around exactly. I hope you know, luckily my dryer will still be here
I don't know, but that's how they force you to upgrade and get new
equipment when your old equipment is
You know at 2600 we we drive machines into the ground we we use things for 10 20 years
And you know if they're not if they're not being used for the um, uh, the the uh, the most urgent stuff
They're being used for something. Yeah, we sorry
just to add a fine detail like we have
machines that
we've replaced capacitors on the
On the motherboards themselves and then put the machine back in
With new power supplies or new drives and the same old os if we want it offline or whatever
Yep, go right back out there to the front line. That's my toothbrush is 15 years old and i've replaced the battery four times
Awesome. Wow. Wow. Okay. Yeah
because the new toothbrush the new the new ones have like some pressure sensitive thing in it to protect your gums or something and it's
Like I don't want that but you can't turn it off and it's there and i'm like
So that for I bought the new one I hated it so i'm like, you know
I'm, just gonna take my old one apart and put a new battery in it
And so i've done that four times now the toothbrush is from like, you know, it's 15 years old at least if not older
uh, and
I had to actually buy older toothbrushes off ebay to get spare parts to fix this one toothbrush
I'm running a machine on xp
Uh, that is only only reason for existence is to run an old version of itunes for windows
Uh, and the reason I want that is because it's not filled with bloatware and ads and all kinds of connect to the itunes store
And I I want that I want to keep it that way
And uh anytime something happens where I might have to change some bit of hardware in that machine
I'm always being lectured you have to upgrade. No, I don't have to upgrade. I like it the way it is
It's not connected to the internet. It plays music for me. It's perfect
I don't want the newest thing because as soon as I get that it's going to do something
I don't want it to do it's going to rename something to something. I don't want
A lot of people don't seem to understand that they feel they have to immediately
Uh change things when they're told to change things by the company by the software manufacturer
I mean sometimes it's it's it's a good idea when it's a security issue
Many times though, you know, if you have something that you like and it's uh, you understand the security concerns
There's nothing wrong with you running it the way you want to run it without somebody telling you what to do
Exactly. I'm glad somebody agrees. It took long enough to find somebody
On space rogue. It's been a delight. It really has please tell us more about how people can get your book
And um, and and what your next book is going to be about
So the current book is space rogue how the hackers known as loft changed the world
It is available at better bookstores everywhere, including amazon, uh, both in hardcover paperback and ebook
So feel free to check out go to your local bookstore bookshop.org. If you're not familiar with it
We'll uh donate part of your purchase price to your local bookshop
Uh so that we can have the local stores stay open and not get run out of business by amazon
But if amazon's your only choice it's available there too. Yeah, that's for the next book. I don't know yet
Yeah, well, I think that'll depend on the feedback to this book
Uh, which uh, it just came out what about a month ago two months ago. It's been uh, six weeks
I think it's been available weeks. Okay, so uh,
Great looking cover it ended up really really really nice. Yeah, absolutely. And uh,
How how do the rest of the people in the loft feel about it?
Uh, that's an interesting question. Um, so I didn't tell anybody I was writing the book, uh until it basically came out
Did they appreciate the surprise?
Uh, I haven't had any negative feedback from them. Uh, there are uh,
There's one person in the community who I won't name
There's one person in the community who I won't name
Who is mentioned in the book and I sent them a advanced copy and say hey i'm publishing this book you're in it
And they were not very happy. Uh, they didn't want to be in the book at all. But other than that
Feedback has been very positive
Wow
So some words, uh towards the end of the book, uh that one of the reviews mentions
Uh, you say hackers are not the bad guys
Most of the great inventors of our time such as alexander graham bell
uh mildred, uh kenner and
nikola tesla
Could easily be considered hackers criminal gangs who are running ransomware campaigns or are stealing credit cards
Are just that criminals they just happen to use a computer instead of a crowbar
They are not hackers not to me
Anyway loft's message of bringing security issues to light and getting them fixed still echoes throughout the industry and is more important today than ever
I can't think of a better way to to sum it all up
Thank you
All right. We've been speaking with uh with space rogue
Who has uh written a terrific book, please?
Get a copy
uh gift it to people and uh, write to us with your feedback if um
If you have anything you want to say about the show this show or the one previous oth at 2600.com space rogue
Any contact points you'd like to give out?
Uh, i'm on twitter. I'm on mastodon prefer mastodon. Uh, there's a website space rogue.net
Uh have email there's a web form on the website
Uh, i'm pretty much available everywhere on linkedin as space rogue, which is kind of interesting
I don't know how long that'll last but it's been there for 20 years. So
Wow
Are you surprised some things have lasted for a long long time and other things?
Yeah, my linkedin profile is space rogue is one of them because they keep saying they're going to crack down on on you know
Not real names, but it's been up there space rogue for 20 years and hopefully it'll stay there
Awesome
Well again, it's been so much fun talking we could talk for hours and hours and hopefully we will again soon
And we look forward to seeing you at hope and maybe we'll make it down to where you are at some point
All right. Great. Looking forward to seeing you. All right. Take care. Good night. Everybody. We'll see you in two weeks