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