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Time for Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
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Now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
For Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
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For Billy Bone.
Okay.
Okay.
Hackers have seized control of one of Britain's military communications satellites and issued blackmail threats, according to the Sunday Business newspaper.
The... I don't see anything funny about this.
Maybe you should take that outside.
The newspaper, quoting security sources, said the intruders altered the course of one of Britain's four satellites that are used by defense planners and military forces around the world.
The sources said the satellite's course was changed just over two weeks ago.
The hackers then issued a blackmail threat, demanding money to stop interfering with the satellite.
This is a nightmare scenario, said one intelligence source.
Military strategists said that if Britain were to come under nuclear attack, an aggressor would first interfere with military communications systems.
This is not just a case of computer nerds mucking about.
This is very, very serious.
And the blackmail threat has made it even more serious, one security source said.
Police said they would not comment as the investigation was at too sensitive a stage.
The Ministry of Defense made no comment.
We'll have more in a moment.
Okay.
Well, that's pretty serious stuff there.
What do you think, Isaac?
Oh, I'm not going to sleep very well tonight.
No, you shouldn't sleep very well tonight.
Nobody should sleep very well tonight.
In fact, it's especially disturbing to me because, as someone who's been involved in the hacker world now for a number of years, to suddenly be made a fool of like this.
To be shown that, in fact, everything I've been saying up until now is wrong.
That hackers are evil, that hackers have a lot of malicious intent and power.
And that, yes, indeed, Western civilization, and probably Eastern civilization, too, and Northern and Southern, whatever other civilizations are out there, are all threatened by computer hackers.
Something, something must be done.
All right.
Well, something will be done.
But first, let's take a quick look at the news.
We'll be looking into this story just a little bit more.
Maybe uncovering a few more details that, not to say that the Reuters news agency didn't cover the entire story, but maybe we can uncover one or two little tidbits more.
We'll be looking into that in just a moment.
Here's a story from February 25th, a few days ago, from the Associated Press.
That's the other bastion of news that we've come to rely upon.
This is entitled, FCC Moves to Protect Mobile Phones.
Did you know mobile phones were in danger?
Well, the FCC has moved to protect them from the likes of us.
The House voted 403 to 3, in a very close vote, on Thursday for a bill to strengthen privacy laws by making it illegal to intentionally intercept or disclose wireless telephone communications.
I guess if you intercept, you have to do it by accident.
And same thing if you disclose information.
The legislation, which now goes to the Senate, also extends to new digital technology restrictions on the manufacture of scanners that can be easily altered to receive cellular frequencies.
They're taking this a step further now.
So they're covering those new digital pieces of equipment that can be altered in various ways.
Representative Billy Towson, a Republican of Louisiana, one of the chief sponsors of the legislation, along with Republican Heather Wilson of New Mexico,
said 68 million Americans now use wireless communications, and we have learned that privacy is deeply at risk in America.
They just learned that now.
Current law makes interception a crime only if a person discloses a wireless communication after its interception.
And who are the communists who voted against the bill?
Well, they were Representatives Ron Paul, a Republican of Texas, Jim McDermott, a Democrat of Washington, and Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat of New York.
They voted against the bill.
They were the only three people to vote against H.R. 514.
And it's pretty scary what's coming down to here, where they will actually make it illegal to even try and decrypt this information.
For instance, pager traffic or phone calls that have been altered digitally in some certain way.
It seems like more of the same, but they're not backing down on the absurdity of the whole initial move, which started back in 1986, to make it illegal to actually listen to things.
It's all because of the fear of privacy.
And where is that real privacy intrusion coming from?
Well, take a look at this Sunday's Newsday on the front page.
And you'll see a story about information being sold.
That's right, our private information is being taken from us and sold.
And people are making a profit off of this.
They have to be stopped.
They have to be stopped.
And it's something that I know a lot of people feel strongly about.
These hackers are out there, and they're grabbing our information.
And are they selling it?
Are they actually selling the information now to the highest bidder?
No, they're not.
This is the government we're talking about here.
This front page story has to do with states.
That's right, states.
Such as the state we live in here, and the state you might be listening to us in.
They are selling the data that you give them, including your licensed photographs.
Photographs on your driver's license.
Now, let's go look at a very small bit of this article here.
But if you can jump into a dumpster or something and find yesterday, actually two days ago, Sunday Newsday,
you'll get quite a kick reading this.
To get a driver's license in any state, applicants must allow the government to take their pictures.
This unique collection of practically every adult in the nation essentially remained untouched
in the electronic storage bins of state capitals, obscure, unconnected, and uncontroversial
until they were put up for sale.
That's right, $4 a photo.
For $4 a photo, New York State was planning to take in up to $2 million in revenue
to provide these images to an unidentified bank that planned to put them on credit cards.
But the proposal which had...
This phone's ringing again, isn't it? I'm going to take care of it.
There.
The phone has been put to sleep.
At $4 a photo, New York State was planning to take in up to $2 million in revenue
to provide these images to, guess who?
An unidentified bank that planned to put them on credit cards.
Isn't that amazing?
Just grabbing your photo, buying it from the state, and putting it on credit cards.
I assume your credit card, but who knows?
The proposal which had no public airing
drew sharp criticism in the state senate late last month,
prompting a quick withdrawal by the governor's office
and the creation of a senate task force
to determine what other highly personal data collected by the state
might wind up in the computer files of private industry.
How many other agencies are sharing information for a price
without people's knowledge?
We don't know, said Joseph Bruno, Republican of Brunswick, the senate majority leader.
Applicants for driver's licenses or motor vehicle registrations
can check off a tiny box on their applications
saying they don't want data sold to direct marketers,
and about 23% do this.
But in the future, the legislators want that turned around
so that no data is sold unless a person specifically authorizes the sale.
This is typical of what's going on around the country,
how information is profits,
and it's really kind of shocking to see governments taking part in all this.
So next time you think your private information is at risk,
well, don't look at your phone.
Don't look at the radio waves that are being sent out.
They're meant to be listened to.
Those are radio waves.
You can't tell people, don't listen to that, it's a crime.
What is a crime, however, is when your private information is sold,
taken from you and given to the highest bidder and spread around,
things you obviously don't want spread around without your knowledge.
And New York State apparently is guilty of that.
Other states are guilty as well.
Well, did you hear of the related incident
regarding South Carolina and a couple of other states
who did in fact sell this information?
South Carolina, Florida, and Colorado.
Yes, to a company who was interested in testing an identification system.
The Image Data Incorporated of New Hampshire.
I think the Secret Service has something to do with this.
Tell us the Secret Service connection.
Well, supposedly they were interested in advising
and provided some insignificant amount of funds
to the actual project that was going on here.
I don't know all that much about it.
I'm hearing most of this secondhand.
But the very fact that the term Secret Service
got thrown into all of this bothers me.
Why is the Secret Service helping?
What interest do they have in spreading our private information all over the place?
Well, I think their interest is more in the identification system
that this company is developing,
which will purportedly be able to simply scan through live video images
looking for certain persons whose warrants are out.
For instance, you know how you've probably read a number of books
where the FBI winds up throwing spotters at airports
looking for certain people before they leave the country?
Well, why put a spotter there and pay him G-8 wage or something like that?
I forget what the FBI is getting paid now.
When you could actually just set up a camera at the gate
who will be looking 24-7 for this individual
and will always make that match.
It's an interesting possibility,
and I'm sure the Secret Service is interested in having that around,
because they can walk around with handheld cameras to certain functions.
They can pick up anybody on the presidential watch list
so far as an assassination attempt.
Or a critical speech attempt, or whatever happens to be the crime this week.
That's very true.
I still can't believe hackers took over a military satellite, though.
That just continues to shock me.
I don't like that phrase, mucking about, either.
Yeah, well, that's apparently what was going on.
But we're going to get into this in just a moment.
We've got a journalist with us who's going to enlighten us a bit more.
A couple of other news items, though.
This is an interesting story out of Camp Pendleton.
A military jury convicted a Marine Corps major Friday
of owning and trafficking in child pornography
and for conduct unbecoming an officer.
Apparently related to the previous, because that's not becoming to an officer.
The panel of six high-ranking officers found Major Wayne...
Oh, boy.
He's got two Zs, two Ys, and no vowels at all in his name.
And that's the only thing that's going to prevent his name from being said on these airwaves.
But his first name is Wayne, and he's from Temecula, whoever that is.
And this is the interesting part.
He never took the pictures or molested anyone.
But having the pictures themselves is being seen as a crime here.
And the really interesting thing is that he must now register as a sex offender.
That's right, he has to register as a sex offender because he had pictures.
And I know this is causing a great amount of outrage among sex offenders
who have worked very hard to get that status in life.
People who have actually abused people and have victims, a victim list.
And here this guy goes, downloads a few things off the Internet,
and right away he's afforded the same status.
Well, it's kind of scary.
Nothing's sacred anymore.
So that's news from the Internet as far as that kind of thing goes.
Secretary of Defense William Cohen has approved the creation of a 22-member reserve component team
to monitor and evaluate Department of Defense websites
to ensure the sites do not compromise national security by revealing sensitive defense information.
The team, called the Joint Web Risk Assessment Cell,
otherwise known as JOIRAC,
will be comprised of two full-time reservists and 20 drilling reserve and National Guard personnel.
The Defense Information Systems Agency will start up the cell on March 1st.
I guess that was yesterday.
Technology has extended America's reach around the world
and has extended the reach of those who seek to threaten Americans at home
by taking satellites out of orbit.
In joining this new mission area for the reserve and guard,
the JOIRAC will help us defend against those who would turn our technological superiority against us.
The JOIRAC will scour defense websites for information and trends of data
that could be used to breach security or pose a threat to defense operations and personnel.
In addition, team members will evaluate website content
to ensure compliance with departmental policies, procedures, and best practices.
With the battlefields of tomorrow moving increasingly into cyberspace,
this is a significant advancement in our efforts to assess risks and reduce our exposure to cyberterrorism.
The reserve and National Guard are ideally suited for this task
because they have a large pool of people with nothing else to do.
Precisely.
No, I just added that part.
A large pool of talented personnel who are in their civilian careers
are highly adept at using computer systems and information technology.
In translation, they know how to turn one on and actually surf the web.
Basically, the military is getting a little self-conscious about the fact
that just about anybody can hop online and start going through the XXXYYY Air Force Base website
and see, whoa, we've got a couple of C-17s here that are fueled up and ready to go all the time
with full complement of green.
They're trying to blackmark most of that out.
And yeah, you're right.
There's a bunch of reservists who really don't have much else to do,
so they said, eh, let them sit down and read through all these things.
Okay, well, we now must go back to the main story at hand,
and that is, of course, the hackers who are blackmailing the military
and causing a stir, causing a threat to Western civilization as we know it
and the military industrial complex and everything else.
This is the story directly from the newspaper, from Sunday Business,
which is a London newspaper.
It was printed on February 10th.
Okay, February 10th.
It's only making it to Reuters now.
I guess Reuters has something else to deal with.
It's an old story.
Yeah, well, okay.
In an astonishing breach of national security,
computer hackers have taken control of one of Britain's military communications satellites.
Sunday Business can reveal that earlier this month,
the intruders altered the course of the satellite
and sent panic throughout the armed forces.
Tony Blair was immediately notified, according to security sources.
The Ministry of Defense had to report to the prime minister
that someone had taken control of one of its four military satellites,
which defense planners and forces deployed around the world
used to communicate with each other.
Military strategists say that if Britain were to come under nuclear attack,
the aggressor would first interfere with military communications systems.
The intelligence services, including the electronic eavesdropping spy base GCHQ,
were called in to hunt the hackers.
One intelligence source said this is a nightmare scenario.
Are you noting all the names that I'm quoting here?
The GCHQ?
No, the people.
We have one intelligence source.
We have military strategists and someone.
Fairly ambiguous.
Yeah, we have someone as well.
Well, that's your opinion that it's ambiguous.
I think it's pretty specific here.
Security sources say the satellite's course was first changed just over two weeks ago.
The hackers have since issued a blackmail threat,
demanding money to stop interfering with the satellite.
The blackmail has resulted in the Metropolitan Police organized crime unit
being brought into the investigation.
One security source said this is not just a case of computer nerds
mucking about.
That's what we had before.
This is very, very serious,
and the blackmail threat has made it even more serious.
A spokeswoman for Scotland Yard's specialist operations
said the investigation was at too sensitive a stage for any comment.
The Ministry of Defense made no comment.
Didn't she make a comment that she's going to make no comment?
No, the spokeswoman was for Scotland Yard.
Yes.
Now, this is the Ministry of Defense.
But she said she had no comment.
No, the spokeswoman said the investigation was at too sensitive a stage for any comment.
It's a lot different.
For any comment.
But she commented that it was too sensitive to make a comment.
But she said a lot more than just no comment.
Okay.
And, in fact, the Ministry of Defense didn't even say no comment.
They made no comment, which means they didn't even say no comment.
They said nothing.
Ooh.
In fact, everybody in the world said nothing.
So we might as well add that sentence in there too.
Okay.
All right?
The Ministry of Defense for Botswana said nothing as well.
Anyway, but security sources, and it's not clear if these are the same security sources as above,
but security sources say the net is closing on the culprits.
The internet or the surveillance net?
I think it's a big white net.
I don't know.
Okay.
Sunday Business is withholding operational details of the investigation to prevent it being jeopardized.
How good of them.
It is good of them.
It really is.
I'm so glad they printed this story to tell us this much.
Anyway, the satellites controlled from RAF Oakhanger in Hampshire.
That sounds like an operational detail to me.
That sounds pretty damn specific there.
Controlled by RAF Oakhanger in Hampshire have the following access codes.
That's a good one.
No, no, no.
I'm just joking around here because we need a little levity.
It's a serious situation where the whole world is crashing down around us,
and we need to lighten it up just a little bit.
Okay.
That's over.
Let's get serious again.
The satellites are used by all of Britain's armed forces,
and they play a crucial role in any military operations,
such as the former Yugoslavia or in Iraq.
Britain's first three military satellites were launched some ten years ago,
while the fourth, SkypeNet.
I don't know if that P is supposed to be there.
S-K-Y-P-N-E-T.
It doesn't really make it work.
Skynet, I can see.
But maybe it's called SkipNet.
Anyway, let's say it's called SkipNet 4D.
It was put in January last year.
Oh, no, here's another one called Skynet 4E.
So apparently that's a typo.
Skynet 4D was launched in January last year.
A fifth satellite, Skynet 4E, was sent up only last Friday on the Ariane rocket,
which was launched from the European Space Agency Launch Center in Karoo, French Guinea.
On the Agency Launch Center in Karoo, French Guinea.
Okay.
On the northeast coast of South America.
Which is actually a very nice launch area.
Yeah, I guess it is.
Military experts say the U.K.
Military experts, got that?
Okay, got that one.
They say the U.K. is the second biggest user of military communications after America.
NATO has two military intelligence satellites similar to the British Skynets
operated by RAF bases, including Oakhanger.
Britain has no spy satellites
but instead uses the feed from the U.S. satellites which provide most of Britain's intelligence.
And that is the story written by Mark Watts.
That's a name for you.
That's an actual name.
He is the chief news reporter for Sunday Business.
The NRO shuffles the information off to the NSA.
The NSA brings it into the GCHQ,
and the GCHQ gives it over to the spy masters over in Britain so far as surveillance.
But that's on the QT, so I'll spread that around.
They couldn't tell you that because it was a specific operation.
Well, they had to get the story out in a hurry, and they probably didn't have time to look into it.
Okay, just one.
But speaking of looking into it, we have on the phone with us a gentleman known as SpaceRogue.
Space, are you there?
I am here.
SpaceRogue runs a news service called Hacker News Network,
which is available online, hackernews.com.
And I believe you have some enlightening information to us
about this rather startling, shocking case
which turns out that hackers are indeed terrorizing the military
and causing the future of this planet to be very much in jeopardy.
What can you shed on that?
Despite the fact that the story was in the prestigious newspaper, the Sunday Business,
and later picked up by the world-renowned Reuters news service,
the whole thing is bogus.
No. No.
Don't say it.
Say it isn't so.
But how?
How, pray tell, can a story like this go out into virtually every newspaper in the world?
You heard all the sources that we quoted, security sources, military experts, someone.
How can an accredited story like that make it to all these newspapers and be bogus?
That's a good question.
From what I understand, the Sunday Business is a fairly new newspaper in London
and hasn't been around very long.
And it would look like that they're trying to get some circulation going.
Yeah, a little name for themselves.
They make themselves a little name.
Evidently Reuters saw the story, didn't bother to fact-check it
or look into it, and ran the story on their wire service.
That's a story in itself right there.
How did you determine that the story is bogus?
I didn't actually determine the story was bogus.
I mean, I read the story just like you did, and I looked at it, and I was like,
there's nobody here I can call to verify this.
There's no names in the article.
That was the first thing that ticked me off.
I'm like, well, yeah, Ministry of Defense, security service, industry expert.
Who are all these people?
At the time, I didn't realize that England has a rather strict government secrets law
and is rather stern about letting these things out.
And so you see these stories all the time in England, or so people tell me,
because I don't live there.
But after I read the article the first time, it really,
that was the first thing that ticked me off,
was there was no verifiable sources in the article.
So I immediately considered it suspect.
There's just no way, I've never seen an article like this before
that never actually puts a name down.
The second thing, after I started thinking about it quite a bit, was that,
wait a minute, this is a military satellite that they're talking about.
This isn't, you know, a Time Warner satellite or something else.
This is a military satellite.
The command and control center for military satellites are usually on military bases,
usually are not going to be connected to the Internet,
and usually are going to be under armed guard.
So the likelihood of somebody breaking in and changing the trajectory of the satellite
is going to be pretty slim.
So those things alone pretty much hit me off,
that this probably wasn't as factual as you would be led to believe.
This brings back memories of, I believe it was 1985, New Jersey,
where a bulletin board known as the private sector, the 2600 bulletin board,
was seized by state prosecutors.
And I remember one of them, a gentleman by the name of Alan Rockoff,
who I think has gone on to even greater things since then,
saying on national TV, with nobody there to counter him,
that these kids were using their BBSs to move satellites all around the sky.
And that made all the newspapers, the fact that he said this,
and that all these kids somehow were sending messages back and forth,
and that's really all a bulletin board is.
Yeah, with their 300-baud modems.
300-baud modems, some had 1,200 granted,
but they apparently were moving satellites clear in the heavens.
And that is how the story was remembered.
Now, I think you're going to see the same thing here,
where this story is just remembered, and the actual story will never be told.
Exactly. And I think that's a common problem.
I think you're going to see other stories like this with increasing frequency as we go on,
because of the fact that most reporters have no clue about technology.
There are a couple of good ones out there, but most of them don't know.
And if you have somebody who claims to be a security expert
or information security specialist or whatever title you happen to put on yourself that day,
and you get quoted as an official source,
well, the reporter, unfortunately, like a moron, is going to believe you
and run out and write their story and say,
hey, I got so-and-so who's an expert who said this,
and so my story must be true,
without actually trying to verify it with a second source.
So, hopefully, we won't see too many more of these types of stories,
but I think that we probably will,
as technology gets even more and more into people's lives and starts making them mainstream.
Well, we had a rash of them last year.
Remember the, what was it, the Hacker Defense League or something like that?
Yes, yes.
The group that, what was it, the New Republic printed a story,
and everybody believed it, thinking that there were these hackers out there
that were basically holding corporate America hostage
and making them write checks to them before they'd free their computer systems,
and this actually made it into a respected journal without any fact-checking whatsoever.
Wasn't that reporter censured, though?
He was later fired.
He was fired.
Yes, he was fired.
He was fired, but the interesting thing, and I still find this to be rather amazing,
is that they condemned him in the newspaper, in the magazine,
but they never apologized to the hackers whose names were so defiled by this,
basically saying that this is the kind of thing that we do,
and it's completely false.
There's no evidence of it, but they never saw fit to take that back.
Another recent example was a Wired magazine article,
and it was actually broken by Forbes, I think.
This was a hacker going by the name of Seven who was on a one-man rampage against pedophiles,
and supposedly law enforcement was looking the other way while he broke into these sites.
Well, this story was evolved and changed and grew over about a year
in various different publications, online and print,
and finally the reporter who originally broke the story realized that this guy Seven
was totally pulling the wool over his eyes and it wasn't true.
And so he actually wrote an apology letter to the hackers and whatnot,
and it was sent out on various news groups, and I published it on my site.
I mean, at least that, even though the reporter didn't get the story right,
he was able to own up to it later and make an apology.
You don't see that too often.
Yeah, accountability is something that I think is very important.
We haven't seen that with the Guinness Book of World Records,
with their Kevin Mitnick fiasco, which, by the way, our site is up now
if you guys are going to visit that, guinnessrecords.com.
There's two ways of spelling Guinness, one N and two Ns.
Pick your favorite and maybe you'll get us and maybe you'll get them.
But we've seen this a lot, and I think one of the reasons is that
computer hacking is one of the few things where you can go up to a reporter
and say, I'm a computer hacker, and you don't have to prove it.
They'll just believe you.
I'm a computer hacker, and, yeah, I steal people's wallets.
And the headline the next day is Computer Hackers Steal People's Wallets.
Now, if you go up to someone and say, I'm a lawyer, I'm a doctor,
I'm a sanitation engineer, generally they're going to want some kind of proof,
some kind of evidence, something to show them that you do this kind of thing.
But the way reporters report on the computer world these days,
anybody who says they're a hacker is a hacker, and that's very damaging.
It's very damaging to everybody, and not the least of which is journalistic integrity.
SpaceVogue, have you had any luck contacting the author of this article, Mark Watts?
From the Sunday Business, no.
They're not on the web.
They don't have a website, so I can't send the guy an email,
and I really can't afford to call England to find this out.
There was an article on ZDNet where supposedly they got a quote from the Ministry of Defense,
but, again, there were no names in it claiming that it was false.
There was a NewsBytes article where they quoted other security experts
that claimed that it was highly improbable.
There have been a couple other stories floating around,
but I personally haven't been able to get a touch of the original author.
It would be nice to ask him some questions, say, well, who did you talk to?
How did you come up with hackers move satellites?
Why didn't you verify your information?
But I haven't been able to get in touch with him myself.
Well, I think maybe we'll give that a shot this week coming up,
because tracking people down really shouldn't be that difficult,
even if they are over there and trying to hide.
Or even if we can't get a hold of the guy who wrote the original Sunday Business article.
Call up Reuters.
Why did you guys run a story without verifying it?
Yeah, or give me more information on this story.
What exactly do you have?
Something else that I think is interesting, this story is dated February 10th,
and I didn't see mention of this until late last week.
Why the delay?
That's a good question.
I mean, the original Sunday Business article, again,
the Sunday Business isn't on the web,
so somebody typed it up over in Europe for me and mailed it to me.
But, I mean, I don't know how accurate that date is.
And, of course, in that article they say it was two weeks ago also.
So this actually happened a month ago.
Now why Reuters took two weeks to run it on the wire service, that's another question.
And how much other news, if this was actually real,
how much other news is out there that we're not hearing about?
And how much news that we are hearing about that's completely false?
Yep.
Oh, wow.
So now there has been a statement issued by the Ministry of Defense
saying it is impossible for a hacker to get into the system.
Again, no names.
Yeah, I haven't seen any actual names from the Ministry of Defense,
but I think that the actual quote was, our satellites are hack-proof.
The story is completely off the wall.
Hackers can't and have not accessed our satellites.
It is impossible for a hacker to get into the system, according to a spokesman.
And I believe that was taken from ZDNet, is that correct?
ZDNet, yeah.
That sounds like ZDNet, yeah.
Okay.
That's pretty interesting right there.
And I think that is a bona fide quote, though.
I don't think there are any quotes like that in the original story.
No.
But I'd like to know from people out there, listeners and people like that,
if they've heard of this story, if it's been on TV and the radio
and what their initial impression was
and what kinds of questions you think we should be asking whenever we see stories like this.
Now, SpaceRogue, tell us something about the site that you run, hackernews.com.
Yeah, I run www.hackernews.com.
It's basically, hopefully, a site that has very similar goals
as to what you do here on Off the Hook,
where we try to report on the goings-on of the hacker underground
and stories that affect hackers at a rather deep level,
because you don't really see a lot of reporting of that sort of thing in the mainstream media.
And if you do like this, hackers take out satellite stories, it's just not true.
Yeah, we see reporting.
We just see all kinds of weird interpretations of reporting.
So I try to update the site every day,
and I try to put up articles that I think other people are going to be interested in.
And when I saw this one come across my desk, my e-mail box just filled up,
and I was just like, geez, this is just ridiculous.
Yeah, I got this article about four times in ten minutes.
Yeah, yeah.
And it was like, oh, no, not again.
Yeah, it came in Monday morning, and I had about 50 messages, all the same URL in it.
But, yeah, we also have original articles on the Hacker News Network.
We try to get people to write some stuff out,
some fairly technical, good-quality articles.
I should have one tomorrow about the vulnerabilities of satcom communications
and if you really want to take out a satellite, how you should go about doing it.
It's not going to be step-by-step, but it will give you a good technical overview anyway.
Okay, so all terrorists of the world take special note here.
Basically, it isn't as easy as you would be led to believe by this article.
Well, if you already have a spacecraft, though, it's a lot easier than you might think.
Oh, if you have a spacecraft, that's another story.
That's right.
If you want to take over somebody else's, that's something different.
There could be all kinds of organizations out there just gliding around in space tampering with satellites.
Let's put a story like that out.
I mean, you might as well.
Hackers land on Mars.
There you go.
And we had it first right here.
All right, we're going to take some phone calls.
212-209-2900 is our phone number.
You're listening to Off the Hook.
We're on the phone with Space Rogue up there in Boston, is it right?
Yeah.
He runs hackernews.com, a hacker newswire source, which I think is a pretty useful thing in these days
since obviously the real newswires aren't getting the story right.
Someone has to be there to correct the record.
Okay, let's go over to the phones.
This time I'm going to pick a number so we don't get our favorite caller.
I'm going to go over here.
This is how you do it.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Good evening there, Emmanuel.
It's Tommy.
How are you doing?
Pretty good.
I got this flu bug for me.
I'm telling you, it's really kicking my butt here.
You got the flu from me over the radio.
Yeah, I'm telling you.
All right.
Well, let's...
Right down from Boston or something.
That's why I did get the flu from Boston, I believe.
Yeah.
And I brought it back down to New York and then transmitted it over the FM airwaves.
That was you?
That was me, yes.
What's on your mind, Tommy?
So anyway, I was a little bored, you know, with this whole Internet thing, so I started surfing around.
And then I realized, hey, we haven't heard anything about Miramax and this Takedown movie.
Actually, we have heard something from Miramax.
Really?
The Takedown has a poster.
I believe if you go to the Kevin Mitnick website, you'll be able to find it.
It's basically just a poster saying that the film is coming out.
It doesn't give an exact day.
I believe it will be coming out in the summer.
It's a really hokey kind of poster, too.
The actor who plays Kevin Mitnick is sitting in a chair on the left.
The actor who plays Shimomura is sitting on the right.
They're basically in a prison with a wall between them, and they're talking to each other on the phone.
And it says, and this is pretty profound,
Guilty or Innocent?
And underneath that it says, Innocent or Guilty?
And then Takedown in big letters at the bottom of the screen.
That's what we have to look forward to.
I hit two different movie databases that keep up with the movie rumors and stuff like that.
The last update that they got was September of 1998,
which was right around the time we were all getting together and protesting this thing.
Actually, we were getting together and protesting in July.
Yeah, well, the whole movement thing.
But it said that it was in post-production and all the principal photography was done,
and they were waiting for the trial to happen.
Well, they're going to be waiting until next month because the trial...
I don't think they're really waiting for the trial.
I think they've been in post-production since they stopped shooting in late August.
Thusly the term post-production.
Yeah, I think it's pretty much a completed tale, whatever it is they're going to say.
The documentary we're making, however, is still...
We're still filming occasional things.
We're going to be at the trial.
We're going to be at other various pertinent places.
Are they going to let us film?
No, but we're going to be there anyway in some form.
I don't know exactly what we're going to do.
I don't know what the setup is going to be like, but we're going to try and capture it.
And if people want to help, by all means, mail us film at 2600.com.
Right now we're looking for one of those things, editing decks,
where basically you take your footage and you stick it onto beta,
or I think DV cam is another format, and use that to feed into the editor.
It's a whole big technological marvel, which if you email us we can fill you in on the details.
If you have any connections, please let us know because we do want to make this thing sometime this year.
Anything else for me?
All right, thanks for calling.
Let's take another phone call.
212-209-2900.
Good evening, you're on the air.
That was quite a buildup, Emanuel.
How are you doing?
Yeah, the story, that didn't really turn out.
You shouldn't tease the socially retarded.
You've got to tell me that.
The world is going to put me out of my fucking mind.
All right, all right.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hi, Emanuel.
How are you doing?
So nice to hear a friendly voice.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Good evening.
How are you?
Fine.
I just want to be brief.
I'm not the computer geniuses that you gentlemen are, but I'd like to make a comment respecting the notion of a hacker.
What I do every night is I pray for the fact that hackers continue to exist.
This is a system that was developed on the taxpayers' dollars.
And quite frankly, there are far greater evils that exist right now in medical experiments and in terms of other forms of technology that far surpass the alleged damage to the reputation of a hacker.
Free intellect going into the next millennium should never be constrained.
We should balance it out.
We should make value judgments about what's right and wrong.
Whether hackers are doing things for propitious reasons or whether they're doing them for nefarious ought to balance out.
But there ought to be choice, and we as individuals ought to want the freedom of our own input, which means dollars and sweat and intellect.
The intellects of the 20th century have been ripped off terribly.
So as far as I'm concerned, more power to the hackers and the notion of protecting private property rights for Bill Gates to the subjugation of individual rights, intellectual property.
Intellectual property that starts with the individual is to me an absurdity.
I should never hear any criticism on a show on WBAI about what hackers do that are right or wrong.
Anything they've done, they've been taught, and they've been taught to, what, want money if they do it wrong, or they've been taught to want freedom if they do it right.
So as far as I'm concerned, viva la hackers, because I can tell you right now the Internet is a dead entity.
They already have developed ways to subjugate the Internet, even through transceivers that can be implanted in people's brains and communicate around the world.
So the bottom line is stake for intellectual freedom.
That's what we want.
We don't want fascism, and fascism, whether it's governmental or it's corporate, which, of course, is corporate right now.
There's no such thing as a government other than the corporate entities that have stolen and appropriated what belongs to the people.
We want the hackers.
And as far as I'm concerned, let the full free range of the intellectual expanse be known and exposed that we might all learn, because there are many of us who learn.
I listen to you knowing next to nothing about computers.
I don't listen to you about how much RAM, how much ROM, how much modem.
I listen to you just to see where individual's curiosity takes them.
As far as I'm concerned, hold them up, and you're doing an excellent job.
God bless you.
Thank you.
Well, that's very nice.
Yeah.
I mean, I love BAI listeners.
We have such interesting perspectives.
Well, it's nice to have a little support.
I don't know about the brain implant thing, although, you know, let's just say, okay, you might poo-poo that idea of brain implants, but take yourself a few years into the future and tell me that it's going to be impossible then.
You know?
I'm not going to tell you it's impossible now.
Okay, fine.
Fine.
Don't.
I won't.
All right.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, I am.
You're calling from Miami, Florida.
Wow.
You must be getting a nice suntan down there.
Yeah.
Did you know that they're going to stop charging for call trace?
You mean Star 5-7?
That's right.
The Public Service Commission has announced to New York that because of the fact that people should not pay for tracing, harassing, or threatening phone calls, the phone companies and utilities have to stop charging for a trace that can lead to an investigation.
Well, that's very interesting.
That is a bit of interesting news, and we'll look into that more because it's certainly something that I've been complaining long and hard about over the years.
Thanks for bringing that to our attention, and have fun down there in Disney World or wherever it is you happen to be hanging out.
And let's go to another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Oh, okay.
I'm sorry about that.
Let's go over here now.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi.
How are you doing?
Pretty good.
Yourself?
I'm just fine.
I have a question, quite frankly, and that is that the hackers were there from the very beginning of computer technology and deserve full credit for whatever intelligence computers show, although I guess you wouldn't want that kind of compliment.
But nevertheless, you hackers have always been an essential part of the progress of computer technology from day one.
And I hate hearing criticism of hackers also, and I've gotten into fights with people, friends of ex-friends who've worked for IBM about that.
But let me say about this satellite business that Reuters put out an article on Sunday, I guess you covered that, and it came up on another radio show on the AM Dial yesterday where all of the callers talked about it.
And the host of that show from 10 to noon on WNYC said he was going to have a show about it in the next couple of days.
What was the general sentiment of the people calling in?
Well, they took it as news.
They didn't have any of the fraudulent aspects.
Nobody even questioned whether or not it was true or false.
So they accepted it as facts.
Well, once they determined that Reuters had put it over the air, they tracked it to Reuters.
They took it as gospel.
Just like when a Guinness Book of World Records says something, it's true.
When Reuters says it, it's true.
You get someone like that with a name behind you, and you can say whatever you want.
And this is the show whose host is also the host of another show on the same station called On the Media, where skepticism should reign.
This will be interesting.
So, you know, it just shows you how easy it is to bite your own tail when that's all you know what you're doing.
Well, that's someone else to contact, and let's see if we can get that person next week to make a little correction.
His name is Brian Lara.
Sorry?
His name is Brian Lara.
Okay.
Well, we'll be calling Brian.
We'll be calling him.
Thanks very much for the information.
Wow.
Space Frog, what do you think?
Well, I think what it points out is that, and I hate to call the American public stupid, but they are.
A lot of people, you know, once it's in print, that's it.
It must be gospel.
And that's part of what being a hacker is all about, is questioning what's there and what's put in front of you.
Not only how to make things work or how to figure out how things work, but also what information is being tried to be fed to you.
You shouldn't accept things at face value and assume that, you know, just because it's in print, just because it was by Reuters or AP or whoever, that it's got to be true.
You've got to question these things.
I think a big part of the solution is what you're doing as well, becoming part of the media yourself
and basically making the facts known to the best of your ability, saying, okay, Reuters, say whatever you want, but this is our perspective.
Right.
I mean, I don't always get them right.
I mean, I have made some mistakes in the past, but at least it's another point of contention.
It's another avenue of information that people can try to get to.
At least you give names when you quote people.
I try to, yes, because I don't want somebody to blame me for being wrong.
I'd rather blame somebody else.
Right.
It's a twofold problem.
I mean, Americans are gullible so far as just accepting whatever the media says.
Also, this is a very mysterious object that seems to sit on their desks.
The computer has always been something that seemed to be out of their control.
So, hey, they hear a story about hackers taking over a satellite.
They probably tend to believe it because they don't know better.
They don't know better.
They don't know exactly what it takes to control a satellite or what the steps are.
They figure it's just point and click, go across the net.
Ooh, satellite control center.
I'll click on this and, oh, I just moved the satellite.
It's a little bit more difficult than that.
What you have is a bunch of keywords.
You have computer, you know, satellite, military, hackers.
You just mix it all together.
Hell of a story right there.
Yeah, and, you know, you just pretty much it writes itself, you know,
and stick it on HBO or something and you've got a nice adventure there.
And it just happens to be running on Reuters and being called the news this week.
So that's pretty much our responsibility is to investigate these things
and show what is wrong and challenge the people who are saying things that we believe are wrong.
So we'll be looking into this definitely in future days and weeks.
Let's take some more phone calls.
Good evening, Aaron.
Off the hook.
Hello.
How are you doing?
I have some information on the Skynet.
Okay.
Can you speak up a little?
All right.
There are two of them.
Uh-huh.
They were orbited in 1990.
You mean launched in 1990, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And, of course, they were a U.K. Ministry of Defense.
And they weighed about 3,250 pounds each.
Okay.
And they were communication satellites for the military.
And they had a design lifetime of about seven years, so they're a little old now.
And this information comes from the January 11th issue, 1999, of Aviation Week in Space Technology.
They published in that issue a lot of tables of interesting information
about everything you don't want to know about things.
Okay.
That's about it.
Okay.
Thanks for the info.
You're welcome.
Is there anything there that we didn't already know?
Well, they're geosynchronous orbital satellites, so they don't move.
They're 22,000 miles out.
They stay stationary above the planet.
They don't move.
Which is why, when they do move, we should be concerned.
Yes.
You see?
That's what Reuters probably was thinking.
Most communication satellites do not move.
That's true.
Well, if they moved, then you wouldn't really be able to track them very well.
You wouldn't be able to communicate with them.
Right.
They come up over the horizon.
They're there for about an hour, and then they disappear.
Right.
Geosynchronous satellites tend to be non-geosynch simply because, at 22,000 miles,
you have a serious problem with getting some really good picture resolution.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
What do you mean they come up over the horizon and then disappear?
Don't geosynchronous satellites stay in the same place?
The spy satellites tend to be in low Earth orbit, and they fly by an area,
which means that, usually, you have to use them with each other.
So, as one flies by and it disappears over the horizon,
the next one is coming up to get the next picture.
Is this always labeled as a communication satellite and never a spy satellite?
I think in the articles, both the Business Sunday and the Reuters,
it's a military communications satellite.
Okay.
So that would indicate geosynchronous.
Yes.
But the rest of the article is false.
Who knows?
Yeah, that's true.
Well, they're probably using the satellite to start with, or a hacker, or even a story.
All right.
Let's take a couple more phone calls.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hi.
This is Alan again.
How are you doing?
So, don't will me to go away this week.
Okay.
In this month's Columbia Journalism Review,
there is an article about an article that was done for, I believe, Dateline.
And in it, the author is complaining about the availability of public records.
He says something along the lines of,
unfortunately, they have strict privacy laws in these states,
so we couldn't get the information.
Oh, poor guys.
Yeah.
And I really want to research this a little bit more,
because I feel that every state should have strict privacy laws,
especially concerning things like vehicle ownership and such.
In New York State, it's very easy to get that information.
In fact, another thing that's very easy to get is voter registration information.
You can find out if somebody is registered as a Republican, Democrat, Independent,
no matter what their phone number is listed or not.
And there's nothing on the form that you fill out to say,
don't give this information out.
You can get it.
Anyone can get it.
And that's pretty scary.
You can get that for California, too,
which is supposedly one of the states that has strict privacy laws.
It's fun to get all the Hollywood actors and actresses' addresses and political affiliations.
Yeah.
And on the note of the DoD stuff,
if you go on Yahoo and search for CZIP and DZIP,
one of the selections it brings up is the directory structure of a military machine.
Uh-oh.
Yeah.
The directory that it's in is password protected,
but the file that contains the directory structure is not.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
It's the complete listing for the system.
So CZIP and DZIP?
CZIP and DZIP.
Charlie Delta.
Okay.
Well, we'll be looking into that,
and I'm sure they'll be looking into us after we look into that.
Thanks very much for calling.
Let's see if we can get another phone call in there.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah, hello.
How are you doing?
Is this the radio show?
This is the radio show, and you're on the air.
Oh, great.
I've been trying to break the biggest news story of all time for about the past 15 years or so.
It's been close to 15 years.
Is it still a big story after 15 years?
It's the biggest, actually the biggest event the world's ever seen.
It basically renders the entire computer hacking and whatever industry is obsolete.
It's not the end of the world or the coming of Christ or something like that, is it?
Right.
Well, what it is is actually, can I give the name of the website?
Sure.
It's called nuclearwarrior.com.
Uh-huh.
What it is is it features a fantastic new type of music that renders all other music obsolete.
Oh, I see.
Along with all music goes culture, media, whatever there is to go has gone due to nuclearwarrior.com,
the world's most astounding website.
Okay.
I don't know what the big secret is about trying to cover this thing up.
Well, we're going to look into it and we're going to proclaim it to the heavens
and we'll see what happens to us as a result.
Thanks for calling.
The music.
Let's see if we can squeeze in another one.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hi, this is Abacab.
I had a call in on this show.
I wouldn't dismiss the satellite anomalies as non-hacker directed offhand.
I've written technical manuals for satellite and satellite communication systems and for the defense industry.
They're really not as protected as everyone would like them to be.
Are these systems connected to the Internet?
No, but it doesn't take a whole lot of equipment or a whole lot of brain power to buy a dish and a small 40-watt MOSFET transmitter
and transmit the codes directly to the satellite to release helium from the tanks, change their orbit.
Aren't usually the uplinks encrypted, though?
I'm sorry?
Aren't usually the uplinks encrypted?
The uplinks are encrypted, but most of the satellites are old and they only use the old 56-bit DES encryption algorithm.
You have to remember that DES went up on these satellites and they haven't really changed it.
That's correct.
And it's in firmware and it's very, very difficult to change it.
Also, you can lock out the spin mechanisms, which keep the transponders pointed generally in the same spot.
You can run tests and force them into test loops.
There's lots of stuff you can do, so I really would not dismiss this at all.
Well, this is all theoretical, but...
It's not just theoretical.
It's possible.
I'm not going to implicate myself because I don't know who's listening, obviously,
but I can tell you as a fact it's not all theoretical and it can be done.
Can be done is theoretical?
Do you have evidence of it actually happening?
Well, I know it actually happened, but of course I'm not a credible source.
I can tell you I'm a hacker.
I can tell you I've worked with satellites, but who are you going to get to verify it?
I'm just telling you, don't dismiss things offhand just because, you know,
for no other reason that someone didn't give a name.
I mean, these people are looking into something that, you know,
you're looking at the depths of society here.
The possible defense implications are incredible.
So, of course, they're going to try to catch these people.
They're not going to catch them.
They've got a very narrow band, very short, bursty, you know, probably portable transmitter.
Most satellites communicate with a microwave communication system.
That's correct, yes.
It has to be in a direct line of sight with the original ground station.
No, it does not.
Well, if it's geosynchronous.
All you have to do is know where the satellite is sitting in the sky.
If the satellite antenna is only pointing at the original ground station.
The only thing they could possibly do is pick up side lobes of the transmitter,
and if you're only transmitting at about 40 or 50 watts, you don't need a traveling wave tube.
You can use a MOSFET transmitter.
If you have the information, if you have $1,000 to $5,000,
and you have a little time on your hands, you can hack a satellite.
You can get through.
You can drop an insert, do a zero substitution, run the old BS algorithms.
You can go in and actually control the transponders, feed things around.
It's been done before.
It'll be done again, and somebody's going to have to fix it.
All right, sir.
I hate to interrupt.
I wish you had called a lot earlier because this is definitely an interesting subject,
but we are out of time.
Okay.
So we'll be following this story in the weeks ahead, though,
and we can certainly continue this discussion.
All right, good job.
Thanks for calling in.
Spacerog, I'm going to give you the opportunity to tell people about your website,
how to connect to it, and anything else you want to give out.
www.hackernews.com.
Check it every day.
Okay, and we certainly will.
Thanks so much for joining us, and we'll be following this story.
We'll probably have an update for you next week as well.
Until then, it's Emanuel Goldstein for Isaac and everybody else,
and thanks so much for everybody who listened.
We had 190 real audio and MP3 listeners today, which I think is maybe a record.
Until next week, Emanuel Goldstein for Off The Hook.
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