The Intrusionist...


Over the past ten years or so I've been, as some would call it obsessed, with computers, networks and their protocols, and technology in general. I had and still do have to this day, a drive and passion for technology, no matter how fast things become outdated and how fast new and improved things come out. I've always been one who likes to learn on the fly, to get in there and get my hands dirty and do hands on work. I guess it's the nature of the beast. Besides technology, I've always been a fan of how the human mind works, and why we do things that we do. I've looked up many articles and read many things on 'the hacker mindset' but I don't agree with any of it. So I'm going to write this all from my perspective and hopefully give those an insight into a 'Hacker Mindset'. This isn't going to be an article on the classifications of the hacker mindset, or the psychology of it all or what makes up a Hacker. I'm just going to tell my own side of the story and how things came to be.

Ever since I can remember, from way back in my childhood, I was always pretty quiet and very easy going. I never really opened my mouth to anyone and I was never the type of person to be loud and obnoxious as most children are. I guess maybe in my early childhood I was already insecure with myself, but I didn't know what insecure was. I just thought it was normal for me. This never limited me with having friends, and being able to communicate. In fact, I think it gave me a good leg up in life. Being afraid, quiet, and insecure with myself limited how much talking I would do with friends and family and this gave me an advantage, as I'd like to think today. The advantage of being able to hear more of what was going on around me. Being able to absorb what was going on around me, what people were saying, what people were thinking, their train of thought. It gave me insight into how the mind worked and it's intricacies. It opened a whole new world for me. A world of exploration. The exploration of someones mind and it's inner workings. An exploration into some place where I shouldn't be, a place that held information that no one knew was there. I was hooked...


I can remember in grade school when personal computers were just becoming a standard thing in houses across the United States. Every school across the US was getting computers in their libraries to teach us children how to use them. I will admit that I found no interests in computers for the first few times I used them. I found no need for it at the time and I was more worried about having fun. Doing the usual kid things like play football and hang out at the park or in the house playing video games. Computers were really of no interest to me at the time. Granted I was only in the 4th or 5th grade. As more and more time went on in school, and the more we started to use them, the more interested I became. Not because it was something that was new and exciting, but because I didn't know anything about it. It was like the mind of friends. I wanted to know how it worked, and why it did certain things. This wasn't a fast growing interest. It was more of a gradual one. I was interested, but I had more interesting things to me at the time and with being limited to only about an hour or so of using them I couldn't do much with them.


As my interest grew and as I started to become more comfortable with computers and learned what made them tick, my life went spiraling downward. My family was going to shambles and I was growing up. My family falling apart was a long time coming. I'm sure most(or some) of you can relate and can sympathize with me when I say that when you're a young child; who is already insecure with themselves, has the frustrations of a marriage falling apart taken out on them, that it does things to you. You find ways of escaping it in innocent ways, or not so innocent. For me, I read a lot of books and spent a lot of time with my imagination. Having a (somewhat) broken home at the time didn't do any good for me. Anything that I was interested in just became boring and frustrating. That is, until we got our own personal computer in the house, set up in my very own room. It didn't have internet access, but that was okay with me. I would spend hours on the thing messing with programs and just going through the Windows95 OS. At such a young age, I couldn't grasp the whole concept of how things worked, but I got a damn good basic understanding of a layout of a computer. My interest was sparked once again.


Then it happened. I was awoken early in the morning by yelling and doors being slammed. My parents were fighting. This was often a reoccurring thing in my household. Sometimes words turned into hands being raised towards one another but thankfully this one was just verbal. Listening to the yelling early in the morning right outside my room still rings inside my head, especially the one word. Divorce. That was it for my family. My mother was filing for divorce. I complete most of the year of school as the papers were filed and finalized. From the day I heard them yelling I became somewhat of an outcast in my own body and mind. I was already unsure, and having divorced parents (which wasn't 'normal' back then) really pushed it to the limit. My brothers and I finished most of the school year out, and then we had to move. We moved with our mother into our grandparents house. It wasn't bad, but I lost all friends I had and pretty much everything I owned, including the computer which took a lot of my attention during those days.


Anyone that has had to move in their freshly acquired teenage years knows that it is very awkward. You don't know anyone, you don't know anything. It's very hard to live through. I made due through the summer hanging out with my cousin and living with my mother and grandparents. It was a hard time. Being embarrassed about your parents being split and living with your grandparents... That did quite a number on my personality and made me seek ways of escape besides books and a computer. I turned to drugs. Drugs were the answer and I abused them to no extent.


Living with grandparents wasn't so bad. They had a new computer and internet, but we weren't allowed to use it. As a young kid, I went against the grain and used it anyways. This is where I became really interested in computers. A whole new door was opened to me. I was able to go anywhere and do anything I wanted. I received my fair share of punishment from using the internet when I wasn't suppose to, but I found ways of not letting them know I was using it. That didn't last long though...


It was time to move again... I finished out my last year of grade school with barely passing grades and a sigh of relief. I was finall glad to move out of my grandparents house and be into my own with just my mother and brothers. The down side was that we didn't have a personal computer, again. I was once again stripped of the only real interest in my life at the time. Stripped of my interest, my hobby, and my escape. I convinced myself it was okay because I was moving into my own house. As hard as I tried though it didn't work. I took out anger and killed time by doing more drugs. It was not a very good time for me, and considering I was once again quite away from friends (at the time as I thought) the drugs made it all go away for the moment.


The summer had passed and it was back to school. High school. I hated every part of it and everyone in it. I rebelled against it in almost every way possible. I hated life, I hated myself and I hated everyone else. I hated people because I hated myself and in turn, they hated me for it. My freshman year was very lonely. I had a few friends that I was close with, but compared to the amount of friends others had, I felt very alone. Most of that time I can't remember who I was, where I was or what I did. All I know is I didn't want to exist at the time. I had no interest in anything anymore. I was tired of being fed up with having what I liked taken away from me. I was almost friendless, I was computer less, I was the product of a 'broken home'. We were not the best off with money... I didn't like anything. I became even more quiet and self hating. Teenage angst? It may have been, but it is still with me today in one way or another. I still have those traits....


Fast forwarding through all the drugs and self hatred. I dropped out of high school and did pretty much nothing with myself for a while. I stopped doing drugs and I started skating again. I needed something to pass the time. School just bored the hell out of me, and I couldn't stand the environment. As I spent time skating it took my mind off most things. That is, until the day where we got our own personal computer. It was an old Compaq with Windows 98SE on it. It had 88MB or ram and a 15 gig hard drive. It wasn't much but I was ecstatic. My mother also went one step farther and got us internet. I spent all morning running around trying to find an ethernet card and installing drivers. About 6 pm that night, I was online... finally.


I was back on the internet and free to do whatever I wanted again. Since I didn't have any sort of responsibilities at the time my eyes were glued to the screen. Learning new things, reading new information that had escaped me for so long. I had never been happier. I had become obsessed with the internet and computers. I stayed up all through the day and night flying through the internet doing clicking anything and doing anything. I was happy. As a result of my new found obsession, I lost a lot of friends and stopped being social. I became an complete outcast for a long time. On the internet I could be anything I wanted or nothing at all. No one ever saw me, heard me or knew me. I didn't have to fit in and I didn't have to be rejected. I was myself and that was all I wanted. I didn't need friends any more. All I needed was myself and the keyboard.


My obsession became an addiction. I was addicted to the internet and everything it had to offer. I wanted nothing else. I was an internet addict and I would have it no other way. Friends were an old past time and family and it's complications didn't matter. As my interest manifested I stumbled upon 'computer hacking' and a few articles explaining it. I Googled and googled until I couldn't keep my eyes open any more I spent countless hours reading and learning and experimenting. Most of my testing and experiments of what I learned were failures for a good while I kept at it. I loved learning how things worked and how to break them. I knew of hackers and I wanted to know what they knew because in my eyes, no one knew more about computers and networks then they did. They were the ones able to build the internet and they were able to destroy it just as fast. I wanted to know everything they knew and more.



I spent a lot of times in chat rooms and playing chess on my down time when I would get tired of reading. This was just something to help calm my brain down and help me go to sleep after 16 hours straight of reading. My first 'hack' was quite a surprise and was stumbled upon by accident. I was in a myspace game room for chess. They had a simple java applet that would let you join games or just sit and chat with others and just hang out. The chat applet was very simple. It consisted of a name of your choosing followed by a colon and whatever text you wanted. There were no separators for the user speaking and what they were saying. It was just a simple [ NickName: text user is saying ] without the brackets. After sitting there bored and holding down the keys I noticed that it would word rap to the next line. I'll give you an example of a a layout. Imagine a simple text box...

The wordrap would come down under your name... A little experimentation and I had my first 'hack'. I was able to clone any nick in the channel. I would just type a bunch of crap until it wrapped, enter a name of someone who was active followed by a colon and whatever I wanted them to say.


Example:

Being a teenager, I had lots of fun with this. It was enjoyable to watch people freak out about something 'they didn't say'. I had fun with that for a few weeks until I stumbled upon another gem in the same chess game room. People would go into a chess match table to talk and cyber or do whatever. The problem with that was that anyone could spectate and ruin your 'fun'. I guess it was the start of being able to find bugs without trying, but I was messing around and pressing the tab key. I pressed it a few times and pressed enter for some reason. The next thing I know it's prompting me to create and enter a private room. A room that no one else could see and had to know the name of and a password to get in. There were no options to create a private room anywhere on the screen. Nothing that even resembled an option to do so. I finally figured out that it was a combination of hitting the tab 6 times and pressing enter (the 6th tab did not highlight anything) and you had yourself a private room. Shortly after the game was removed from myspace and the site that hosted it (off of myspace) was shut down. That was the start of who I am today....


My first 'hack'. It was was the greatest thing to me at the time. Being able to manipulate something to do what I wanted. Something it wasn't intended to do. I felt amazing. I was proud of myself. I was entertained. All the things that I wanted and all the things I thought I needed at the time. I was the king, the power and the one who called all of the shots at that point in time. In my eyes at the time, I could make people fall before my feet whenever I wanted. They could do nothing about it and I enjoyed it to the fullest. I was finally better than normal. I was above average and I held those of lesser in my hands. I don't realize it until now but it was power that I wanted, and would stop at nothing to obtain. As many have said, "Once you taste and experience power, you will stop at nothing to keep it". It was such a shame to be bitten by that bug at such a young age.


After my experience in controlling a chat room and the people that were in it I layed idle for a while. It wasn't because I chose too, it was because I didn't know where to go next. I wanted to take on bigger and better things. I wanted to control and conquer. I wanted to be known and feared. I wanted things I wasn't ready for. I spent hours being a skiddy. Running scripts and looking for exploits in every site I came across. I don't know the full behind why I wanted to destroy someones work... I'm sorry for those that lost everything because of me and I apologize from the bottom of my heart.


During my skiddie period I hooked up with an old friend of mine. We just happen to meet at the park one day and decided to get drunk. He was like me. He liked computers and was fascinated by them. We got along great and spent a lot of time drinking together and getting into trouble. Little did I know that he was more like me then I had originally thought. He was a hacker, too. This is where things really took a drastic change. There was another one of me. Another one who exploited things and made them do what HE wanted them to do. He showed me new things that I didn't even know existed and things that weren't documented. He showed me what it was to take over things far bigger then a chat room. Now I was far more power hungry then I was before. It was no longer a want, but a need. I needed to have the power. His demonstrations had made me need power.


My drive to exploit was multiplied. If I wasn't dedicated before, I sure as hell was now. I was infatuated with the idea of being able to do what he showed me. I tried and tried to do what he did and, for the most part, failed miserably... It seemed like I couldn't do anything right and I couldn't accomplish what I had set out to do. I was severely frustrated with myself and my failures. I had wanted to just give up and move on many times but the taste of power was still fresh on my tounge and I wanted it more and more as days went past without it. It seemed the harder I tried the more I failed and I had no sort of source for answers. Now that I knew all that I could, I had questions that still lingered and I needed answers...


This is when I was shown Totse.com by the friend of mine. I was amazed at the amount of information that Totse contained and the amount of users and the knowledge they possessed. I had recognized the site before from articles that I would read, but I never knew about the forums that were hidden from plain view. I frequented the Totse forums a few times a day and had a blast. Even though I was there a lot, it took me a while to start posting in the NS&H section which I now call my home. I was helped so much by the members there at the time and was amazed at what those people were accomplishing. I found a place that contained people that had the same interests as me and were, in my eyes, in search of the same thing that I needed.


After lurking for a while I started to become an active member of NS&H. I would post in almost every topic there was and I would read posts over and over again to soak up as much as I could. This gave me a new drive. I was back in a good mood and I was feeling lucky again. It had been a long time since I had exploited something and filled the void that was in my mind. I was back on the hunt again for anything and everything to exploit. I slowly started to gain more and more of a name for myself around the forums. I look back on it now and think of my posts and I can't help but think it was because of my 'outside the box' thinking. Could have been something else altogether.


As my name grew around the forums, so did my skill level. I had started succeeding in my efforts to control and take over. I was doing what I needed to to to make myself feel complete. I had it all at the time. A group just like me, the accomplishments, the acknowledgment and the knowledge. I couldn't ask for anything else... but still, it wasn't' enough. Hacking websites had grown old and tiresome and it was the same thing over and over again. I was tired of doing that. Sure, it got my name out there, but I didn't feel like it was enough. It was slow and gradual, but the movement towards bigger and better things was happening. It didn't take long, and before I know it I, along with someone else, were inside multiple system in a night. Systems that held information...


It was early in the morning for me. I had spent the day doing nothing exciting and was drinking at the computer again. As I always do when I have nothing else going on. All of a sudden I get a message over MSN from a Totse member. It was an NS&H regular that I figured wanted some help with something. This was of course the case but we started talking more and more. The next thing we know, we are both on Google and scanning IP's. It didn't take long until we stumbled across a server running the Remote Desktop Service for windows. We started guessing passwords with the hope that we would get access. We both knew that it was a very slim chance that we would get in. Then something strange happened. Instead of a message saying that it was the wrong password, a window popped up. It was the desktop of the server that we were guessing passwords to. We actually did it. We gained access to a system that was across the world with nothing more then good guessing and a bit of luck... We couldn't believe it.


We were amazed at the fact of being inside a system that wasn't ours. We explored it up and down. We sought after information that we could use to our advantage. It was exciting, but this box was a bust. It was almost empty... That didn't deter us from our hunt. We were feeling lucky and we wanted more. We were going to find something that night if it took all of our luck and skill to do it. It didn't take long for that to happen... We had found another system we could try and guess our way into. It was running a remotely viewable security system that was left wide open. After a routine scan we find out that again, it was running the Remote Desktop Service. We connect and we try guessing our way in. All default passwords and commonly used ones didn't work. We weren't going to give up though. We were determined at getting in. We noticed that this system was on a domain. We laid our cards out on the table and entered in the domain as the password... We hit the jackpot. We were granted full access to the system with administrator rights. This wasn't an ordinary box though... This box was what, at the time, seemed like the central hub for the a department store. It contained a work schedule, an inventory and order list, a currency tracker and invoice reporter.... We had what we wanted. A big time hack. We weren't going to let it go.... We back doored the hell out of it and were scavenging as much data as we could from it. We took our time and no one ever knew we were there... but that was only the beginning of 'big time' hacks for myself....


It took some time to completely go through that box, but we did it with as much speed as we could without over looking anything. We created extra hidden admin users on that box. We stole as much data and took as many screen shots as possible. We owned it completely. That box was ours and there was nothing the true owners could do about it, besides shut it down to get rid of us. That wasn't the end of our night though. We gained access to many more servers and home computers due to misconfiguration and poor passwords. We even gained access to a medical doctors personal computer with full information on patients and their afflictions. The night was ours and so were our victims computers. We were on a roll!




The way that night went it felt like I couldn't be stopped. I felt like I had the power to control any box I wanted and do whatever I wanted with it. I felt untouchable and invisible. None of the owners of the computers knew I was there. They could be on the system as the same time as myself and they had no idea. I finally had what I wanted. The complete and utter power to control a system that I had no business controlling. Making it do whatever I wanted it to do.


After that night, web hacking took a back seat and became more of a hobby to my new found interest. It was 'system hacking' as I liked to call it that became my new interest and love. Surely I loved seeing my name on someone else's website. I like the laughs that I would get knowing that someone who visited that site knew that I was there, and that I was better then the person that created it. I indulged in the fact that the administrator and creator would be completely ignorant to the entry method. Instead I found a much bigger rush on the 'higher stakes tables'. Those being bigger and more complex systems and servers. It was an adrenaline rush just connecting, let alone moving about in such things. I watched myself carefully and made sure to clean up after myself in such systems. I had never run into a problem before and was sure I was never going to. I was too 'intelligent' for my own good...




My life was great at the time. Well, not great, but better than it was. I was in control of a few systems, I had a job that supported my drinking and smoking. I had a girlfriend that cared about me and a family that left me to do my own thing. I was comfortable in my skin for the most part. I had a community that knew me by the masses and friends that knew my talents. Things couldn't have been better for me. Like anything good though, it doesn't last. Life became shitty again and I started to hate it all over again. I was frustrated and tired of everything going on. I took these angers out on the systems I was breaking into. My attacks had always been very secret until that point where I snapped. I was like a professional burglar. I crept in as quietly as possible through a window and left without a trace. After I snapped, things changed. Instead of sneaking in, I would kick in the front door screaming and yelling. Leaving my muddy footprints all over the place with no regard to the fact that I was wearing a one of a kind shoe that could be traced back to me. I don't know how I never got caught, and how I'm not in prison. Thank God I got over that phase. With the things that were to come next, I would be serving a long time in prison for what I've done had I taken the same actions as I did on those systems back then...


I was back in another self destructive rut and I was taking it out on other peoples hard work. I didn't care and I like the Black Hat title at the time. I like knowing that I was one of the people that web site creators and system administrators watched out for. I liked know that there were many others working against what I and others did. Trying to keep us from destroying and taking over. Trying to stop us in our tracks. This fuelled my fire. I wasn't going to let anyone get in my way of what I wanted and needed. I wasn't going to be stopped from showing who was smarter. Who was better. Who was the stronger one... I wanted to show them.


Hacker. Black Hat. Skript Kiddie. I was all of those and more. I used it all to my advantage. If I wanted something, I would get it. If I couldn't obtain it, I would use my title as a threat to get it. My prey was those of the common user. The ones who didn't know any better or who were too ignorant. For the most parts, people gave in to my wishes. Gave me what I wanted. Like anything in life though, there are going to be obstacles at times. People were reluctant to budge. Outright refused demands and bargains. This is where I learned to be a social engineer. I had already loved getting in peoples heads. I loved knowing what made them tick. Like anything, if you know how something works, you may have complete control over it. I learned that people are easier to control over time. Very much more volatile, but much easier to gain control over.


Machines are set to run under a set of rules and guidelines. They are set in stone and the machine knows no other way of running. The only way you can defeat these guidelines is if there is a hole in them. People on the other hand... They are much easier to gain access to sensitive data through. People do not have a set of guidelines that they have to abide by to work. They can make mistakes. They can be fed false information and you they can return true and sensitive information without ever knowing what they did. People are the weakest link in computer security and this is something that can never be fixed.

Even though I knew how to use people to my advantage, it wasn't my strongest skill set. I dreaded having to have interactions with people, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do to get the job done. I disliked it so much because of the variables involved with people. They were unpredictable no matter how much you knew about them. It's something that I don't like to use, but it's a good thing to know. Especially when a few simple questions that seem like idle talk can get you all of their credit card and bank account information. You would be surprised at how easily people give these things up.


The ignorance of people is something to laugh at on a daily basis. People are almost too trusting to strangers over the cable lines. I've met more people who have given up their passwords in a single conversation then I can count on one hand. Do you ever think that a simple sentence you say can give up everything? Do you stop to realize that almost everything you do on the internet comes back to one location? An email... and most don't realize that in one conversation they can give up everything and be fucked for a long time to come...


Thankfully by the time I figured out that I could get rich quick off people, I had already been past my destructive phase again. I realized that it wasn't right to destroy. To take what wasn't mine. To steal from others what they had worked hard for. I was back to working silently behind the scenes and trying to not bring attention to myself again. I learned more and more that having your name out there wasn't a good thing. Being a great hacker isn't about getting your name out there and being famous. Being a great hacker is being able to do what you set out to do, and not get caught. This is something that I had learned from my previous mistakes. Realizing early that smashing in the front door with guns blazing, taking everything in reach without wearing a mask would land my ass straight in jail sooner or later. I had my close call and that was enough.