118 DEAR HACKER

118 DEAR HACKER

heard of the zine. Well, after a little bit of complaining, I got them to put the zine out where it normally goes and then put some up by the registers, so hopefully, you should get a few more sales from them. Well, I just felt like sharing.

Javelin Thanks for the support. We depend on our readers to keep an eye out for this sort

of thing. Always remember to be polite, though. Otherwise, next time they’ll just burn the issues upon arrival.

Dear 2600: Your magazine captivates. It shows not only that there is a clearly

defined line between “hacking” and “using a DoS attack to impress my buddies.” However, I guess I’m bowing to the inevitable when I say that I still get disgusted at idiots who insist on being malicious for no reason. If you do this kind of shit, you need to rethink yourself.

Taking aim at average computer users who are ignorant when it comes to things like this is bush league. Just because you can get on IRC and type “/whois joe” doesn’t give you the right to go slam a lame OOB down the poor guy’s/gal’s throat, especially since they don’t know what’s going on, and then flaunt about it. You probably didn’t even write the program that did it.

It’s not funny. It’s stupid. Just because you can send broadcast packets by typing a command in your shell account doesn’t make you “elite” or “scary.” It does, however, make your “penis smaller” and your “gapped front-teeth wider.”

I’m sorry if I seem a tad irate—this was just inspired while I was taking a magical journey in IRC-land (which is becoming more and more the medium of dysfunctional communication) and watching these morons come and harass people who were actually trying to enjoy themselves (however that works on IRC). Just think before you do something next time—is it really worth doing?

THE CHALLENGES OF LIFE AS A HACKER

Also, your site was recently added to our web proxy server to be blocked, much to my disputing. Unfortunately, there’s no way around this as it’s done right in the Livingstons that we dial up.

Dave Wrecker of Universes Destroyer of Worlds

While what you say is true for the most part, you must also remember that this is only IRC and that IRC is only part of the Internet, neither of which can be con- sidered “real life.” Half the problems we face are caused by people who want to apply “real life” solutions to matters of the net. So don’t burst a blood vessel over what the little ASCII characters on your screen are doing. Yelling at the TV is far more productive.

Dear 2600:

I own a large apartment complex (100+ units) and in the past 3-4 months I have had reports and documentation of calls to 900 numbers (sex lines) from several residents’ apartments. The calls are being billed on the customers’ RBOC bill from third-party billing agencies. The calls take place when the residents are not home and in one case the resident was out of state.

I can’t believe that someone is getting into the apartment with a mas- ter key as they are tightly controlled and the events are all during daylight hours. We have lots of nosy neighbors and a service crew of four people who ask questions of anyone who is not a resident.

Each resident has a portable phone. Could someone be accessing their phone line through the portable phone? I was able to listen to the caller’s voice as it was recorded by one of the billing companies. It was too clear to be coming from a portable phone. This leads me to believe that the hacker is getting into the E5 switch and fooling Ameritech’s equipment as to the source of the call. Is this possible?

Please give us a clue as to how this may be happening. The residents to whom this is happening to are not wealthy people.