WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:27.480 So, like you said, you started with BBSs in the early 80s. 00:27.480 --> 00:33.680 Now, was there a certain kind of BBS software or a specific BBS that you thought really 00:33.680 --> 00:38.480 influenced you at the beginning? 00:38.480 --> 00:39.480 Not at the beginning. 00:39.480 --> 00:47.080 I mean, the one I liked was RBBS and later on when I ran my own, I started with RBBS 00:47.080 --> 00:53.960 and then somebody convinced me to switch to QuickBBS and that was a lot better and that 00:53.960 --> 00:59.360 was the one that really got me interested in programming, I guess. 00:59.360 --> 01:03.320 Not just using the BBS, but I actually tried to write my own after that. 01:03.320 --> 01:05.600 Did you end up writing your own? 01:05.600 --> 01:06.960 I didn't finish it. 01:06.960 --> 01:11.040 I think everyone started their own and never finished it. 01:11.040 --> 01:17.520 Is there a, I mean, so in terms of, I mean, RBBS, is RBBS and or QuickBBS the quintessential 01:17.520 --> 01:18.520 BBS to you? 01:18.520 --> 01:24.360 Those PC ANSI-supported 80-column BBSs? 01:24.360 --> 01:30.240 Yeah probably QuickBBS for the public domain boards, you know, all the pirate boards ran 01:30.240 --> 01:36.680 celerity or, you know, they're all the Emulex hacks it seems like. 01:36.680 --> 01:41.600 Did you keep track of any of the ANSI groups that were going by and stuff like that? 01:41.600 --> 01:42.600 Not really. 01:42.600 --> 01:52.280 I mean, I remember, what, ACID and, that's the only one I can remember. 01:52.280 --> 01:54.240 There was like ACID and ICE is the other one. 01:54.240 --> 01:55.240 ICE, right. 01:55.240 --> 01:56.240 It's all coming back. 01:56.240 --> 01:57.240 Yeah. 01:57.240 --> 02:01.200 Well there's ACID, ICE, TRIBE, others, you know, and the problem is what I find is that 02:01.200 --> 02:09.200 it tends to be ACID and ICE and, you know, and there were like 200 other groups but never 02:09.200 --> 02:11.560 got that name recognition. 02:11.560 --> 02:17.800 You know, there really seems to be like almost a, almost a template for how your BBS has 02:17.800 --> 02:24.400 to be in terms of like, you know, it's got to have a, it's got to have a dark adjective 02:24.400 --> 02:30.960 and a dark noun so it's got to be forbidden castle or lost cavern or damaged, you know. 02:30.960 --> 02:31.960 Yeah. 02:31.960 --> 02:37.280 Well there was all the toxic wasteland type boards and there was one called festering 02:37.280 --> 02:39.680 pit of file excretions. 02:39.680 --> 02:41.720 Those were the pirate boards I think. 02:41.720 --> 02:47.120 One of the things that's really lost is how much time you spend on your BBS, trying to 02:47.120 --> 02:48.120 make it work. 02:48.120 --> 02:49.120 Oh God, yeah. 02:49.120 --> 02:50.120 Here are hours of it. 02:50.120 --> 02:56.360 Yeah, I remember I spent, when I set up Quick BBS I spent, I think the whole summer, staying 02:56.360 --> 03:03.280 up all night every night, playing on the same REM tape over and over all summer and finally 03:03.280 --> 03:06.000 got it up and running. 03:06.000 --> 03:07.000 Actually it was running the whole time. 03:07.000 --> 03:15.680 I just was making it look better and working on the ANSI and doing all that stuff. 03:15.680 --> 03:20.400 I asked this in a different way but, I mean, is there a specific BBS in your past outside 03:20.400 --> 03:25.080 of your own that you think really has an influence on you or that's a particular favorite that 03:25.080 --> 03:30.440 you are always trying to get on? 03:30.440 --> 03:37.720 No, there's not a certain one that comes to mind. 03:37.720 --> 03:41.800 There were some that were hard to get on. 03:41.800 --> 03:46.000 The Lexicon was one of the big pirate boards. 03:46.000 --> 03:51.920 I think they only had two lines or so but I can't think of any particular one. 03:51.920 --> 03:56.360 They were all hard to get on, all the good ones. 03:56.360 --> 04:03.320 I do remember though that we found out a trick, this was later when I was into hacking. 04:03.320 --> 04:08.160 There was a Southwestern Bell system called DATU where I could call up a phone number 04:08.160 --> 04:14.760 and enter, it was a Southwestern Bell lineman used this to access lines and if a bullet 04:14.760 --> 04:20.560 board was busy I could call this up and enter that bullet board's phone number and it would 04:20.560 --> 04:25.600 cause enough, it would cause the line quality to go so bad that it would drop carrier so 04:25.600 --> 04:35.600 then I could get in so that was my way of getting into boards that were busy. 04:35.600 --> 04:43.280 The pirate BBS's, especially now that pirate, now that pirating has taken on essentially 04:43.280 --> 04:49.520 the same quality of pervasiveness as dope smoking, essentially now it's something that 04:49.520 --> 04:54.520 everybody does and we'll talk about and there's a few every year who get whacked and then 04:54.520 --> 05:01.360 it's the other millions who are just like, well bad for him. 05:01.360 --> 05:09.000 Back then it's a different kind of environment really, I mean just the relative scarcity 05:09.000 --> 05:19.440 of them and the amount of time spent, I don't know if you had any thoughts or opinions on 05:19.440 --> 05:26.000 the difference of pirate boards in the past, what it was like. 05:26.000 --> 05:33.840 I haven't kept up with the pirate scene, I'm a consumer now, not a producer. 05:33.840 --> 05:42.960 Well I mean the mid 80's kind of BBS's, mid 80's early 90's BBS's. 05:42.960 --> 05:51.840 You had the crackers, the couriers, the suppliers, I guess you have all that today. 05:51.840 --> 05:59.720 I was a cracker for a short while and then a courier and then eventually moved on from 05:59.720 --> 06:04.680 the pirating to the freaking and then to the hacking so pirating was just kind of a short 06:04.680 --> 06:09.640 phase I guess on the road to hacking. 06:09.640 --> 06:19.040 Now when you wrote ToneLoke, ToneLoke is significantly better than what comes before it. 06:19.040 --> 06:36.120 I attended a war dialing talk in 2002, I attended a war dialing talk that covered and one of 06:36.120 --> 06:40.800 his main themes was you should use ToneLoke because it's the only good one and this is 06:40.800 --> 06:43.880 when I first encountered ToneLoke. 06:43.880 --> 06:51.400 I mean did you have an inspiration for doing this program? 06:51.400 --> 06:56.920 It started off, I actually went through another phase kind of after pirating and right before 06:56.920 --> 07:04.240 freaking of voicemail box hacking and there was a voicemail system that had an administration 07:04.240 --> 07:09.120 box and it had a four digit password on it and I was trying to hack this box so I wrote 07:09.120 --> 07:13.520 this program called Boxer that just tried all the four digit codes and it would let 07:13.520 --> 07:19.540 me listen to it on the modem while it hacked and that program later I modified it and turned 07:19.540 --> 07:25.800 it into ToneLoke so it would dial scanning for PBX's and modems so that's how it started. 07:25.800 --> 07:30.640 It wasn't even a war dialer, it was something else and then I first used it for actually 07:30.640 --> 07:36.320 just for getting PBX's which you could use to call free long distance and freaking and 07:36.320 --> 07:38.280 stuff like that. 07:38.280 --> 07:43.480 Then I added the ability to scan for modems as I got more into hacking and eventually 07:43.480 --> 07:46.200 that's all I used it for, the modems. 07:46.200 --> 07:53.840 Did you get much, I mean it was more difficult back then than it is now but do you remember 07:53.840 --> 07:58.200 any of the feedback you got from people or people using it in ways you didn't expect 07:58.200 --> 08:01.440 or? 08:01.440 --> 08:08.360 Yeah I remember I first gave it to my friends so we could all use it to hack PBX's and 08:08.360 --> 08:14.200 then somebody sent it to one of the pirate boards and that's how it started to get popular 08:14.200 --> 08:19.160 was the couriers back then needed to have long distance code so they could call it long 08:19.160 --> 08:24.040 distance and send all these wares everywhere so they started using it to hack PBX's and 08:24.040 --> 08:32.040 it just got more and more popular and I heard people would use it through, when you could 08:32.040 --> 08:36.600 scan for modems they would want to scan an area that wasn't local to them so they would 08:36.600 --> 08:42.000 actually get on an internet out dial which lets you access a modem in another part of 08:42.000 --> 08:46.600 the country or the world through the internet for free and they would scan through the internet 08:46.600 --> 08:51.080 using this remote modem, that was one cool idea. 08:51.080 --> 09:03.800 Let's see one person used it to register for a class at UT Austin, they have a phone system 09:03.800 --> 09:07.640 where you call up and dial codes and you dial the class you want to add and the class was 09:07.640 --> 09:11.240 full and he really wanted to get in so he programmed Tone Locke to just keep trying 09:11.240 --> 09:16.280 over and over until the class opened up and he finally got it. 09:16.280 --> 09:17.280 What else? 09:17.280 --> 09:26.680 There was another, oh yeah, someone used it kind of to harass somebody, they programmed 09:26.680 --> 09:34.040 Tone Locke to call up a pager prefix and page 10,000 people to one person's phone number 09:34.040 --> 09:38.760 and so that person started getting calls for starting right away for like two weeks on 09:38.760 --> 09:44.080 their phone just from being paged by everybody so those are some of the weird things people 09:44.080 --> 09:45.080 have used it for. 09:45.080 --> 09:51.480 Yeah, I mean one of the things that's interesting about it is that it persists as a admired 09:51.480 --> 09:52.480 tool. 09:52.480 --> 10:02.680 I mean did you know about, how do I put it, it seems like a lot of programming experience 10:02.680 --> 10:03.680 went into it. 10:03.680 --> 10:09.680 I mean certainly your graphical representation of exchanges is highly touted. 10:09.680 --> 10:14.800 I have to give credit to Mucho Moss for that, that was totally his idea and that was one 10:14.800 --> 10:16.600 of his big contributions to Tone Locke. 10:16.600 --> 10:20.880 I guess let me give some history on how he came in. 10:20.880 --> 10:25.440 I had written Tone Locke and something happened, I lost the source code, my hard drive crashed 10:25.440 --> 10:31.320 or something so I stopped working on it and he came across it and liked it and he wanted 10:31.320 --> 10:38.200 to add some more features to it so he asked me if he could work on it and I told him yeah 10:38.200 --> 10:41.440 but I lost the source and I don't want to rewrite it so he offered to rewrite it and 10:41.440 --> 10:45.280 bring it back up to where it was and he did that and then we both started working on it 10:45.280 --> 10:49.440 together from then on so that's why the Tone Locke you see now is his minor threat, Mucho 10:49.440 --> 10:55.360 Moss and he came up with the tone map, the graphical representation which was one of 10:55.360 --> 11:02.440 the cool things about it. 11:02.440 --> 11:08.400 Was there, I mean as you said it was uploaded to a pirate board, did you find, even though 11:08.400 --> 11:15.160 you're uploading it to a relatively obscure set of boards, did you find it coming back 11:15.160 --> 11:19.960 to you in strange places, like running into it where you didn't expect it or running 11:19.960 --> 11:20.960 into it? 11:20.960 --> 11:28.400 I started seeing it on all the pirate boards, every board would have Tone Locke eventually 11:28.400 --> 11:35.160 and then later when the internet came around, around 93 or 94, it was on some internet sites, 11:35.160 --> 11:42.320 hacking sites, yeah the last version we actually released was in September of 94 and that's 11:42.320 --> 11:50.280 the version that's still out there today. 11:50.280 --> 11:56.520 If you had to describe the kind of boards that you were on in the early 90s, how would 11:56.520 --> 11:59.400 you describe them? 11:59.400 --> 12:07.520 In the early 90s, like 90 and 91, there were still a few public domain boards I was on 12:07.520 --> 12:15.760 kind of moved toward the hacking boards and then 91, 92 more into the hacking freaking 12:15.760 --> 12:22.760 boards, but only a couple of those, you know I just picked about two or three that I liked 12:22.760 --> 12:27.840 and just stuck to those, so I wasn't on like all the boards or anything. 12:27.840 --> 12:30.880 Well what made them good versus the others? 12:30.880 --> 12:34.920 Just the people on it, I mean that's what makes a board good I think, it didn't matter 12:34.920 --> 12:38.440 what they were running, I don't even remember what they were running, but the message groups, 12:38.440 --> 12:44.360 you know people who you could meet, because I mean through like Scantronics was one board 12:44.360 --> 12:51.080 I remember, I think it was from San Diego maybe, ran by a guy named Cludge and through 12:51.080 --> 12:56.800 that board I made a couple of good friends that I ended up doing a lot of hacking stuff 12:56.800 --> 12:59.720 with later. 12:59.720 --> 13:10.880 Did you have a, I mean, the pirate BBS's at that point, I mean quote unquote the underground 13:10.880 --> 13:17.240 BBS's, had a kind of a standoffish relationship with all the professional boards and all the 13:17.240 --> 13:22.080 public domain boards and all the others, I mean do you have any memories of that, of 13:22.080 --> 13:31.080 like, you know, keep that off here, keep our number out of the hands of the kids and don't 13:31.080 --> 13:33.120 let anyone know where we are and stuff? 13:33.120 --> 13:39.320 Yeah, they all wanted to be secret and elite, you know, a lot of boards, pirate boards had 13:39.320 --> 13:44.520 a PD front, so they looked like a public domain board and if you had special access then it 13:44.520 --> 13:45.800 was actually a pirate board. 13:45.800 --> 13:52.120 One of my friends ran an Opus BBS, which nobody ran a pirate board off Opus, but he actually 13:52.120 --> 13:56.440 ran a PD board, but if you had high enough access you got onto the pirate board and it 13:56.440 --> 14:01.680 looked totally different. 14:01.680 --> 14:06.920 A lot of pirate boards had, were designed to look like some obscure system, like an 14:06.920 --> 14:12.080 old Unix system or whatever and then once you log in, you know, you get the pirate board. 14:12.080 --> 14:16.360 Sometimes there are special passwords to get in and just to get access you might have to 14:16.360 --> 14:21.600 answer some questions like, what does Cosmos stand for, you know, something like that. 14:21.600 --> 14:26.440 I remember when I first got on Scantronics, I was going through the questionnaire and 14:26.440 --> 14:33.800 had to answer some hacking questions and the Sysop Clutch just chatted me and I forgot 14:33.800 --> 14:37.040 what he said, but he gave me access right away for some reason, might have been Tone 14:37.040 --> 14:42.640 Locke, I don't remember. 14:42.640 --> 14:50.400 If you had to describe what it was like, you know, what it was like to be on an underground 14:50.400 --> 14:58.800 board, you know, like how did it feel, you know, like how did it, you know, what was 14:58.800 --> 15:04.440 the, I guess what was the environment like, you know, what was the tone of the posting 15:04.440 --> 15:08.040 or the people and... 15:08.040 --> 15:13.880 Well I guess what made them really useful other than meeting, you know, just other hackers 15:13.880 --> 15:19.000 and people you heard about and stuff was if you were scanning, for example, with Tone 15:19.000 --> 15:23.240 Locke, whatever, you found a system that you didn't recognize, you would post like what 15:23.240 --> 15:27.360 it looked like, post a login prompt and somebody else on there would have already come across 15:27.360 --> 15:31.440 it and figure the whole system out and know, you know, the default passwords and know how 15:31.440 --> 15:36.480 to run it, so you could post that and somebody would respond and give you the full deal, 15:36.480 --> 15:42.200 maybe there's already a text file on it, you know, so that was really useful. 15:42.200 --> 15:46.540 You could read through the message groups of other people's scans, there was a whole 15:46.540 --> 15:52.600 message form called scans and, you know, if you recognized the system that they found, 15:52.600 --> 15:56.160 you could help them out the same way, so that was one useful thing. 15:56.160 --> 16:04.000 Now, going by your age, you were on these at a relatively young age, certainly the earlier 16:04.000 --> 16:10.840 BBSs in the mid-80s, you were very young and even these, you were pretty young, did you 16:10.840 --> 16:15.720 find that they, did you find yourself gravitating to the boards with other young people or was 16:15.720 --> 16:20.720 it just whoever happened to be there, I mean, you know? 16:20.720 --> 16:25.320 Yeah, I don't really care about the age, I mean, I think most people were a little bit 16:25.320 --> 16:32.560 older than me, except for, well, my pirate friends were actually about a year younger 16:32.560 --> 16:35.280 but the hacker people were a little bit older, it seemed like. 16:35.280 --> 16:43.120 Do you think there's a reason why it attracts younger as opposed to just anybody? 16:43.120 --> 16:48.080 Well, when you're 15 and 14, you don't have a car, you don't have a girlfriend, you got 16:48.080 --> 16:54.320 nothing but time, right, especially during the summer, no school, so you've already got, 16:54.320 --> 17:01.920 you know, 18 hours a day to just explore, you know, programming or hacking or whatever, 17:01.920 --> 17:08.000 so I think that's why you see these kids, 15-year-old kids, you know, in Europe hacking 17:08.000 --> 17:13.560 DVDs, I mean, thank God for those kids, right, because they don't have anything better to 17:13.560 --> 17:17.720 do, no car, no girlfriend, that's just what they do, and then once they get a car and 17:17.720 --> 17:23.360 a girlfriend, 17, 18, then, you know, they don't have as much time left to do that stuff. 17:23.360 --> 17:26.880 Did you find that the case with yourself? 17:26.880 --> 17:27.880 Yeah. 17:27.880 --> 17:33.880 Actually, a lot of this stuff happened, I mean, at least I was long enough to drive, 17:33.880 --> 17:39.560 but, you know, and I had to work and go to school, so I had less time, but, you know, 17:39.560 --> 17:45.080 I didn't really get into, ever since I had seen War Games, of course, I was interested 17:45.080 --> 17:54.160 in hacking, but I never met anybody, no other hackers, until, you know, 1990 or so, so, 17:54.160 --> 17:59.120 you know, I was like 18 or 19 by the time I started meeting other people who were interested 17:59.120 --> 18:00.120 in it. 18:00.120 --> 18:06.640 Now, the time between War Games and writing a war dialer is a significant period of time, 18:06.640 --> 18:08.640 almost 10 years. 18:08.640 --> 18:16.360 Yeah, I mean, I guess I wrote Toneloke in 1991, the first version, and War Games, like, 18:16.360 --> 18:20.840 83, I guess, it came out, so, I mean, there were plenty of War Dialers, obviously, there 18:20.840 --> 18:32.200 was, oh god, what were they, do you remember, I forgot now, yeah, the old ones, there was 18:32.200 --> 18:37.720 one in, like, Basic, I'm trying to remember the name, but, anyway, yeah, none of them, 18:37.720 --> 18:42.720 they worked, kind of, but, they did, you know, none of them did random scanning, for one, 18:42.720 --> 18:48.120 that was what Toneloke did differently, and none of them were as configurable as I wanted 18:48.120 --> 18:49.120 to. 18:49.120 --> 18:54.280 Yeah, certainly you have all these features that you pack into it, I mean, was this your 18:54.280 --> 18:59.440 first time you'd written something like this, where you'd said, here's a function that 18:59.440 --> 19:03.120 exists with computers, and I'm going to write a program that does that function even better 19:03.120 --> 19:08.920 and more configured, or had there been other practice programs you'd written? 19:08.920 --> 19:14.080 I had written some public domain software for some little utilities for quick BBS, really 19:14.080 --> 19:22.000 small, stupid things, but this was, yeah, that was the first big one, you know, I'd 19:22.000 --> 19:27.240 started writing that BBS, and I learned C doing that, and then Toneloke was in C, and 19:27.240 --> 19:33.400 I got better at C, running Toneloke, so, but yeah, that was the first big program that 19:33.400 --> 19:43.800 I'd written. 19:43.800 --> 19:53.000 With running your own BBS, which is when, is that in the early 80s as well, or is it 19:53.000 --> 19:54.000 much later? 19:54.000 --> 20:01.440 Yeah, no, it's, okay, so I called my first BBS in 1984, and of course, then I wanted 20:01.440 --> 20:08.920 my own, so I was living with my dad, and we had one phone line, and I set up a BBS, and 20:08.920 --> 20:12.760 as soon as calls started coming in, my dad's trying to answer the phone, it's like, well, 20:12.760 --> 20:17.400 you know, I told him I was running a BBS, so he made me take it down, obviously, so 20:17.400 --> 20:25.160 that didn't work, so I couldn't run a BBS again until 1988, I put up my board, and I 20:25.160 --> 20:33.920 had my own phone line at that point, so that was, yeah, that was my first, my own BBS, 20:33.920 --> 20:36.920 I ran that for about a year and a half. 20:36.920 --> 20:37.920 Do you remember the name? 20:37.920 --> 20:38.920 Atlantis. 20:38.920 --> 20:53.600 Do you have any strong memories about Atlantis? 20:53.600 --> 21:00.600 I mean, I learned a lot doing it, you know, like, I got in, I had been doing basic programming 21:00.600 --> 21:08.320 all along, but I got into more programming like Pascal and C at that point, I got more 21:08.320 --> 21:13.960 interested in networking, my board was a FireNet board, and so I got interested in email and 21:13.960 --> 21:21.200 all that stuff that, you know, I didn't even know about before, nothing, you know, the 21:21.200 --> 21:26.000 board wasn't any spectacular as your average board, it had trade wars on it, people played 21:26.000 --> 21:29.840 that all the time, so, yeah. 21:29.840 --> 21:36.000 Now I assume your board, your time, is this a predates Legend of the Red Dragon, or is 21:36.000 --> 21:37.000 that the same time too? 21:37.000 --> 21:41.480 Legend of, what is that, I don't even, there you go, okay, it's a, it's a role playing 21:41.480 --> 21:47.960 game, it is the single most thing, most common thing I am asked about, related to BBS's 21:47.960 --> 21:51.240 of like, oh, you're going to cover Legend of the Red Dragon, right, it's essentially 21:51.240 --> 21:56.640 a role playing game that has very well done ANSI screens, created by Seth Abel, whose 21:56.640 --> 22:03.720 real name turns out to be Seth Abel Robinson, and I think it dates to 91, 92, okay, and 22:03.720 --> 22:07.120 that was probably after my time as NPD Land. 22:07.120 --> 22:12.080 Yeah, I mean, this is, it just becomes like the most beloved thing, but you know, you 22:12.080 --> 22:17.480 have a lot of cases of that, of like, these very shared experiences over just a few programs, 22:17.480 --> 22:22.480 which is, like I said, why I was so interested when, you know, I was able to get in contact 22:22.480 --> 22:27.720 with the author of Tone Loke, because Tone Loke represents for a lot of kids their first 22:27.720 --> 22:33.640 real, I mean, it's a tool that does this magical thing for you, right, it's like, it's a thing 22:33.640 --> 22:39.240 you put on your computer that finds other computers, and that's a pretty major, major 22:39.240 --> 22:40.240 deal. 22:40.240 --> 22:48.040 Did you, I mean, did you have any competition at that point? 22:48.040 --> 22:56.040 No, I mean, competition came around later, I think, like, there's one called THC Scan, 22:56.040 --> 23:01.920 I think, that's a newer one, I think it might be Windows based, Tone Loke's DOS based, 23:01.920 --> 23:08.600 people think DOS, you know, oh my god, but it actually runs it on Linux too, if you want. 23:08.600 --> 23:13.280 There's some commercial ones, there's, like, Phone Sweep, if you wanted to pay $10,000 23:13.280 --> 23:19.600 for it, it did the same thing as Tone Loke, but it wasn't written by a hacker, so, yeah, 23:19.600 --> 23:22.600 it's worth $10,000, right? 23:22.600 --> 23:28.120 Again, this is one, do you have any strong opinions on that perception of hackers and 23:28.120 --> 23:32.760 underground VPSs, because certainly by the early 90s, they're really being demonized 23:32.760 --> 23:35.000 until the internet shows up to take the heat away. 23:35.000 --> 23:41.520 I mean, did you have any thoughts on that? 23:41.520 --> 23:47.240 Nothing that, you know, that hasn't already been said before, I mean, the media, you know, 23:47.240 --> 23:50.840 they're going to do what they want, they have their own agenda, and some of the people who 23:50.840 --> 23:55.120 interviewed me, or at least one of the people, told me directly, because I was asking him, 23:55.120 --> 23:59.280 I'm trying to fight this case, I have a First Amendment argument when I was banned from 23:59.280 --> 24:03.600 the internet, and he's like, well, you know, I can cover that, but you have to understand 24:03.600 --> 24:06.600 journalists are not your agent, you know. 24:06.600 --> 24:10.680 We have our own agenda, and you never know what's going to happen at the end, you never 24:10.680 --> 24:18.040 know what the spin's going to be, you know, so, I mean, that's no surprise to a lot of 24:18.040 --> 24:24.040 people, but to people who, you know, maybe hackers who've gotten in trouble and they 24:24.040 --> 24:30.280 aren't faced with the media trying to interview them, I guess that is a surprise to them when 24:30.280 --> 24:37.280 the thing comes out on TV or in the magazine, and it looks different from what they expected. 24:37.280 --> 24:45.840 You know, is there anything about hacker BBS's that you think hasn't really come out in terms 24:45.840 --> 24:51.200 of like, you know, aspects of using it or what it was like that you think just doesn't 24:51.200 --> 25:02.480 get covered because it's not interesting enough? 25:02.480 --> 25:07.840 Like the old hacker boards, you mean? 25:07.840 --> 25:12.040 That's too obscure an open question, it's a perfectly valid answer, by the way. 25:12.040 --> 25:16.840 Yeah, I just, it's been so long, I haven't, you know, it's been ten years really since 25:16.840 --> 25:17.840 hacker boards, so. 25:17.840 --> 25:23.040 Certainly, I mean, that's, you know, that's all part of it, I mean, do you have any particularly 25:23.040 --> 25:31.920 strong memories, good ones or bad ones from that time that you still remember? 25:31.920 --> 25:38.000 I like, I mean, going to the hacker conventions, that wasn't really directly related to the 25:38.000 --> 25:41.360 bullet boards, but all the same people you knew from the boards, you finally could meet 25:41.360 --> 25:50.040 them, you know, in person, so that was fun, and, you know, get, drink and do crazy things. 25:50.040 --> 25:51.040 Which cons? 25:51.040 --> 25:55.480 I went, the first one I went to was Christmas Con or Ho Ho Con, because it was right in 25:55.480 --> 26:03.840 Houston, close enough, and then went to Summer Con, and then the next Christmas Con, that's 26:03.840 --> 26:07.920 all I've ever been to, I've never been to Hope or Def Con or any of those. 26:07.920 --> 26:11.600 Well, and they really are different animals, by the way. 26:11.600 --> 26:13.320 Well now there's 2,000 people. 26:13.320 --> 26:14.800 5,000, that's the thing. 26:14.800 --> 26:18.640 Yeah, I mean, the biggest one I ever went to was, I think, 200 or 300 people. 26:18.640 --> 26:22.320 And the Summer Cons are still going on, actually. 26:22.320 --> 26:23.320 Are they? 26:23.320 --> 26:24.320 Yeah. 26:24.320 --> 26:29.000 Yeah, there used to be like 20 people, you know, invite only. 26:29.000 --> 26:32.560 I think I went to one that was actually invite only, but there were still like 100 people 26:32.560 --> 26:33.560 there. 26:33.560 --> 26:34.560 Big invitations. 26:34.560 --> 26:35.560 Yeah. 26:35.560 --> 26:48.120 I mean, you know, in describing those, I mean, what was the need to go, you know, what was, 26:48.120 --> 26:50.920 what made you say, you know, why not, I'll go to this thing? 26:50.920 --> 26:54.840 Well, Ho Ho Con was so close that I couldn't not go. 26:54.840 --> 26:57.720 It was 200 miles away, you know, Houston. 26:57.720 --> 27:01.960 And there was going to be people there from the boards I'd been calling that I'd never 27:01.960 --> 27:02.960 met. 27:02.960 --> 27:07.800 I hadn't met any other hackers in person. 27:07.800 --> 27:15.480 Most of my friends local to me were more of the pirate type, where's dudes, and all the 27:15.480 --> 27:19.240 hacker people I knew were in other cities. 27:19.240 --> 27:21.840 So this was a chance to meet them in person. 27:21.840 --> 27:26.960 And you know, after that, some of these people I started, you know, working more with on 27:26.960 --> 27:31.520 hacking things and all kinds of things. 27:31.520 --> 27:40.480 Let's see, as a sysop, like you said, it was a relatively short time, but we ever asked 27:40.480 --> 27:45.360 to co sysop on other boards? 27:45.360 --> 27:46.360 I don't think so. 27:46.360 --> 27:48.800 Not that I can think of. 27:48.800 --> 27:52.480 I mean, it would be a big deal because I mean, if you weren't a sysop, if you didn't have 27:52.480 --> 27:58.120 your own board, it was a big deal to be a co sysop because I don't know, it was neat, 27:58.120 --> 27:59.120 I guess. 27:59.120 --> 28:06.000 If you already had your own board, who cares about another board, you know. 28:06.000 --> 28:13.960 Did you have any, again, answer as much as you want to remember or care to, but I mean, 28:13.960 --> 28:18.760 were you aware when the Sun Devil busts start happening and when, I mean, certainly in the 28:18.760 --> 28:25.520 early 90s, a lot of boards are just now starting to be seized, busted and removed and taken 28:25.520 --> 28:26.520 down? 28:26.520 --> 28:29.960 Do you have memories from that time? 28:29.960 --> 28:36.800 No, that was, I think it was 1990, at least the Austin Raids, and that was just before 28:36.800 --> 28:42.840 I got into the scene, so I didn't know about it when it happened. 28:42.840 --> 28:48.920 I knew about it, you know, a year or two later, you know, the Steve Jackson games raid and 28:48.920 --> 28:54.760 I met, you know, some of the Austin people, Eric Bloodaxe was in Austin and I guess that 28:54.760 --> 28:57.400 was the main one who I met. 28:57.400 --> 29:07.120 But yeah, it was before my time, before I was into hacking, really. 29:07.120 --> 29:12.880 Do you think that hacking and freaking BBSs were an important part or a side effect with 29:12.880 --> 29:13.880 BBSs? 29:13.880 --> 29:19.840 Do you have a, in the scheme of things, as you knew it, I mean, do you think they were? 29:19.840 --> 29:25.560 Well, BBSs were just the way to meet other hackers, that was the main point. 29:25.560 --> 29:32.000 You know, hacking by yourself, like I said, I was interested for like six years or more, 29:32.000 --> 29:36.080 you know, I just, I didn't know what to do, I mean, I tried things, I scanned and I found 29:36.080 --> 29:41.480 some HP 3000 system, I had no idea what it was, I tried everything, I probably spent 29:41.480 --> 29:45.800 weeks on that system when, meanwhile, you know, probably five miles away you have the 29:45.800 --> 29:50.320 mentor who knew everything about the system, but I didn't know the mentor. 29:50.320 --> 29:57.320 And I remember I had given, I had print out of the system to somebody at school who was 29:57.320 --> 30:02.200 on a hacker board and he posted it, got a response from somebody on the board with a 30:02.200 --> 30:07.360 printout on exactly how to hack it and I was reading the message and it was from the mentor, 30:07.360 --> 30:11.160 I didn't know who he was at that time, but years later I realized, hey, that's, you know, 30:11.160 --> 30:12.580 same guy. 30:12.580 --> 30:18.600 So I mean, I think that was the main, you know, things, BBSs were just a way to meet 30:18.600 --> 30:22.760 other people so you could learn about the system you're trying to hack, you know, download 30:22.760 --> 30:28.320 text files, download Frac, read about the system, you know, you found scanning. 30:28.320 --> 30:32.560 Do you remember reading Mentor's Conscience of a Hacker? 30:32.560 --> 30:33.560 Yeah. 30:33.560 --> 30:34.560 I remember that. 30:34.560 --> 30:35.560 It was all caps, wasn't it? 30:35.560 --> 30:36.560 It's kind of weird. 30:36.560 --> 30:37.560 Maybe one of the copies you got. 30:37.560 --> 30:38.560 Okay. 30:38.560 --> 30:41.560 It might have been converted, but yeah, I remember that. 30:41.560 --> 30:46.520 Do you have any memories of it? 30:46.520 --> 30:51.200 That was before I was, had really done any hacking, but I think it just made me want 30:51.200 --> 30:59.520 to be a hacker more after reading it, I mean, it was, you know, I could relate to it. 30:59.520 --> 31:07.800 What do you think makes a good BBS? 31:07.800 --> 31:10.280 I think mostly just, you know, the people on it. 31:10.280 --> 31:17.000 I mean, in the end, there were cool boards that had cool ANSI and, you know, 10 lines 31:17.000 --> 31:23.320 and 300 gigs or whatever, I guess it was 300 megs back then, right? 31:23.320 --> 31:29.400 But yeah, I mean, some of the best boards were just, you know, the cheesy software, 31:29.400 --> 31:30.400 I don't even know what they're running. 31:30.400 --> 31:34.800 It might have been black and white, you know, but the people on it, you know, the content, 31:34.800 --> 31:39.720 the messages, yeah, that was, to me, what made a good board. 31:39.720 --> 31:48.360 Did you end up affiliating with any groups? 31:48.360 --> 31:52.760 Pirate groups, yeah, like when I was going through the pirate thing, I was with a group 31:52.760 --> 31:53.760 called Public Enemy. 31:53.760 --> 31:58.960 They were kind of, they were mostly Canadians and then most, like half in Canada and half 31:58.960 --> 32:05.520 in Austin, I think, and people spread around, and I started out, I didn't have a fast enough 32:05.520 --> 32:13.360 modem to be a courier, so I started just cracking games and then did some couriering, but that 32:13.360 --> 32:20.360 wasn't really interesting, so that was it, and just my little phase through hacking. 32:20.360 --> 32:21.360 Yeah, I mean... 32:21.360 --> 32:22.360 I mean, pirating. 32:22.360 --> 32:31.040 I mean, when, certainly by the early 90s, when you start having pirating, it's on a 32:31.040 --> 32:33.040 whole different scale than the others. 32:33.040 --> 32:38.600 I mean, I don't know if you ever ran into this phenomenon, the for-pay pirate BBSs that 32:38.600 --> 32:41.680 were like a lot of money to be on. 32:41.680 --> 32:47.160 Yeah, no, I mean, I couldn't understand why anybody would pay, but apparently they were 32:47.160 --> 32:50.280 out there. 32:50.280 --> 32:52.400 I do remember one thing. 32:52.400 --> 32:58.640 This was sometime in 1988 to 1990 when I was into the public domain scene, I had the public 32:58.640 --> 33:07.280 domain board, FidoNet, all that, and we had these monthly CTSA, Central Texas CISOPs Association 33:07.280 --> 33:14.520 meetings, and Southwestern Bell was doing something where, because when you were a CISOP 33:14.520 --> 33:19.600 and you had a phone line, it was used 24 hours a day, because your board was always busy, 33:19.600 --> 33:25.520 so you were paying $15 a month for this phone line, but most people, they buy a phone line, 33:25.520 --> 33:29.720 and they pay $15 a month, they don't use it that much per day. 33:29.720 --> 33:35.280 So Southwestern Bell was trying to charge more money for CISOPs, for people who were 33:35.280 --> 33:38.640 on boards, even though the deal was, you buy a phone line, you can use it as much as you 33:38.640 --> 33:40.000 want. 33:40.000 --> 33:48.600 And so the CISOPs ganged up and formed this thing called COSAR that was against that, 33:48.600 --> 33:55.760 and we did things like, they had International Pulse Dial Month, I don't know how international 33:55.760 --> 34:02.400 it really was, but the thing was, it costs Southwestern Bell less money to process touch 34:02.400 --> 34:04.400 tones than it does to process pulse. 34:04.400 --> 34:07.160 Do you remember pulse dialing? 34:07.160 --> 34:13.680 Some people may not, but they would charge more for it, right? 34:13.680 --> 34:17.400 So what the CISOPs did, they agreed for the whole month, whatever month it was, to use 34:17.400 --> 34:22.560 nothing but pulse dialing, and to try to convince all their users to also do the same, to overload 34:22.560 --> 34:28.120 Southwestern Bell circuits, just to prove that it costs you more to process pulse dialing 34:28.120 --> 34:29.120 than it does for touch tone. 34:29.120 --> 34:33.360 So that was like a little battle against the man. 34:33.360 --> 34:35.080 Were you a member of COSAR? 34:35.080 --> 34:41.280 Well, yeah, COSAR wasn't really official, you didn't have to join or anything, but 34:41.280 --> 34:44.240 I did the pulse dialing thing. 34:44.240 --> 34:50.320 I was a member of the CTSA. 34:50.320 --> 34:52.840 I do know the COSAR thing. 34:52.840 --> 34:57.200 The common belief is that the reason that they were actually going after CISOPs was 34:57.200 --> 35:05.320 because they were going to implement a version of Minitel, and that they perceived that bulletin 35:05.320 --> 35:10.160 boards were a direct threat. 35:10.160 --> 35:14.640 So their theory was, let's destroy it, or price it out of existence, and get rid of 35:14.640 --> 35:15.640 them. 35:15.640 --> 35:17.480 And so they did this crazy thing. 35:17.480 --> 35:24.920 And then this lawyer starts COSAR, and it gets huge, and they back off that, and there's 35:24.920 --> 35:30.160 articles about them, and insulting stuff, and yeah, and that ultimately they do back 35:30.160 --> 35:31.160 off. 35:31.160 --> 35:37.240 It's one of the major triumphs, because a lot of the announcement goes over Phytonet 35:37.240 --> 35:39.000 to do it. 35:39.000 --> 35:41.240 Did you keep track much of the Phytonet politics? 35:41.240 --> 35:47.040 Kind of, well, I mean, yeah, those people, they just loved the drama it seemed like. 35:47.040 --> 35:52.120 I guess the internet was around, I didn't know anything about it, but kind of parallel 35:52.120 --> 35:57.200 to Phytonet, except Phytonet was using all modems. 35:57.200 --> 36:06.560 You had the echo mail, and the local Phytonet people, they met. 36:06.560 --> 36:12.880 I was part of that, and I don't know, it was just very political, it seemed like. 36:12.880 --> 36:17.640 The guy who was the hub for Austin, he had total control, like a dictatorship, and if 36:17.640 --> 36:21.800 he didn't like you, you weren't going to get your mail, there's nothing you can do. 36:21.800 --> 36:28.360 And he ended up not liking me much after a while, so I eventually, my board went down 36:28.360 --> 36:35.120 for about a month, and you have a node number, which is like your identity, kind of like 36:35.120 --> 36:40.240 your domain nowadays, and he assigned my node number to somebody else pretty quickly, you 36:40.240 --> 36:45.680 know, which he was allowed to do, and so I lost it. 36:45.680 --> 36:50.280 So yeah, Phytonet's full of politics, I don't even know, are they still around, are they 36:50.280 --> 36:51.280 still doing anything? 36:51.280 --> 36:52.280 Yes. 36:52.280 --> 36:53.880 They're just an internet domain now, right? 36:53.880 --> 36:54.880 No. 36:54.880 --> 36:56.600 Something, phytonet.org, I mean, you can email. 36:56.600 --> 37:00.600 The Denton Area Phytonet's Association is still meeting monthly. 37:00.600 --> 37:01.600 Wow. 37:01.600 --> 37:08.760 There, Steve Corrella is the current region coordinator for this area. 37:08.760 --> 37:16.760 So Mike Masterson was the Austin hub, I don't know where he is today, but, you know, 1 colon 37:16.760 --> 37:23.920 382 slash 1, you know. 37:23.920 --> 37:27.440 Do you remember the PK ARC versus PK ZIP thing? 37:27.440 --> 37:28.440 Yeah, I remember that. 37:28.440 --> 37:29.440 That was a big deal. 37:29.440 --> 37:30.440 What was your opinion of it? 37:30.440 --> 37:37.640 Well, so the story I remember is C came out with ARC, a software company called C, with 37:37.640 --> 37:43.320 this compression thing, ARC, and then Phil Katz came out with a better version of ARC, 37:43.320 --> 37:49.400 did the same thing, but it was faster, I guess, and so they sued him, and then meanwhile he 37:49.400 --> 37:54.080 was working on this new thing on the side called ZIP that was way better than ARC, faster, 37:54.080 --> 37:55.080 smaller. 37:55.080 --> 38:01.120 So by the time they won, and I think they did win in the end, everybody was using ZIP 38:01.120 --> 38:06.200 because all the SysOps were against ARC, and so nobody used ARC anymore. 38:06.200 --> 38:10.640 And that was, you know, like the small guy against the company, I don't think C was probably 38:10.640 --> 38:15.200 that big at the time, but it seemed like it. 38:15.200 --> 38:26.320 Did you, um, I mean, did you perceive any of the arguments going by or any of that stuff 38:26.320 --> 38:27.320 with it? 38:27.320 --> 38:33.640 I mean, any of the, did you feel a need to switch to get away from ARC? 38:33.640 --> 38:39.800 I just thought ZIP was better, I mean, just for technically better, you know, faster and 38:39.800 --> 38:45.160 smaller, that was really all I cared about. 38:45.160 --> 38:51.080 What influence did War Games have on you? 38:51.080 --> 38:57.240 It just made me want to, you know, pack, I guess, I mean, I don't know, you know, he 38:57.240 --> 39:03.520 had dialed in and he wanted to play those games or whatever, and I didn't want to dial 39:03.520 --> 39:06.760 in a NORAD, but you know, just anything, it didn't really matter. 39:06.760 --> 39:11.440 Actually, I did want to change my grades, like everybody probably, and so I found some 39:11.440 --> 39:16.000 War Dialer and started scanning my school, I didn't find anything, I don't even think 39:16.000 --> 39:22.200 they had a computer at that time, but yeah, I'm in suspense, God, you know, six months 39:22.200 --> 39:29.320 trying to do that, no luck, I ended up finding some system that the schools used to borrow 39:29.320 --> 39:32.080 the film strips or something, so. 39:32.080 --> 39:34.280 Well, that's something. 39:34.280 --> 39:39.480 Something, not what I wanted. 39:39.480 --> 39:49.760 Is there, is there, I keep separating your time with PBSs from the early 80s to the early 39:49.760 --> 39:58.360 90s because the style of boards are different, I mean, you know, lots more speed, a larger 39:58.360 --> 40:01.960 base of people, so there's like a greater expansion of them, you know, really between 40:01.960 --> 40:06.560 those two, but is there anything about boards that you think people have lost knowledge 40:06.560 --> 40:11.280 of, like, that just people just don't know and don't remember and that people who use 40:11.280 --> 40:20.800 it now don't know and remember with the internet that you think they should know? 40:20.800 --> 40:26.280 How long it took to load up a page, you know, 300 baud, I mean, you sit there and wait for 40:26.280 --> 40:32.280 it to go like this, people don't know that, I mean, they think, I guess the webpages are 40:32.280 --> 40:45.720 slow if you have a motive now, but, you know, you're getting images and all that, what else? 40:45.720 --> 40:55.760 Yeah, I don't know, I mean, you have websites that are kind of message forums and kind of 40:55.760 --> 40:59.800 a community, but a lot of boards were like a community, you know, everybody, you didn't 40:59.800 --> 41:06.760 know each other in person, but you knew each other on the board, and I don't know, nothing 41:06.760 --> 41:33.760 specific though.