tKC or “How a deaf from Africa cracking scene captured”
** Many have heard of Kevin Mitnick , the icon of the hacker community, but few know that the cracker world also has its own icon - tHE kEYBOARD cAPER. This article describes the period when his team dominated the entire cracking scene.
I was born in South Africa, still here. White, 45+ years old ( at the moment - hereinafter Mann Calavera ). Sorry, I will not tell you the date of birth or my real name, but the fact is that my name is tKC . :-) And yes, I was deaf and grew up in a school for deaf children, until I got into normal at the age of 13 because my speech was well developed and my condition was a little “better” than it was for special schools. I do not speak sign language with my parents; in fact, it is for this reason that I communicate better than other deaf people, if you understand what I mean. I also don't speak English, because I grew up in an Afrikaans speaking environment where I read lips.
In childhood, my friends and I were bad guys. We hijacked cars and motorcycles, rode night or two, but then always returned them back, but not directly to that place. These were good times. Once we hijacked a blue Ferrari and, oh bl *, the cops stopped us. The girl who was with me prompted to pretend to be deaf - they did just that: they used sign language, pretended not to understand, and we were eventually released. After this incident, we decided not to engage in more hijackings.
On Christmas Day of 1984, I had my first computer - Spectravideo , similar to Commodore, Spectrum, etc. and of course I loved messing with it. Some of my friends already had computers. We exchanged games, and it was on Spectavideo that I started learning programming at BASIC, but after a couple of months my computer was covered with a basin, and my parents could not afford to buy a new one. It is a pity, but in 1987 I graduated from school without computers.
In 1988, I hired to work at a bank as an ordinary clerk, and in the evening I attended a college where I studied programming on COBOL. But those courses were completely suck and I scored on them in 5 months - too slowly. After that, I thought that the computers were not mine, but already in January of 1990, I decided to look at the new XT (8088, 8 Mhz). I could not resist and bought. So I got my own PC, which I bought myself (8 Mhz, 20 Mbg HDD, monochrome). Hell, I didn’t even know what DOS is, I didn’t understand what C:> is , etc. I have never seen a PC before. But since I bought it, I decided to figure out what it is. I stuck at the computer for days, with breaks to sleep before work. He began to forget his friends, did not hang out with girls, etc. Within a few months I had a good understanding of DOS, and once a new AT (80286, 12 Mhz) reached South Africa and I upgraded my PC to 286. Then I made friends with computer vendors and through them I received my first “free” software - Norton Utilities , PC-Tools, etc. Also I got Pascal, which I still love.
')
I could no longer do without a PC, only computers were in my head, people didn't care about me anymore. One day a friend gave me a few toys ( Space Quest I / II). I pribaldel from them, but all these copy protections floated me. I turned to my friends with the question: “ Where do you take crackles? ” But no one could directly answer me. I asked around and someone said that for this you need to learn ASM and HEX ... what kind of garbage is this? Some people promised to get me a Borland's Turbo Debugger and Assembly. Without some manuals or lessons, after some time, I myself figured out how to edit HEX (using Norton's DiskEdit) and program on ASM. It was not so easy, because I did not write much, but just broke and left the original EXE for backups (I didn’t know how to write patches yet). And then I started asking friends to bring me games without cracks, so that I could hack them and learn, but my friends were happy that I gave them cracked games.
In February 1991, I heard about the new Beltel chat, similar to IRC. One of my friends decided to try this thing. All you had to do was buy a modem and create an account in Telkom, which he did. One evening I went to see what it was and I liked it. Then I bought my first modem (2400b) and created an account, and the fun began. There I made a lot of friends, got access to Beltel spiral accounts, which could be used for free. Blade Runner and Doc Hollywood helped me a lot with hacker skills. I used the nickname Dr. Wolfen in Beltel after Blade Runner advised me a cool game - Wolfenstein 3D.
In April 1991, I moved to another bank and this time to the computer department. After a couple of months, the hackers asked me if I had heard a scene about BBS that I had no idea about. They explained everything to me and gave a couple of numbers to some BBSok. I remember my first call to LeClub , it was very cool - a collection of files! I noticed how many cracks have already been made by different people. I downloaded them all that I saw and learned from them. Most of them were created by the Razor 1911 team (for games). I started hacking more by downloading shareware from BBSok. And soon I did and filled up so many of my cracks already that people paid attention to me. It was then that The Keyboard Caper was born.
August 1991, Blade Runner told me that at that time there were 2 main teams in South Africa: MoT ( Masters of Terror ) and HAi ( Hacking Attack Inc ), with which MoT specialized on varese, and HAi especially on hacking, and I like he was not eager to enter somewhere. One night, Acid Phreak (one of the founders of the Forest Crew hacker team) said that I should launch my own BBS and soon after that I created my own board - Wolfenstein BBS . As a sysop, I was known as Dr. Wolfen, because I didn’t want someone to know that this is a tKC board. My BBS grew into the largest in South Africa and contained a large collection of cracks and shareware programs. I became interested in the activities of the MoT, and after a few calls, I managed to find the WHQ BBS that belonged to them. In addition, this board was quite “classified”. I logged in under the fake name to look around. The peculiarity of this board was that it received calls from other countries, which interested me. Most of the foreign calls came from Razor 1911.
Later, I met Midi Maniac , who was the South African distributor for Razor 1911, and I also met Aphex Twin . I was obsessed with MoT and I wanted to know more about them, it seemed to me that they know much more than they want to show. I investigated their WHQ BBS from the bottom to the top, and after a couple of weeks I was calculated. The members of the MoT phoned my BBS and kicking it, leaving a message so that I would no longer have a word for them.
After several HDD crashes, I asked myself: what the hell do I let them do? If they can bend me, then why don't I bend them? Their WHQ BBS was the only UNIX-based system in South Africa, which is why it was hard to crack it first, but it motivated me to learn UNIX (thanks to friends at Beltel) and I broke their board. Of course, MoT went out of themselves and released a whole demo, where they revealed that tKC is Dr. Wolfen. People began to ask who I really am. On behalf of Dr. I explained to Wolfen that tKC was supposedly my good friend. After a lot of collisions, MoT died ... finally.
After all this chaos, my board became more and more, growing my crack, because I received a lot of requests for hacking. There was a question - what to do: continue to hack yourself or join some group? At that time, HAi was the only cracking group in South Africa. After a couple of weeks, Acid Phreak taught me how to make free calls to the USA and South Africa. I got through to HAi HQ BBS and met her Sputnik sysop (who was the leader of HAi), we became friends, I also met SandMan . Friends or not, I decided to show them who the coolest crackers in South Africa are and fill up their cracks on their boards, sometimes playing with the speed of their first release. And then Sputnik invited me to join the team ... and I refused.
For several months I continued to hack the software myself and upon request. By that time, I already used Windows 3.0 for multitasking, even though I didn't like it. He began to learn how to hack Windows programs - hacked Windows Commander 1.0. :-) Somehow I noticed that someone Powerlord had logged in on my board, I looked at his address - the same school for the deaf that I went to. I thought that he was also deaf (later it turned out that he was not), and over time we became good friends.
June 1993, another computer department was transferred to the bank under my authority. And you know what? There were more than 40 girls there! Oh yeah! This is the job! :-) Most of them were 17-24 years old. It was fantastic.
Somewhere in 1993, Aphex Twin invited me to Forest Crew - it was a hacker team, strictly underground, more than 30 members. I joined Forest Crew as an ANSi artist and demo coder. By that time, I had already made friends with a bunch of warez groups from overseas : Razor 1911 , ACiD , Hybrid , The Dream Team , etc. In a few months, Forest Crew changed its name to Frozen Crew . But in 1994, without any announcements, Frozen Crew died out. Rumors claimed that most of the participants were covered in the raid. Yes, the cops and my house rummaged, but could not find a single confirmation that I, too, was a hacker. I was crushed - how so, what to do now? I lost a lot of contact with the hackers and continued to hack the software alone. It took some time, suddenly, Aphex Twin called on my BBS. How glad I was! It was good to see him again.
I continued to crack the software and did not want any teams, I wanted to make a Name for myself, but after a few months I thought that I could do even more - still create my own team. I asked Aphex Twin if I could use the name Phrozen Crew and revive the team as a cracker, not a hacker. He gave the go-ahead and in June 1994, the Phrozen Crew came alive with me as the founder, Lucido as the ANSi artist, Psylocke as the demo coder and Mutha as the musician. All members were full newbies on the South Africa crackers scene.
Phrozen Crew released so many cracks, demos, ANSi / VGA, which eventually became the largest team, overtaking all other groups in South Africa, but I wanted more ... In May 1995, I got a copy of Windows 95 Beta through a friend. I was stunned, it was cool, but with a huge number of bugs, so I had to roll back to Windows 3.1. Fortunately, I soon got a copy of the Windows 95 Final.
March 1996, I heard a lot about the Internet, and then, in one of the cracks poured onto my board, I found UCF.nfo. From the file, I learned that you can contact UCF ( United Cracking Force - the unconditional elite 0day - note ) via IRC. IRC? What the fuck is this? I spoke with one familiar sysop and he said that I definitely should try. By that time, his BBS supported the Internet, so I called him and went online through his board. Damn, well, everything was slow - a 28.8k modem, but it went online at 2400b. :-) With a grief in half, I figured out how to use IRC and went to # ucf96 channel, having blurted out something in the chat. LostSoul ( one of the strongest crackers in the UCF line - approx. ) Asked if he could help me, and I told him that I was from South Africa and just wanted to get to know UCF. He was friendly, but because of the brakes, I could not stay online for more than 15 minutes.
In April 1996, I decided that I needed personal access to the network, even though it was expensive, but I connected. Dial-up! I installed mIRC 3.x and went to # ucf96. LostSoul was polite again and we later became good friends. He invited me to the #cracking channel and made me Opo there. Soon after, I met Marquis ' a (founder of UCF - note) . He made me a member of UCF, and my board became the official SA HQ for the team. I also joined some more crackers teams and made crackers through them, but I didn’t forget about the PC. My BBS was getting bigger and bigger; tons of cracks made people in South Africa happier. :-) I had 25+ distro sites, 50+ online conferences, 200+ calls per day.
In May 1996, I decided to create the Phrozen Crew channel in IRC and launched # pc96. He himself began to learn cracking through Softice , and once he discovered W32Dasm 2.0 for himself. More and more people were joining Phrozen Crew, and from July 1, we officially began to release crack via IRC ... and then broke through. Suddenly, people paid attention to me, the channel began to grow by leaps and bounds and I decided to close my Wolfenstein BBS, because it was hard to maintain both the board and IRC at the same time.
After many months of hard work, Phrozen Crew has become the largest cracking team on the Internet. Because of this, I came out of all the other teams except UCF. Of course, the team leaders asked me to stay, but I still left them. You have no idea how many acquaintances I made in IRC, how many messages I received every day.
Suddenly, the Marquis kicked me out of UCF without giving a reason. I think he just became jealous, because the PC produced a lot more cracks than UCF. However, I still treated him like a friend.
In December 1996, I announced my departure from Phrozen Crew, left IRC to spend more time in the real world. Sold all my computers ... God, what have I done?!?! Yes, you understood correctly - I had a girlfriend. :)
In June 1997, I picked up some kind of virus, I could not walk, I could not even move, it was hellish pain. Doctors could not make an accurate diagnosis and it was only in July 1997 that it turned out that it was a fucking shistosomiasis! I felt a little easier, but I still could not walk, because legs did not work. During July, when I was bedridden, I was wildly bored and I wrote my first tutorial on a laptop that I was lent to. A friend at work sent this tutorial Thatdude ( later becoming the third, and in the later history of the PC - the second person in the group - note ), who distributed it and I soon wrote the second, but then I did not know if it was in demand or not, because I was offline.
In August 1997, I was still in the hospital. Although I felt a little better, my legs still did not move. And so, one of the doctors discovered why - the veins in my legs hardened. I had an operation to replace the veins, cutting my leg from ankle to groin and after that ... I could move my toes! Later I wrote my third tutorial, and by mid-September I got home on my own two feet.
In October 1997, I bought my first laptop and decided to return to Phrozen Crew. By November, I bought an external modem at 33.6k and returned to # pc97 already. It was great to meet all these people again, everyone was excited and I took up the hacking like mad, but Softice didn’t pull my laptop (486,8 Mb RAM). I wrote the fourth tutorial, and then the fifth, and only after that I learned how much they were in great demand and how famous my name was made.
In January 1998, I bought a Pentium (P166, 64 RAM, 6 Gb HDD, CD-RW and, oh yeah, 56k modem), finally it was possible to play again with Softice! :-) I released more serials, keygens, cracks, so that the people would be pleased. May 1998, BRipper suggested that I write Oscar 10.x and I was glad to do it. On June 14th, I released Oscar 10.0, oh God, people were delighted, and soon after that, rumors of new anti-piracy laws in the United States began.
In July of 1998, I left the bank, having decided that I could earn more by programming. The bosses in the bank did not allow me to do programming because I was deaf. What the fuck is this? I knew Pascal, Delphi, Basic, Visual Basic, Visual C ++, C ++ Builder, Cobol, Assembly, Clarion, Fortran and some Java. But everything went wrong, as I wanted.
Because of all these anti-piracy laws, too many members of the group, too much openness for people from the outside ... In short, I wanted to do as best for the PC and, after consulting with Archimede ( in fact, the team manager, the second person in the PC after tKC - ), made the biggest mistake in his life. On September 13, I threw out the majority of the participants from the team and declared the PC dead. The idea was to create a new team with only some of the old PC members. It was a damn hard day, as if the world had stopped spinning.
A few days later, the “dismissed” PC members decided to unite under the old name, but I told them that the PC is dead and dismissed everyone again. Bad thing. After that, I literally felt that I was no longer welcome and I understood their feelings. I finally left the post of the head of the already dead PC, and after a couple of days I learned that they had voted to ask me to come back again, but it was too late for me. Poor thought head, so much in just such a short time. I think I just finally had to pay for fame and fame in the underground environment. And the price was great. I cried…
October 1998, I continued to release crackers under my own name through the channel #cracks and I haven’t had any desire to work in any team. In the middle of November 1998, after many pushes from the side, I decided to create a new group - CiA, Crackers in Action . At the same time, I met a store owner who once sold my first Pentium to me. He asked if I knew anyone who could help him hack one program (no, I did not tell him that I was tKC). I replied that I could do it and gave him a patch the next day. And before I could say anything, he shoved a new Pentium II into my hands (P2-266, ATX, 128 RAM, 6 Gb HDD). Wow, that was a gift! :-)
December 1998, CiA quickly grew and by the 31st we issued 121 crack for only December and 157 in total.
In January of 1999, I still didn’t have official work, so I took up any hack for repairing \ PC settings that my friends threw up. Besides, they banned me to #cracks, because, allegedly, I tried to seize the channel. He is still insanity. It became very tight, on the 16th of January the phone was disconnected from me, since I could not pay my bills. Oh, it seemed it was time to find a permanent job. In March, the former girl came to visit once, I prepared something in a hurry. Listening to music, joking, talking, talking, talking. I showed her all the programs that I wrote, even hacker ones. When she left in the evening, she said that she would try to come up with something with work. The next day she called and asked to come to her. I came. Silently, she handed me 2000 rand ( ~ $ 200 - approx. ) And said that for now this is all she can do. I felt like a beggar, it was unpleasant for me and I rested to the end, but I nevertheless agreed, saying that I would definitely return everything. I was infinitely grateful to her. I paid the bills and on March 6 I returned to IRC.
As early as 1998, I had both hearing systems broken when some girl drunk pushed me into the pool and until May 1999 I had to live without them, because the new ones cost around 14,000 rand ( ~ $ 1400 - approx. ). And in May, I helped a friend of my friend, who asked why I did not use a hearing aid, because I did not hear it trite. I explained to him that I could not afford them. The next day, this man, whom I hardly knew, came to me and presented two new hearing aids. What? How so? He explained that I seemed to him to be a good guy and definitely the most funny deaf of all that he saw. I accepted his gift.
In July of the 99th I got a cheap job at the Internet Cafe, but at least now I could sit in the IRC as much as I wanted, which I used. However, there was still not enough money to pay bills. In September 2000, I finally found an official job and was able to pay all the bills.
October 9, today.Now you see that fame and fame may not be so attractive in real life as in the underground. And my life was not so good, you have to pay for everything. Speaking of CiA. As of October 9, 2000, we have already released 1,859 cracks, counting from November 1998, not bad. And we are still growing. To all my fans: I will always be there, hacking software for you, as long as I can. I'm not an old man yet. :-)
Cracking in my blood ...
October 10, 2000,
tKC - The Keyboard Caper,
PhRoZeN CReW / Crackers in Action
This text was written by tKC for one e-mage, published in 2000, and was intended for people who are aware of the state of affairs in the pirate scene. Whenever possible, I tried with my notes to clarify the roles of certain people, as well as some features that tKC did not describe because of them, as it seemed to him, platitudes. I also diluted the text with illustrations.
CiA grew, as befits a good team, but in the end, too, sunk into oblivion in 2001. However, tKC was not discouraged, and as early as January 2002, he joined the Phrozen Hell team , which lived until 2006 and issued more than 2,000 cracks. At the same time, the PC continued to exist and in 2004, a girl stood at her helm - Nitallica , which everyone on the stage knew, perhaps.
It was rumored that Michael Steyn was hiding under the pseudonym tKC and several people with this name are even on LinkedIn, but who of them is still unknown to him, and their experience doesn’t differ from what is written in this article .
In any case, tKC always stood out from the crowd of founders / leaders of pirate groups with its constant positive, openness and ability to endear themselves to any interlocutor. Anyone who has ever spoken to him in the IRC will confirm that he is a wonderful conversationalist and just an interesting person who also left a huge mark on the history of the pirate community.
PS
- Childhood
- The first PC and the first BBS
- Wolfenstein BBS and the first conflict
- Windows era and first raid
- Creating Phrozen Crew and the Internet
- The biggest team in the world
- Disease
- Return to the scene
- Sudden Death and CIA
- Unemployed
- Epilogue
- Translator's epilogue
Childhood
I was born in South Africa, still here. White, 45+ years old ( at the moment - hereinafter Mann Calavera ). Sorry, I will not tell you the date of birth or my real name, but the fact is that my name is tKC . :-) And yes, I was deaf and grew up in a school for deaf children, until I got into normal at the age of 13 because my speech was well developed and my condition was a little “better” than it was for special schools. I do not speak sign language with my parents; in fact, it is for this reason that I communicate better than other deaf people, if you understand what I mean. I also don't speak English, because I grew up in an Afrikaans speaking environment where I read lips.
In childhood, my friends and I were bad guys. We hijacked cars and motorcycles, rode night or two, but then always returned them back, but not directly to that place. These were good times. Once we hijacked a blue Ferrari and, oh bl *, the cops stopped us. The girl who was with me prompted to pretend to be deaf - they did just that: they used sign language, pretended not to understand, and we were eventually released. After this incident, we decided not to engage in more hijackings.
On Christmas Day of 1984, I had my first computer - Spectravideo , similar to Commodore, Spectrum, etc. and of course I loved messing with it. Some of my friends already had computers. We exchanged games, and it was on Spectavideo that I started learning programming at BASIC, but after a couple of months my computer was covered with a basin, and my parents could not afford to buy a new one. It is a pity, but in 1987 I graduated from school without computers.
The first PC and the first BBS
In 1988, I hired to work at a bank as an ordinary clerk, and in the evening I attended a college where I studied programming on COBOL. But those courses were completely suck and I scored on them in 5 months - too slowly. After that, I thought that the computers were not mine, but already in January of 1990, I decided to look at the new XT (8088, 8 Mhz). I could not resist and bought. So I got my own PC, which I bought myself (8 Mhz, 20 Mbg HDD, monochrome). Hell, I didn’t even know what DOS is, I didn’t understand what C:> is , etc. I have never seen a PC before. But since I bought it, I decided to figure out what it is. I stuck at the computer for days, with breaks to sleep before work. He began to forget his friends, did not hang out with girls, etc. Within a few months I had a good understanding of DOS, and once a new AT (80286, 12 Mhz) reached South Africa and I upgraded my PC to 286. Then I made friends with computer vendors and through them I received my first “free” software - Norton Utilities , PC-Tools, etc. Also I got Pascal, which I still love.
')
I could no longer do without a PC, only computers were in my head, people didn't care about me anymore. One day a friend gave me a few toys ( Space Quest I / II). I pribaldel from them, but all these copy protections floated me. I turned to my friends with the question: “ Where do you take crackles? ” But no one could directly answer me. I asked around and someone said that for this you need to learn ASM and HEX ... what kind of garbage is this? Some people promised to get me a Borland's Turbo Debugger and Assembly. Without some manuals or lessons, after some time, I myself figured out how to edit HEX (using Norton's DiskEdit) and program on ASM. It was not so easy, because I did not write much, but just broke and left the original EXE for backups (I didn’t know how to write patches yet). And then I started asking friends to bring me games without cracks, so that I could hack them and learn, but my friends were happy that I gave them cracked games.
In February 1991, I heard about the new Beltel chat, similar to IRC. One of my friends decided to try this thing. All you had to do was buy a modem and create an account in Telkom, which he did. One evening I went to see what it was and I liked it. Then I bought my first modem (2400b) and created an account, and the fun began. There I made a lot of friends, got access to Beltel spiral accounts, which could be used for free. Blade Runner and Doc Hollywood helped me a lot with hacker skills. I used the nickname Dr. Wolfen in Beltel after Blade Runner advised me a cool game - Wolfenstein 3D.
In April 1991, I moved to another bank and this time to the computer department. After a couple of months, the hackers asked me if I had heard a scene about BBS that I had no idea about. They explained everything to me and gave a couple of numbers to some BBSok. I remember my first call to LeClub , it was very cool - a collection of files! I noticed how many cracks have already been made by different people. I downloaded them all that I saw and learned from them. Most of them were created by the Razor 1911 team (for games). I started hacking more by downloading shareware from BBSok. And soon I did and filled up so many of my cracks already that people paid attention to me. It was then that The Keyboard Caper was born.Wolfenstein BBS and the first conflict
August 1991, Blade Runner told me that at that time there were 2 main teams in South Africa: MoT ( Masters of Terror ) and HAi ( Hacking Attack Inc ), with which MoT specialized on varese, and HAi especially on hacking, and I like he was not eager to enter somewhere. One night, Acid Phreak (one of the founders of the Forest Crew hacker team) said that I should launch my own BBS and soon after that I created my own board - Wolfenstein BBS . As a sysop, I was known as Dr. Wolfen, because I didn’t want someone to know that this is a tKC board. My BBS grew into the largest in South Africa and contained a large collection of cracks and shareware programs. I became interested in the activities of the MoT, and after a few calls, I managed to find the WHQ BBS that belonged to them. In addition, this board was quite “classified”. I logged in under the fake name to look around. The peculiarity of this board was that it received calls from other countries, which interested me. Most of the foreign calls came from Razor 1911.
Later, I met Midi Maniac , who was the South African distributor for Razor 1911, and I also met Aphex Twin . I was obsessed with MoT and I wanted to know more about them, it seemed to me that they know much more than they want to show. I investigated their WHQ BBS from the bottom to the top, and after a couple of weeks I was calculated. The members of the MoT phoned my BBS and kicking it, leaving a message so that I would no longer have a word for them.After several HDD crashes, I asked myself: what the hell do I let them do? If they can bend me, then why don't I bend them? Their WHQ BBS was the only UNIX-based system in South Africa, which is why it was hard to crack it first, but it motivated me to learn UNIX (thanks to friends at Beltel) and I broke their board. Of course, MoT went out of themselves and released a whole demo, where they revealed that tKC is Dr. Wolfen. People began to ask who I really am. On behalf of Dr. I explained to Wolfen that tKC was supposedly my good friend. After a lot of collisions, MoT died ... finally.
After all this chaos, my board became more and more, growing my crack, because I received a lot of requests for hacking. There was a question - what to do: continue to hack yourself or join some group? At that time, HAi was the only cracking group in South Africa. After a couple of weeks, Acid Phreak taught me how to make free calls to the USA and South Africa. I got through to HAi HQ BBS and met her Sputnik sysop (who was the leader of HAi), we became friends, I also met SandMan . Friends or not, I decided to show them who the coolest crackers in South Africa are and fill up their cracks on their boards, sometimes playing with the speed of their first release. And then Sputnik invited me to join the team ... and I refused.
Windows era and first raid
For several months I continued to hack the software myself and upon request. By that time, I already used Windows 3.0 for multitasking, even though I didn't like it. He began to learn how to hack Windows programs - hacked Windows Commander 1.0. :-) Somehow I noticed that someone Powerlord had logged in on my board, I looked at his address - the same school for the deaf that I went to. I thought that he was also deaf (later it turned out that he was not), and over time we became good friends.
June 1993, another computer department was transferred to the bank under my authority. And you know what? There were more than 40 girls there! Oh yeah! This is the job! :-) Most of them were 17-24 years old. It was fantastic.
Somewhere in 1993, Aphex Twin invited me to Forest Crew - it was a hacker team, strictly underground, more than 30 members. I joined Forest Crew as an ANSi artist and demo coder. By that time, I had already made friends with a bunch of warez groups from overseas : Razor 1911 , ACiD , Hybrid , The Dream Team , etc. In a few months, Forest Crew changed its name to Frozen Crew . But in 1994, without any announcements, Frozen Crew died out. Rumors claimed that most of the participants were covered in the raid. Yes, the cops and my house rummaged, but could not find a single confirmation that I, too, was a hacker. I was crushed - how so, what to do now? I lost a lot of contact with the hackers and continued to hack the software alone. It took some time, suddenly, Aphex Twin called on my BBS. How glad I was! It was good to see him again.
(During its existence, the tKC teams more than once came under raids and some participants were arrested, which subsequently caused the entire cracking scene to begin to take anonymity more seriously, although South Africa always remained an island of safety for pirates - note)
Creating Phrozen Crew and the Internet
I continued to crack the software and did not want any teams, I wanted to make a Name for myself, but after a few months I thought that I could do even more - still create my own team. I asked Aphex Twin if I could use the name Phrozen Crew and revive the team as a cracker, not a hacker. He gave the go-ahead and in June 1994, the Phrozen Crew came alive with me as the founder, Lucido as the ANSi artist, Psylocke as the demo coder and Mutha as the musician. All members were full newbies on the South Africa crackers scene.
Phrozen Crew released so many cracks, demos, ANSi / VGA, which eventually became the largest team, overtaking all other groups in South Africa, but I wanted more ... In May 1995, I got a copy of Windows 95 Beta through a friend. I was stunned, it was cool, but with a huge number of bugs, so I had to roll back to Windows 3.1. Fortunately, I soon got a copy of the Windows 95 Final.
March 1996, I heard a lot about the Internet, and then, in one of the cracks poured onto my board, I found UCF.nfo. From the file, I learned that you can contact UCF ( United Cracking Force - the unconditional elite 0day - note ) via IRC. IRC? What the fuck is this? I spoke with one familiar sysop and he said that I definitely should try. By that time, his BBS supported the Internet, so I called him and went online through his board. Damn, well, everything was slow - a 28.8k modem, but it went online at 2400b. :-) With a grief in half, I figured out how to use IRC and went to # ucf96 channel, having blurted out something in the chat. LostSoul ( one of the strongest crackers in the UCF line - approx. ) Asked if he could help me, and I told him that I was from South Africa and just wanted to get to know UCF. He was friendly, but because of the brakes, I could not stay online for more than 15 minutes.
In April 1996, I decided that I needed personal access to the network, even though it was expensive, but I connected. Dial-up! I installed mIRC 3.x and went to # ucf96. LostSoul was polite again and we later became good friends. He invited me to the #cracking channel and made me Opo there. Soon after, I met Marquis ' a (founder of UCF - note) . He made me a member of UCF, and my board became the official SA HQ for the team. I also joined some more crackers teams and made crackers through them, but I didn’t forget about the PC. My BBS was getting bigger and bigger; tons of cracks made people in South Africa happier. :-) I had 25+ distro sites, 50+ online conferences, 200+ calls per day.(At that time, there was no intense competition between UCF and PC, as many members of the Phrozen Crew were part of UCF. This sometimes created confusion on the boards, but kept the situation before the PC’s so-called "elite positions" - on in fact, just “Elite” badges in .nfo and custom hirez-art for each participant. After that, some UCF members left the team for the PC. Another factor that contributed to the transition was a greater number of distribution channels from Phrozen Crew).
The biggest team in the world
In May 1996, I decided to create the Phrozen Crew channel in IRC and launched # pc96. He himself began to learn cracking through Softice , and once he discovered W32Dasm 2.0 for himself. More and more people were joining Phrozen Crew, and from July 1, we officially began to release crack via IRC ... and then broke through. Suddenly, people paid attention to me, the channel began to grow by leaps and bounds and I decided to close my Wolfenstein BBS, because it was hard to maintain both the board and IRC at the same time.
After many months of hard work, Phrozen Crew has become the largest cracking team on the Internet. Because of this, I came out of all the other teams except UCF. Of course, the team leaders asked me to stay, but I still left them. You have no idea how many acquaintances I made in IRC, how many messages I received every day.
Suddenly, the Marquis kicked me out of UCF without giving a reason. I think he just became jealous, because the PC produced a lot more cracks than UCF. However, I still treated him like a friend.
(At this point, UCF consisted of 14 people, with only half of them engaged in burglary; at the same time, the PC numbered 20 people only directly burglars with a total composition of 32 people. Largely due to the competition between UCF and PC , the first decided to crush all skills and began to concentrate almost entirely on keygens. Thus, in 2000, 91% of UCF releases were keygens - note)
Disease
In December 1996, I announced my departure from Phrozen Crew, left IRC to spend more time in the real world. Sold all my computers ... God, what have I done?!?! Yes, you understood correctly - I had a girlfriend. :)
(By the way, tKC was never shy, and in this translation a significant part of his love affairs with stagemakers is omitted, because she still has little to do with Habr's theme. In other words, he has never had problems with women it was and at a certain period he even lived as an "Alphonse" - approx.)
In June 1997, I picked up some kind of virus, I could not walk, I could not even move, it was hellish pain. Doctors could not make an accurate diagnosis and it was only in July 1997 that it turned out that it was a fucking shistosomiasis! I felt a little easier, but I still could not walk, because legs did not work. During July, when I was bedridden, I was wildly bored and I wrote my first tutorial on a laptop that I was lent to. A friend at work sent this tutorial Thatdude ( later becoming the third, and in the later history of the PC - the second person in the group - note ), who distributed it and I soon wrote the second, but then I did not know if it was in demand or not, because I was offline.
(Already, its first tKC tutorial literally blew up the Internet and the curve of interest in cracking and the scene among the ordinary public sharply went up almost at an angle of 90 degrees. This resulted in a rapid increase in the cracker teams and, accordingly, an increase in pirated traffic. e-mages and communities - note)
In August 1997, I was still in the hospital. Although I felt a little better, my legs still did not move. And so, one of the doctors discovered why - the veins in my legs hardened. I had an operation to replace the veins, cutting my leg from ankle to groin and after that ... I could move my toes! Later I wrote my third tutorial, and by mid-September I got home on my own two feet.
Return to the scene
In October 1997, I bought my first laptop and decided to return to Phrozen Crew. By November, I bought an external modem at 33.6k and returned to # pc97 already. It was great to meet all these people again, everyone was excited and I took up the hacking like mad, but Softice didn’t pull my laptop (486,8 Mb RAM). I wrote the fourth tutorial, and then the fifth, and only after that I learned how much they were in great demand and how famous my name was made.
In January 1998, I bought a Pentium (P166, 64 RAM, 6 Gb HDD, CD-RW and, oh yeah, 56k modem), finally it was possible to play again with Softice! :-) I released more serials, keygens, cracks, so that the people would be pleased. May 1998, BRipper suggested that I write Oscar 10.x and I was glad to do it. On June 14th, I released Oscar 10.0, oh God, people were delighted, and soon after that, rumors of new anti-piracy laws in the United States began.(Oscar was one of the first, if not the first, offline database of serial numbers and keyfiles for various programs. The base included thousands of accounts, collecting almost 8 thousand serial numbers at its peak. Since the 98th year, it has been releasing PC, but other teams also supported the Oscar format and released their updates for this compilation.In the 90s and early 2000s, Oscar could often be found on CD compilations like Hacker Toolkit or Hacker Toolkit. .)
(At that time, 59 people were already in the PC, most of whom were hackers and, thanks to such a large staff, the Phrozen Crew literally flooded the scene with releases in most cases winning other teams in reaction time on a large number of boards. A huge fan community formed around the team, which helped members of the group in many ways, including distribution - note)
In July of 1998, I left the bank, having decided that I could earn more by programming. The bosses in the bank did not allow me to do programming because I was deaf. What the fuck is this? I knew Pascal, Delphi, Basic, Visual Basic, Visual C ++, C ++ Builder, Cobol, Assembly, Clarion, Fortran and some Java. But everything went wrong, as I wanted.
Sudden Death and CIA
Because of all these anti-piracy laws, too many members of the group, too much openness for people from the outside ... In short, I wanted to do as best for the PC and, after consulting with Archimede ( in fact, the team manager, the second person in the PC after tKC - ), made the biggest mistake in his life. On September 13, I threw out the majority of the participants from the team and declared the PC dead. The idea was to create a new team with only some of the old PC members. It was a damn hard day, as if the world had stopped spinning.
(From 97-2003, there were a lot of raids on the pirate scene, which led to the fact that many of the top teams even suspended their activities for some time and almost all decided to reduce their numbers for the sake of safety. By this time, the PC had a list in more than 5000 releases - note)
A few days later, the “dismissed” PC members decided to unite under the old name, but I told them that the PC is dead and dismissed everyone again. Bad thing. After that, I literally felt that I was no longer welcome and I understood their feelings. I finally left the post of the head of the already dead PC, and after a couple of days I learned that they had voted to ask me to come back again, but it was too late for me. Poor thought head, so much in just such a short time. I think I just finally had to pay for fame and fame in the underground environment. And the price was great. I cried…
October 1998, I continued to release crackers under my own name through the channel #cracks and I haven’t had any desire to work in any team. In the middle of November 1998, after many pushes from the side, I decided to create a new group - CiA, Crackers in Action . At the same time, I met a store owner who once sold my first Pentium to me. He asked if I knew anyone who could help him hack one program (no, I did not tell him that I was tKC). I replied that I could do it and gave him a patch the next day. And before I could say anything, he shoved a new Pentium II into my hands (P2-266, ATX, 128 RAM, 6 Gb HDD). Wow, that was a gift! :-)December 1998, CiA quickly grew and by the 31st we issued 121 crack for only December and 157 in total.
(CiA was also not a small team, on average, it had about 20+ members during its activity, having expanded as much as possible in 2000 to the 31st participant. At the same time, CiA, like Phrozen Crew, did not they cared much about the rules of the scene, did not follow the Dyups, were rather mediocre about the “only keygens” slogans and were generally a fairly free and democratic team, which attracted users to them, as they used to attract to the PC.
Unemployed
In January of 1999, I still didn’t have official work, so I took up any hack for repairing \ PC settings that my friends threw up. Besides, they banned me to #cracks, because, allegedly, I tried to seize the channel. He is still insanity. It became very tight, on the 16th of January the phone was disconnected from me, since I could not pay my bills. Oh, it seemed it was time to find a permanent job. In March, the former girl came to visit once, I prepared something in a hurry. Listening to music, joking, talking, talking, talking. I showed her all the programs that I wrote, even hacker ones. When she left in the evening, she said that she would try to come up with something with work. The next day she called and asked to come to her. I came. Silently, she handed me 2000 rand ( ~ $ 200 - approx. ) And said that for now this is all she can do. I felt like a beggar, it was unpleasant for me and I rested to the end, but I nevertheless agreed, saying that I would definitely return everything. I was infinitely grateful to her. I paid the bills and on March 6 I returned to IRC.
As early as 1998, I had both hearing systems broken when some girl drunk pushed me into the pool and until May 1999 I had to live without them, because the new ones cost around 14,000 rand ( ~ $ 1400 - approx. ). And in May, I helped a friend of my friend, who asked why I did not use a hearing aid, because I did not hear it trite. I explained to him that I could not afford them. The next day, this man, whom I hardly knew, came to me and presented two new hearing aids. What? How so? He explained that I seemed to him to be a good guy and definitely the most funny deaf of all that he saw. I accepted his gift.
In July of the 99th I got a cheap job at the Internet Cafe, but at least now I could sit in the IRC as much as I wanted, which I used. However, there was still not enough money to pay bills. In September 2000, I finally found an official job and was able to pay all the bills.
Epilogue
October 9, today.Now you see that fame and fame may not be so attractive in real life as in the underground. And my life was not so good, you have to pay for everything. Speaking of CiA. As of October 9, 2000, we have already released 1,859 cracks, counting from November 1998, not bad. And we are still growing. To all my fans: I will always be there, hacking software for you, as long as I can. I'm not an old man yet. :-)
Cracking in my blood ...
October 10, 2000,
tKC - The Keyboard Caper,
PhRoZeN CReW / Crackers in Action
Translator's epilogue
This text was written by tKC for one e-mage, published in 2000, and was intended for people who are aware of the state of affairs in the pirate scene. Whenever possible, I tried with my notes to clarify the roles of certain people, as well as some features that tKC did not describe because of them, as it seemed to him, platitudes. I also diluted the text with illustrations.
CiA grew, as befits a good team, but in the end, too, sunk into oblivion in 2001. However, tKC was not discouraged, and as early as January 2002, he joined the Phrozen Hell team , which lived until 2006 and issued more than 2,000 cracks. At the same time, the PC continued to exist and in 2004, a girl stood at her helm - Nitallica , which everyone on the stage knew, perhaps.It was rumored that Michael Steyn was hiding under the pseudonym tKC and several people with this name are even on LinkedIn, but who of them is still unknown to him, and their experience doesn’t differ from what is written in this article .
In any case, tKC always stood out from the crowd of founders / leaders of pirate groups with its constant positive, openness and ability to endear themselves to any interlocutor. Anyone who has ever spoken to him in the IRC will confirm that he is a wonderful conversationalist and just an interesting person who also left a huge mark on the history of the pirate community.
PS
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/216571/
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