Translation of the book "Kingpin". Chapter 3. “The Hungry Programmers”

magisterludi : Kevin Poulsen, editor of the magazine WIRED, and in childhood blackhat the hacker Dark Dante, wrote a book about “one of his acquaintances”.

The book shows the path from a teenager-geek (but at the same time pitching), to a seasoned cyberpahan, as well as some methods of the work of special services to catch hackers and carders.

The beginning and the translation plan are here: “ Shkvoren: schoolchildren translate a book about hackers ”.
Prologue
Chapter 3. “The Hungry Programmers”
Chapter 5. “Cyberwar!”
Chapter 34. DarkMarket
(we publish as soon as the translations are ready)
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The logic of choosing a book for working with schoolchildren is as follows:

• there are few books about hackers in Russian (one and a half)
• There are no books about carding in Russian at all
• Kevin Poulsen - WIRED Editor, No Stupid Comrade, Authoritative
• to introduce young people to the translation and creativity in Habré and get feedback from elders
• schoolchildren-students-specialists work very sparingly for learning and show the significance of the work
• The text is not very hardcore and is accessible to a wide range, but touches upon issues of information security, vulnerabilities of payment systems, the structure of the carding underground
• the book illustrates that "feeding" in underground forums - ends badly

I want to express my gratitude to the guys from the project “Young programmers of the FSB of the Russian Federation” from the Kadetskaya school in 1770 Moscow and to the leader Sergey Epifantsev for coordinating work.



Who wants to help with the translation of other chapters write in a personal magisterludi .

Chapter 3. Hungry Programmers

Max found Tim Spencer's house on top of one of the hills that separates the San Francisco peninsula from quiet and hinterland towns stumbled across the Pacific coast. But the word “house” was not very suitable for the description of this structure. It was a huge 6000-square-foot villa on a 50-acre plot, offering a beautiful view of the city of Half Moon Bay. Max went through the main gate and front doors to the spacious living room with beautifully curved glass walls ...

He arrived through San Francisco a year after the parole to start all over again. Tim and his Idaho friends who rented this house called him Hangri Manor. This name reminded them of the first joint venture started a year earlier. They planned to join the Silicon Valley industry by creating a small computer company called Hungry Programmers, whose employees literally worked on food. However, IT specialists soon found their place in the computer business and “Hungry Programmers” turned into an unofficial club for the interests of Tim and his friends from the Meridian School and Idaho University. Hangri Manor was the main base of the club, where everyone had fun. In addition, there lived five of its members. Max will now be the sixth.

He came to Khangri Manor with a minimum of things and an enormous burden on his heart, since the judicial system was unfair to deal with him. In 1993, when Max was in prison for the second year, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that "hands or other parts of the body and its appendages" cannot be a lethal weapon. This meant that Max was convicted for nothing. But despite the decision of the Supreme Court, the request for pardon was rejected. The judge admitted that Max was formally innocent, for which he "pulled the sentence", but the lawyers did not file a lawsuit in time, so the train left.

When Max was finally released on April 26, 1995, he realized that he had served almost 4 years in the Idaho State Prison, although his crime “dragged” 60 days in the county jail. While he was in jail, his friends graduated from college and received a decent education, which allowed them to leave Idaho and start a promising career.

Max arrived with his father in Seattle, and Tim, Seth and Luke drove from San Francisco to a meeting of graduates - programmers from the Meridian school. Friends were amazed at Max's strong physique (the result of his hard training in prison!) And his rampant optimism, which was not hampered by either a lack of a diploma or a criminal past. Max knew that the time had come for unlimited possibilities: three months after his conviction, the British scientist-programmer created the World Wide Web. Now there were about 19,000 sites, including for the White House. Internet service providers have emerged in every self-respecting city, and large companies like America Online and CompuServe have added a network access service to their offerings.

The Internet has become available to the general population. And Max, from an eccentric computer programmer, turned into a high-class specialist who understood what quickly took hold of millions of people. Thanks to his knowledge, Max could well fight for the vacancy of an IT specialist in Seattle. And he struggled with an emphasis on the vacancies of technical support workers who are knowledgeable in all the intricacies of computer and computer networks.

Max found a job and now hung out for a long time in “disadvantaged” areas, sorting out with “terrible” computers. Trying to find the necessary courage, he returned to the still preserved group communication system IRC. When Max was locked up, IRC was incredibly popular in the then society. But with the development and improvement of the Internet, many users began to use simpler ways of instant messaging and web chat. Those who continued to use IRC were, as a rule, either crazy geeks, or hackers - amateurs, or pirates who turned their dirty work through computers somewhere in forgotten tunnels and alleys. This stratum of society parasitized somewhere in the forgotten tunnels and alleys, despite the legal and commercialized Internet.

Prior to prison, Max actively used IRC. Computer genius imagined himself invisible in cyberspace. He liked this role. He chose the pseudonym "Ghost23", since the number 23 was happy for him. Among other things, according to the Chinese Book of Changes I-Ching hexagongram number 23 foreshadowed major changes in life, wreaked havoc. And Max joined the pirate community with the help of IRC. Members of this community were people who spat on any copyright laws, gained a reputation by pumping music, games, and software. There, Max’s computer skills have found a suitable application. He discovered an unprotected file server (FTP) in Littleton, Colorado and turned it into a cache, a different cache for stolen software.
security The cache was intended for Max and his friends and is also equipped with unlicensed copies of programs such as NetXray, Laplink and SyMnatec pcAnywhere.

But his passion for piracy played a cruel joke with him. The provider found suspicious downloads to the servers of CompuServe’s corporate offices in Bellevue, where Max had just gotten a job. And it was not necessary to have seven genius in the forehead in order to understand: Max was “burned”. The case received wide publicity. Max was gradually forgotten only a year after his release.

Just then, Max decided to start all over again in Silicon Valley, where the dot-Com economy was growing like a snowball, and any talented programmer could find a job without worrying about his past. Max needed a new, spotless name. Max invented a new pseudonym for himself - “Max Vision” (“Max is an all-seeing eye.” Approx. Translation). This positive pseudonym is fully
reflected all the aspirations of max. And as soon as our hero saw the outlines of Seattle in the rearview mirror of his car, he said “Bye” to Max Butler. From today he has become Max - X-ray (Max Ray Vision).

***

Far-sighted Max realized that life in Hangri Manor is simply wonderful. Surrounded by hilly meadows, the house could boast two outbuildings, four bedrooms, a room for servants, a full-fledged dining room, a shelter for livestock and a brick wood-burning stove like in an Italian pizzeria, as well as a barbecue located in a ventilated room next to the huge bright kitchen. The “hungry” inhabitants of the estate turned the library into a computer classroom and a server room filled with a variety of custom gaming PCs for entertainment. They laid a network cable for high-speed Internet to each room, which required partial outages in the 92 highway area due to difficulties with this very telephone cable. The old telephone system connected the west wing with the east one. As a “zest”, one of the “hungry” installed a hot tub in the courtyard, which allowed to have a rest after work in the evening and watch the stars.

Another found Max work as a system administrator at MPath Interactive. This company was famous for giving a lot of money for a startup to the cool gamers of Silicon Valley. Max plunged into work. Contrary to the stereotypes of the computer “bot”, he liked not only to troubleshoot computer problems and correct mistakes, but also really to help people. Finally, he found the long-awaited drive, which he lacked.

But this idyll was broken by an unexpected greeting from the past. The court courier, who appeared out of the blue, handed Max a $ 300,000 suit. The lawsuit was filed by the Software Development Association. This industrial organization decided to use the possible defeat of Max in court as a warning to all Internet pirates. As the Association proclaimed in a press release: “This action is a lesson for those Internet users who believe that they can violate copyrights without fear of publicity or punishment.”

Since this was the first such lawsuit, he was immediately publicized, both in the form of a brief but informative article in Wired magazine, and in the form of a mention in the congressional hearings on the Internet piracy law. Surprisingly, Max’s life has not changed at all, even after his name became a “talk of the town”.

When the excitement in the press subsided, the Developer Association (SPA) was ready to quietly "hush up" the case for $ 3,500 and a couple of free computer consultations. But there was also the other side of the coin - Max was noticed in the FBI.

Chris Beeson, a young agent from the Bureau of the capture of cybercriminals, lucidly explained to Max his task. With the help of Max, the FBI planned to find underground cybercriminals. Hackers involved in piracy and the distribution of unlicensed versions of games and music, they were no longer interested. There are new, more dangerous "figures" in the criminal computer environment - the "real" criminals. They were real cybervoys, pedophiles and even terrorists. “The FBI no longer chases people like you, Max,” said Beeson.

In March 1997, Max Vision was formally entered into the FBI whistleblower program. His first written report to the Bureau was: 1) an introductory course on warez and writing virus programs; 2) a manual on hacking computers. The subsequent report dealt with file hosting services, one of which he exploited in Seattle, and the illegal unification of Rabid Nevrosis. This association has already managed to inherit last October, putting in open access pirated release of Metallic "Ride the Lightning".

When Max got to the pirated version of AutoCAD, he received $ 200 in reward from the FBI. Max signed the receipt with the agent name Equalizer, as Bison forced. Oddly enough, these two so far peacefully got along with each other. But none of them knew yet that Chris Bison would put his EQ in the future and turn him into one of those elusive criminals he wanted to catch.

Terms
1) Varez (eng. Warez - a slang version of “wares”, an abbreviated plural of “software” - “software”) is a program that is illegally distributed in violation of the rights of the copyright holder. Often contains changes and / or additions that allow you to use it for free.
2) IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is an application-level protocol for real-time messaging. Designed primarily for group communication, it also allows you to communicate through private messages and share data, including files.
3) The Crimean lobe (Silicone lobe, Eng. Silicon Valley [ˈsɪlɪkən ˈvæli]) is the south-western part of the consolidated metropolitan statistical area (agglomeration-conurbation) of San Francisco in California (United States), characterized by a high density of high-tech companies, with high density companies that have large companies that have large companies that employ high-tech companies, which are characterized by a large density of high-tech firms, USA. and the production of computers and their components.
4) Rabid Neurosis - ("Mad Neurosis" translated from English) is an illegal cyber organization engaged in the illegal sale of copies of official music releases. As a rule, due to the fault of the leaders of this group, new albums appeared in the public domain several months before the official release.
5) Dotkom economy - a combination of dotcom companies (dotcom, dot-com, dot.com) - whose business models are entirely based on work within the Internet. The rapid development of such companies began in the late 90s. XX century. The name comes from the English dot-com "(" dot-com ") - top-level domain. COM, which mainly registered commercial organizations.