Underground carders market. Translation of the book "Kingpin". Chapter 4. "The White Hat"

Kevin Poulsen, editor of the magazine WIRED, and in his 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 1. "The Key"
Chapter 3. “The Hungry Programmers”
Chapter 4. "The White Hat"
Chapter 5. “Cyberwar!”
Chapter 6. "I miss crime"
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 (there was one UPD )
• 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 it touches on issues of information security, vulnerabilities of payment systems, the structure of the carding underground, basic concepts of the Internet infrastructure
• the book illustrates that "feeding" in underground forums - ends badly

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

The white hat

Translation by Alexander Kurylyov, Goto Camp participant

Max built his new life in a period of profound changes in the hacker world. The first people who identified themselves as hackers were students who mastered software and electronics at MIT in the 1960s. They were smart children who took an irreverent, non-authoritarian approach to technology. They complete an innovative-sloppy counterbalance joyless-suit and lab-jacket, like IBM
Pranks were part of the hacker culture, and phreaking was also a largely illegal investigation of forgotten highways in the telephone network. But hacking was, above all, a creative work that led to countless turning points in the history of computers.

The word "hacker" acquired a negative color in the early 1980s, when the first home computers — the Commodore 64s, TRS-80s, Apple — came to student rooms on the outskirts and cities in all of the United States. These machines were products of the hacker culture: Apple II, and with it the concept of “home computer”, originated thanks to two phreakers, called Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.
But not all adolescents were provided with computers, and many were eagerly awaiting “adult life” to experience all the power of the process and research networks, which are achieved using a phone call or modem squeal. So they began illegal forays into corporate, state, and academic systems and took their first tentative steps to ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet.

When these first young attackers began to fail in 1983, the national press found the word to describe them, and they became known as "Hackers." As in the previous generation of hackers, they are pushing the boundaries of technology and make things that seemed impossible to everyone. It was for them to breach corporate computers, grab telephone communications, and slide into government systems, universities, and protect contractors' networks. The old school shudders shuddered at such a comparison, but from now on, the word “hacker” will have two meanings: a talented programmer who pulled himself up on his own, and a computer intruder. In addition to the confusion, many hackers were both.

Now, in the mid-1990s, the hacker community was once again divided. The FBI and the Secret Service staged the arrests of high-profile attackers such as Kevin Mitnick and Mark "Phiber Optik" Aben, a telephone hacker, from New York, .] Now the Internet has been open to all and personal computers have become powerful enough to run the same operating systems and programming languages ​​that only great amateurs could have used before. And now real money has flowed into cyber security.

Hacking the system was not cool. Those who possessed the hacker mindset more and more often found themselves legally employed. And the attackers hung up their black hats and went over to the bright side. They became Whitehat hackers, referring to characters from old cowboy films, using their computer talents and skills to protect truth and justice.

Max thought of himself as a white hat. Tracking new types of attacks and vulnerabilities is now his job. And, like Max Vision, he begins to promote some computer security newsletters where the latest events were discussed. But he cannot fully expel the identity of Ghost23 from himself. It was an open secret among Max’s friends that he continues to crack systems. When he met something new or interesting, he saw no danger in taking it for himself.

ShiawasenaHoshi Habrauser Translation

Tim was at work that day when a bewildered system administrator from another company called to track down Hungry.com, the online home of Hungry Programmers, where they posted projects, posted resumes, left email addresses that remained unchanged. work or other excesses. There were dozens of geeks on a shared resource, but Tim knew who was responsible for the penetration. He left the sysadmin on the other line and called Max.

“Stop hacking. Now, ”he said.
Max apologized - it was a burning lawn again and again (it was the burning lawn all over again). Tim switched to the line with the system administrator and happily reported that the attack was stopped.
The complaint surprised and embarrassed Max - if his goals knew that he was a good guy, then there would be no problems due to innocuous penetration. “Max, you have to get permission,” Tim explained. He gave him life advice. “Just imagine that everyone is watching you. This is a great way to make sure you do it right. If I stood by your side or your father, would you feel the same when you did all this? What would we say? ”

If there was a thing that Max missed in his new life, it would be the absence of a partner with whom to share. He met the 20-year-old Kimi Winters on the Warmth rave, which was held in an abandoned warehouse. Max was on stage, dancing with amazing grace; he twisted his arms like a brazilian fire dancer. Kimi is a community college student and part-time barista, with shorter legs than Max. She walked around in a shapeless black sweatshirt unisex, which she loved to wear when she appeared. But if you look like it, she was definitely very cute, with cheeks like liquid apples and with skin the color of copper like her Korean mother.

Hangouts in Hungry Manor were legendary and when Kimi appeared in the living room there she was filled with dozens of guests from the Silicon Valley keyboard caste - programmers, system administrators and web designers mixed under a glass chandelier. Max shone when he saw her. He gave her a tour of the house, pointing to the attributes added by Hungry Programmers.

The tour ended in a bedroom in the eastern wing of the Hungry Manor. With all the grandeur of the house, Max's room was like a cell - no furniture, except the futon (Japanese futon) on the floor, no amenities except the computer. For the party, Max turned blue and red spotlights on a bottle of mint schnapps (this was his only flaw). The next evening, Kimi came to dinner, in the veggie menu which contained only one position - raw food cookies.

Max cut the leftover cookies and served with schnapps. In the end, why not eat raw syrup cookies for dinner, since there are no other options? (Why, after all, did you not eat a raw cookie dough for dinner, given the option?)?

Kimi was intrigued. Max needs so little for happiness. He's just like a kid. When Max's birthday came shortly after the party, she sent him a box decorated with balloons to his office at MPath and Max was touched to tears by such a gesture. She was the girl of his dreams, as he told her later. They started thinking about starting to live together. In September, the owner of Hungry Manor, dissatisfied with the programmers' possession of the mansion, reclaimed it and, after a farewell party, their common home scattered throughout the Bay Area. Max and Kimim settled into the Mountain View, in a close-up studio of a bar-like complex on the 101st highway congested by the Silicon Valley traffic artery.

Max resumed his job at the FBI and his ghost of IRC led him to a new opportunity - to become a white hat. On one of the channels he became friends with a man who opened a consulting firm in San Francisco and was interested in Max’s participation. Max went to town to pay a visit to Matt Harrigan, aka “Digital Jesus”.
Harrigan was only 22. He was one of four white-hats who shared his story with Forbes last year. He slyly used his 15 minutes of fame and won start-up capital for business — a professional hacker shop in San Francisco's financial district.

The idea was simple: corporations paid his company Microcosm Computer Resources to drive their networks through real hacker attacks and to draw up a detailed report on the strengths and weaknesses in security. The Pentest business (penetration test) - as it was called - was managed by the big five accounting firms, but Harrigan could vouch for clients about what none of the counting firms could do: his experience comes from actual hacking practice and he hires other former hackers.

The MCR rates will range from $ 300 to $ 400 per working hour, Harrigan said. Max will work as a subcontractor, receiving from $ 100 to $ 150. All this for two things that he loves to do more than anything in the world: to hack and write reports.
Max found his niche. It turned out that his purposefulness adapted him to penetration tests: he was immune to frustration, punching client networks for hours, moving from one attack vector to another until the right path was found.
With Max making real money at the MCR, Kimi quit her job as a barista and found a decent job for teaching autistic students. The couple moved from a tiny studio in Mountain View to a duplex in San Jose. In March, they were married in a university church in Lakewood in Washington, where Kimi's family lived.

Tim Spencer and many of the Hungry Programmers came to Washington to see how their difficult child gets married. Max's parents, his sister, Kimi's family, many friends and relatives appeared at the ceremony. Max wore a tuxedo and smile from ear to ear, Kimi beamed in a white wedding dress and veil. Surrounded by family and beloved friends, they were the perfect couple to begin their life together.
Kimi's father - proudly standing in a military uniform and her mother in a traditional hanbuk stood outside. Max, surrounded by his parents, smiled into the camera, while clouds gathered in the sky over the Pacific Northwest.
It's been almost three years since Max got out of prison. Now he had everything - a devoted wife, a promising whitehat-hacker career and a beautiful home. He'll throw it all out in just a few weeks.