📸

HACKING FOR PROFIT

For hackers, VM is made to order. The 1–800 numbers for VM systems are easy enough to find: the tried and true methods of dumpster diving, social engineering and war dialling will almost always turn up a few usable targets. War dialling has been simplified in the last decade with the advent of automatic diallers that churn through hundreds of numbers, recording those that are answered by machines or computers. The process is still inelegant, a brute force method, but it works.

After identifying a suitable VM 1–800 number, hackers break into the system to take over a box or, better, a series of boxes. Security is often lax on voice mail computers, with box numbers and passwords ridiculously easy to guess by an experienced hacker. One of the methods has become known as 'finger hacking': punching away on the telephone keypad trying groups of numbers until a box and the appropriate password are found. Ideally, hackers look for unused boxes. That way they can assign their own passwords and are less likely to be detected. Failing that, though, they will simply annex an assigned box, changing the password to lock out the real user.

VM boxes are more secure than hacker boards: the police, for a start, can't routinely monitor VM systems as they can boards, while hackers can quickly move on to new systems if they suspect the authorities of watching one they are using. And the messaging technology of VM systems lends itself to passing on lists of codes. The code line is often the greeting message of the hacker-controlled VM box; in other words, instead of hearing the standard 'Hello, Mr Smith is not in the office. Please leave a message . . .', hackers calling in will hear the current list of stolen code numbers. In this manner, only the hacker leaving the codes need know the box password. The other hackers, those picking up the codes or leaving a message, need to know only the box number.

It was, in the end, a VM computer that led the authorities to Doucette. On 9 February 1989 the president of a real estate company in Rolling Meadow contacted the US Secret Service office in Chicago. His voice mail computer, he complained, was being besieged by hackers.

The harassed real estate man became known as Source 1. On 15 February two Secret Service agents, William 'Fred' Moore and Bill

📸