Underground by Suelette Dreyfus: Hackers, Crackers, and Feds (Oh My!)

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So What’s It About?

“Underground” by Suelette Dreyfus is a great historical fiction narrative detailing the rise and fall of some crackers and phreakers and their opponents: phone company employees, system administrators, and Feds. It takes place between 1988 and 1994, when multi-user BBSes were starting to pop up and a telephone call was the ONLY way to access other computers. It’s about 99 times better than this review. In fact, I request that you stop reading this immediately and just read it yourself. It’s really that good.

That being said, most of the stories are told from the perspective of the attackers, except for a few spurious tales of BBS operators and virus attacks. All of the attacker stories have similar plot themes:

• Personal Background: Who were their friends? How was their family life?
• The first taste: How did they get into the scene? Who were their friends and mentors? How did they get free international calling? Were they chasing a white whale, or were they just enjoying themselves?
• The glory days: Usually describes a list of big fish that the attacker accessed, as well as the social support the attacker got in his home community. At this point, the Feds notice the attacker and start playing cat-and-mouse with him.
• The Law Won: The Feds make an identification, and either the attacker goes on the lam or gets busted at his computer. Nobody who got away would be at liberty to contribute to the book, so logically the attackers mentioned in the book are all caught. The court cases are described, as well as public reaction.
• Where they are today: How the legal system treated them, what they did after their legal troubles were over, and are they currently employed?

Literary Freeware

The author, Suelette Dreyfus released the book as “Literary Freeware,” allowing anyone with an internet connection to download the book for free. The text of the book was released to Project Gutenberg, and the author herself wrote a special forward for the free version of the book, describing the reasons a book’s author might decide NOT to get paid for the book:

From the forward:

Because part of the joy of creating a piece of art is in knowing that many people can – and are – enjoying it. Particularly people who can’t otherwise afford to pay $11 USD for a book. People such as cash strapped hackers. This book is about them, their lives and obsessions. It rubs clear a small circle in the frosted glass so the reader can peer into that hazy world. ‘Underground’ belongs on the Net, in their ephemeral landscape.

[...]

By releasing this book for free on the Net, I’m hoping more people will not only enjoy the story of how the international computer underground rose to power, but also make the journey into the minds of hackers involved. When I first began sketching out the book’s structure, I decided to go with depth. I wanted the reader to think, `NOW I understand, because I too was there.’ I hope those words will enter your thoughts as you read this electronic book.

The book’s website also hosted dozens of different formats/languages of the book. However, don’t try to go there anymore! It’s been taken over by some crappy hacker book e-commerce website. A reader named Rory Gordon searched the internet much more thoroughly than I did and discovered that http://www.underground-book.net is apparently the website’s actual address. Also the Wayback Machine has you covered! It even archived the 26 language/file format combinations the author made available.

How Was It?

It is good. How good? I dislike reading e-books. I like to read on my bed and sometimes write on my copy of the book. By the time I drag my desktop computer over to my bed and plug it in, I’m no longer in the mood for reading, and when I draw on the monitor, I can’t use it for other things. I actually ordered a hard copy of A New Kind of Science — review coming, whenever I summon the courage to read the last two chapters — so that I didn’t have to print out 1000 pages or read it on my computer monitor.

Despite all of this, I read the whole PDF (~300 pages) within 48 hours when I first got my hands on it — summer of 2007, for those keeping track. I stayed up late, I snuck peeks in my school IT job, and I couldn’t put it down to save my life.

At times, the pace is a lot like The Da Vinci Code, but with much longer chapters. If you don’t like that, the pacing is a lot like Harry Potter. If you don’t like that, the pacing is similar to the action sequences of Snow Crash. If you don’t like any of them, then I feel you need a good hug and some cake.

Highlights

First and foremost, it is well-written from a technical standpoint. There aren’t any “Law and Order” moments where images are super enhanced and Visual Basic GUIs are prototyped to track IP addresses. The author accessibly writes like she knows Unix systems, which is refreshing, given the number of errors I find in technical articles written by non-techies.

As for content, the story of Par is by far the best out of all of them. On a tip, he found a computer that was almost literally a gold mine: dialing it at certain times of the day caused it to spit out a large list of valid credit card numbers owned by rich Saudis. He ends up handing them out and using them like they’re free candy, which ends up drawing the eye of the Secret Service. He ends up having to go on the lam, surviving on the kindness of fellow hackers — and his 23-year-old Swiss girlfriend, Theorem. What follows is a great description of the techniques the Secret Service used to track him down (involving agencies working together on a few different continents), as well as his dumb luck in evading capture for so long.

Also, the book is chalk-full of moments like this:

If, however, the line did not have a trace on it, the company’s modem would search for its lost connection to the hacker’s modem. Without the continuous flow of electronic signals, the NorTel modem would hang up after a few seconds. If no-one reactivated the line at the NorTel end, the connection would time-out 90 seconds later and the telephone exchange would disconnect the call completely.

Mendax listened anxiously as the NorTel modem searched for his modem by squealing high-pitched noises into the telephone line. No modem here. Go on, hang up.

Suddenly, silence.

OK, thought Mendax. Just 90 seconds to go. Just wait here for a minute and a half. Just hope the exchange times out. Just pray there’s no trace.

Then someone picked up the telephone at the NorTel end. Mendax started. He heard several voices, male and female, in the background. Jesus. What were these NorTel people on about? Mendax was so quiet he almost stopped breathing. There was silence at the receivers on both ends of that telephone line. It was a tense waiting game. Mendax heard his heart racing.

A good hacker has nerves of steel. He could stare down the toughest, stony-faced poker player. Most importantly, he never panics. He never just hangs up in a flurry of fear.

Then someone in the NorTel office–a woman–said out loud in a confused voice, ‘There’s nothing there. There’s nothing there at all.’

She hung up.

Mendax waited. He still would not hang up until he was sure there was no trace. Ninety seconds passed before the phone timed out. The fast beeping of a timed-out telephone connection never sounded so good. Mendax sat frozen at his desk as his mind replayed the events of the past half hour again and again. No more NorTel. Way too dangerous.

In Conclusion

Read the book! This whole paragraph is a big link to the PDF. Just read it! It’s good!

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