, X-NEWS: spcvxb alt.folklore.computers: 21727K Relay-Version: VMS News - V6.0-3 14/03/90 VAX/VMS V5.4; site spcvxb.spc.edu . Path: spcvxb.spc.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!snark!ericH Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.arts.sf.written,comp.unix.sysv386K Subject: WAR GAMES II, or How I Learned To Start Worrying And Hate The Bomb D Message-ID: <1g4SFs#0hrCFz1d6mkh7y8r7T7JqJt6=eric@snark.thyrsus.com>. From: eric@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) Date: 10 Apr 92 15:20:34 GMT
 Lines: 301Z Xref: spcvxb alt.folklore.computers:21727 rec.arts.sf.written:6379 comp.unix.sysv386:20436     			WAR GAMES II 	 			    or 2 	How I Learned To Start Worrying and Hate The Bomb  K [This is a repost.  Many people who saw the first part emailed me wondering N if the complete version was ever floated.  It was, but appears to have gone by2 a lot of people.  I hope they all catch this one.]  N    Some of my friends call me an `improbability vortex' --- the kind of personN weird stuff just naturally happens around.  Occasionally I manage to to forgetM why; my life doesn't seem bizarre to *me*.  Then, something happens to remind  me...   O    Wednesday, March 25 1992: a fairly ordinary day in the life of Eric Raymond, J Boy Hacker.  Shower, read netnews, phone calls, some revision on the cloneL hardware buyer's guide I've been working on for comp.unix.sysv386.  Will theO top ten vendors go for my idea of a competitive "UNIX Dream Machines Bake-Off"? K Hmm...well, Swan Tech wants to sign up, that's a start.  Ah, the mail's in.   L    Riffle, riffle.  What's this?  Forwarded from MIT Press.  Something about the book, no doubt...   D    The Book: if you don't know it already, I edited a lexicon calledK _The_New_Hacker's_Dictionary_  (MIT Press, 1991, ISBN 0-262-68069-6).  It's H all about hacker language and folklore.  Sold 14,000 copies in its firstH seven months, got rave reviews everywhere, good stuff like that.  Got myK first nut-case letter about a month back --- always heard that was supposed M to happen to authors.  Some of the fallout has been weird.  Ouch, fallout --- * *bad* choice of words.  Back to our story.  L    Hm.  From ISPNews.  INFOSecurity Product News.  Eh?  Never heard of them;L sounds like some trade rag for professional paranoids.  Computer form on theE inside; addressed to ERIC RAYMOND EDITOR, THE MIT PRESS, MASS INST OF K TECHNOLOGY, CAMBRIDGE MA 02142.  I see what happened; the Press's editorial L address miscegenated with my book credit in someone's mailing-list software,I and some clerical droid at the Press didn't look at content and forwarded 1 a piece of mail that should have stayed in-house.   I    What we've got here is, oh, yeah, must be a report from the magazine's L bingo card.  Reader service; they circle numbers, you get a bunch of productJ info requests.  OK, who wants to know about my book?  Maybe I'll give themN a surprise and answer it myself.  They probably all think the book is a how-toH manual for crackers.  Damn all journalists for what they did to the word "hacker", anyhow...       There were four.  First one:       DAVID CARGILL SYSTEMS A    GUARDIAN LIFE INS
    STE 201    888 SEVENTH AVE    NEW YORK         NY 10106  N    Oh, boring, I thought to myself.  Actually he turned out not to be; I spokeI with him, later, and the guy turns out to be an old UNIX hand who, when I K explained what the book is really about, cheerfully expatiated on Cargill's  Theory of Fat Electrons.  O    See, Con Edison sucks its line current out of the big generators with a pair M of coil taps located near the top of the dynamo.  When the normal tap brushes I get dirty, they take 'em off line to clean up, and use special auxilliary G taps on the *bottom* of the coil.  Now (sez Cargill) this is a problem, L because when they do that they get not ordinary or `thin' electrons, but theJ fat'n'sloppy electrons that are heavier and so settle to the bottom of theK generator.  These flow down ordinary wires OK, but when they have to turn a N sharp corner (like in an IC via) they get stuck.  This is what causes computer	 glitches.   I    I laughed, said "You sound like a man who wants to hear about {quantum K bogodynamics}" and directed him to the on-line version of the book at prep.  Back to our story...      Next guy...      BRADLEY H EDWARDS  SEC SPE     SECURITY-SAFETY    CONSULTS     PO BOX 536     TOPEKA            KS 66601   I Well, the phone number attached to this one was out of service.  Security M Specialist, eh?  For sure he's got the cracker/hacker bug on the brain.  Then * my eyeballs tripped over the third address      PAMELA D MILLER CHIEF    USSPACE COM	    STOP 4     J2C/SS0-C    CHEYENNE MTN AFB  CO 80914   M and I went into the mental equivalent of TILT TILT TILT.  Now, any of you who L ain't congenital idiots raised in a rain barrel somewhere on the butt-end ofO nowhere will already have decoded that address to "U.S. Space Command, Cheyenne M Mountain Air Force Base".  Yeah, that's right.  NORAD; the big tunnel complex K under the mountain from which they be plannin' to fight World War III if it H ever goes down.  Huge walls of blinkenlights, 30-foot-thick blast doors,O "We could tell you, sir, but then we'd have to kill you", the whole weird trip. C Cornpone accents with their fingers on the pulse of the Apocalypse.   I    Oh, *man*, I said to myself.  I have to talk to this woman.  I haven't N forgotten the nationwide media flap after _War_Games_ came out.  You remember,M that silly movie where the kid with the voice-controlled IMSAI (snort) cracks L into NORAD's computers and accidentally damn near starts a nuclear war?  GodN damn; I'll bet the plot of that sucker is seared into the collective psyche ofK every security officer at Cheyenne Mountain, they probably screen the video ; every couple months just to keep the newbies on their toes.   L    What kind of hideous Federal heat could land on me if PAMELA D MILLER hasM hacker/cracker confusion on the brain?  I imagine some steel-eyed amazon in a J blue suit exuding grim determination to Nip This Menace In The Bud.  *Bad*N scene for a guy who is, after all, better known in some circles for practisingL witchcraft and stone anarchist-loony politics than for The Book.  Yiiiii ...M visions of sinister limos and Men In Black pulling up to my front porch.  "We K want to ask you a few questions, sir."  So I called my editor Terri and Guy M Steele (credited coauthor) and told them all the proceedings so far.  Nervous ' laughter all around.  Lugubrious jokes.   N    I need to convince this woman and her unknown masters that I'm a *harmless*K lunatic.  Time to track PAMELA D to her lair. (Yes.  Think of her that way, I Pamela D., like one of those impossible anonymous synthetic blondes in an K upscale skin magazine.  "Well, I'm into sailing Sunfishes and I really like N kids, you know?".  Good.  A *much* less threatening mental tableau.)  I limberE up my phoning fingers and call the number blazoned above her address.   ;    <click> <sputter> "NORAD operator ten.  What extension?" E    Gulp.  "Uh, I'm trying to reach Pamela D. Miller?  I got a product  information query from her."#    "Do you have an extension, sir?" H    "Um, no I don't.  Just this number.  And her address." I reel it off.6    "Try the base locator at Peterson, sir.  554-4020.""    "Thanks", I said, and hung up."  J    Ohhh-kay.  NORAD for sure.  Hail Eris! PAMELA D's hanging out somewhereK under a couple of cubic miles of rock, likely in some cramped little office L with 1950s-era furniture and walls painted institutional puke-green.  And anN old-style black phone. (How long has it been since you've seen a black phone?)K (Trust me, this is what the military version of bureaucratic rabbit warrens K looks like.)  Or maybe at some gleaming console watching telemetry from all K those KH-11s we're supposed to pretend don't exist.  Hah.  Heads up, Pammy; D constructive chaos is about to enter your life.  All hail Discordia!  I    This is about where things started to get really Kafkaesque.  The base J locator is their directory information desk.  I ask for Pamela D. Miller'sO extension and get 3247 (remember that number).  I call it.  Some guy who sounds J exactly like Andy Griffith answers: "<something unintelligible> Morrow", IA say I'm looking for Pamela D. Miller and he says "You want 3427".o  K    O.K.  I call 3427.  Busy signal.  Bummer.  The thrill of the hunt havingoN took hold, I feel rather frustrated.  I go off and do other things for fifteenL minutes or so --- polishing the draft rules for the Dream Machines Bake-Off.* I call again.  Busy signal.  Bummer again.  J    Lunch, some code-bashing, and about six or seven cycles of this later IO begin to suspect evil things.  Either this woman spends more continuous time onrL the phone than your average Hollywood lawyer or I've got a wrong number.  OrM she doesn't actually exist.  In your typical government agency she could haveaJ died with the phoneset in her hand in 1974 and nobody'd have got around toL noticing it was off the hook yet.  On the other hand, *somebody* had to fill out that product-bingo card.  I    On my next try, when the operator says "Busy, sir." I explain that theeI number's been continuously so for several hours, and this seems unlikely. 5    "I'll check for an alternate.  <pause>  Try 3052." K    Right.  No one answers at 3052.  I hang up and answer some email.  I tryrM again.  No answer.  Again, fifteen minutes later.  No answer.  Oy vey.  Isn't. this where I got on?  M    So I try 3247 (the *original* number) again.  Busy.  Foo.  I call the basemK locator people again and explain that there appears to be some confusion in > the air.  Is it 3247 or 3427?  And what's with this 3052 jazz?I    "I have 3247 listed, sir.  I'll double-check.  <pause> It says 3427 onl her card."  Silence.    "Well, which is it?" I say.+    "3427.  But it says 3247 on the roster."-H    "Well", I say with enormous gentleness, "don't you think you ought to consider *fixing* it?"L    The silence of blank incomprehension on the other end.  Never ask a droidD to exceed its programming; it wastes your time and annoys the droid.,    I hang up.  And try 3427 again.  Busy...   K    A few cycles later I conclude this isn't working; it's time to drop back M and punt.  I consider everything I know about bureaucracies, call the locatorkO people and confidently ask for the US Space Command main administration number.s  L    "Um, there doesn't seem to be one, sir.  Oh, wait, you can try this one."' She gives out with a string of numbers.'    "Can you transfer me?"g)    "Stand by."  (...only in the military)l
    <click>    "AF Space Command."F    I go into my spiel about PAMELA D. and her inquiry and her address.F    "Uh, that's a Cheyenne Mountain address. Can't help you with that.".    "Um", I said, "this *is* US Space Command?"K    "No sir, this is AF Space Command.  Separate organization.  We're on then" base; they're under the mountain."6    "Two *separate* Space Commands?" I said. "Why two?"K    I can't tell you what he said, because I didn't understand the resultingkJ freshet of bureaucratese.  A couple of requests for clarification just gotK me in deeper.  I caught something about "functional separation" and stringsDJ of building numbers about as intelligible as so many Egyptian hieroglyphs.G    Struggling my way out of this verbal morass, I said, "Well, where doI I go from here?"G    "Lemme see if I can send you over to someone that'll help", he says,e and gives me another number.  M    It's mid-afternoon now and I'm starting to lose it.  Fifteen hundred milesdL from these people and I feel as thoroughly trapped in their maze as though II was physically under that bloody mountain.  Theseus with no Ariadne and aiI nuclear-security Minotaur lurking around the next bend.  (I like my mixedoD metaphors shaken, not stirred, thank you.)  PAMELA D, where are you?  J    But I call this guy's number and get the most human-sounding voice yet.N "Base information", it says.  Young, female, black, rather pretty if that liltI isn't out of sync with her looks.  Quite a change from the depersonalizedrE midwestern/southern whitebread twangs I've been hearing.  She listenst, sympathetically as I recount my tale of woe.  F    "Well, let's see what I can do for you."  <pause>  "That's strange.' I have no listing for a Pamela Miller."aK    If there were any justice in the world there'd have been eerie, sinister I music on the soundtrack just then.  Slowly building towards the Moment of H Discovery.  Wait for it.  At the time, a slight but definite premonitory chill ran down my spine.A    "Well.  Does this mail code mean anything to you?  J2C/SSO-C?" +    "Yes sir, it means she's in J2 section." >    "O.K., what does J2 do?  What does that say about her job?"&     Long pause. "She's in intel, sir."  O    Jangling chords and screaming brass from the unseen orchestra.  Oh, *great*.'N All the paranoid fantasies that'd been slowly graying out as I threaded my wayA through the labyrinth sprang back to full and colorful life.  TheeJ *intelligence* group.  Better and better.  I thought about buzzing Guy andF asking him if he was on good terms with any of his overseas relatives.  aO    "A spook!" I said, and laughed rather hollowly.  "No wonder I've had troubleo# reaching her.  What do I try next?"eH    Perhaps ominously, the woman did not elect to contradict my choice ofM terms.  "I'll see if I can reach anyone at J2 who knows her", she said.  Long G pause.  Long, long pause.  Background noises; people coughing, murmureda speech, file doors banging.oO    Finally, anticlimax.  "I found her. That's 2nd Lt. Miller, sir; I don't knowIK why she'd have "CHIEF" after her name.  Her extension is 3433, but she's onn- detached duty and won't be back till Monday."a  J    And there you have it.  It's 2:39 the following morning and I look likeJ an out-take from the "Nightfly" cover --- but if I disappear mysteriously,! y'all will *know* where to start.    			TO BE CONTINUED...   M (Interlude, Friday morning.  My father reads an uploaded version of the above O and asks if I intend to post it.  Upon learning that I already have, he soberlyiO advises against offending the entire U.S. Air Force.  "After all," he observes,bF "they could drop a smart bomb down your chimney."  Gee.  Thanks, Dad.)  N Monday morning, March 30th: Once more into the breach --- and Pamela D. MillerI is real!  Got her first time.  Neither amazon nor bimbo, of course, but aiN bright and generous-minded lady with a sense of humor.  And a *1st* lieutenantL now.  She turns out to be (no less) chief of computer security at NORAD; andK (mirabile dictu) she *knows* the difference between a hacker and a cracker. J *Vast* sigh of relief --- no snatch teams in my future and I can unstop my chimney now.  I She was hip enough to laugh when I told her something of my travails lastaF Wednesday, laugh harder when I told her the title of this posting, andL hardest when I volunteered to autograph her copy of TNHD with an inscriptionK reading "I will not start World War III.  I will not start World War III.  e# I will not start World War III...."p  L She's not allowed to have a direct phone line, much less an Internet addressO (think about it) so this mini-epic is going to have to go to her by snail-mail.nK But I've been invited to tour NORAD and (yes, it is possible) visit the War $ Room if I'm ever out Colorado way...   				---   I RISKS moral.  Gotta have a RISKS moral for this story.  Well, there are aeO couple.  The trivial one is, watch out for aliasing problems if you ever edit arO book; we've only got one word for several different kinds of `editor', and thatiK high-level difference may not be visible to computers or the clerical help.i  M A less trivial one is "Don't be paranoid; it encourages paranoia in others.".rN I had fun writing the above; I've always enjoyed the mad-genius-on-speed styleM as practised by Robert Anton Wilson, Tom Robbins, Hunter Thompson at. al. ---tL but if Lt. Miller were that wiggy or I'd really approached her with The FearL dripping from my every vocal overtone, things could've got ugly (hah! littleN did she suspect that I kept her on the phone only long enough for my insidiousJ infrasonic acoustic virus to escape from her earpiece and set up *sinister2 resonances* in any nearby electronic equipment...)  O The least trivial of all is that *human* networking is still our most effectiveiL tool for some important kinds of risk reduction.  Mutual trust, when you canM establish it, is the best security.  You guess; am I more or less worried nowoI about the risks inherent in having something like NORAD exist, having got J a little acquainted with Lt. Miller?  Are *you* more or less worried afterL reading this story?  And, which is the real point, does this posting make itK more or *less* likely that someone with the requisite skills would actuallyu try to crack NORAD?  -- yM       Eric S. Raymond = eric@snark.thyrsus.com  (breathing easier in Malvern)l