to manufacture, is an Oxford-trained lawyer self-taught over the

last twenty years in computing. Most of the time I am tackling

fraud, industrial espionage and advising insurers and companies
of the precise ways in which a business can collapse as the
consequence of a fire, bomb, or other disaster. My writings
about hacking have given me a limited form of prominence and also
some insights, but many of the skills I need day-to-day have
come from elsewhere. Hacking is far less important than many
people think.

Hugo Cornwall

London, UK, August 1994

****************************************

HACKER'S HANDBOOK III

HUGO CORNWALL

(c) Hugo Cornwall, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1994

 CONTENTS

Preface to Third Edition

Introduction

1: First Principles: developing hacking instincts

2: Computer-to-computer communications: how computers talk to

each other

3: Hacker's Equipment: terminal emulators & modems

4: Targets: What you can find on mainframes: history of remote

services, on-line publishing, news broadcasting, university
and research mainframes

5: Hacker's Intelligence: phone numbers, passwords and background

research

6: Hacker's Techniques: 'the usual password tricks'; a typical

hacking session - tones, speeds, protocols, prompts,
operating system levels

7: Networks: PSS technology and terminology; public and private

networks, VANs

8: Videotex systems: public and private services

9: Radio computer data : plucking data from the radio waves

10: Hacking: the future : falling hardware costs and increased

remote computer usage versus increasing security; the
synchronous world; hacker's ethics

Appendices (omitted)

I: Trouble Shooting
II: Eccentric Glossary
III: CCITT and related standards
IV: Standard computer alphabets
V: Modems
VI: RS 232C and V 24
VII: Radio Spectrum
VIII: Port-finder flow chart
IX: File Transfer Protocols
Index (omitted)

PREFACE TO HACKER III

The original Hacker's Handbook had quite modest expectations. It

was written because, halfway through 1984, it had become apparent
that there was a growing interest in the exploration, from the
comfort of the homely personal computer, of the world of large
mainframes and the data networks that connected them to each
other. The same questions were coming up over and over again in
magazines and hobbyist bulletin boards. Why not produce a book to
satisfy this demand, the publishers and I asked ourselves. At the
same time I, and a number of other hackers were concerned to make
sure that those who were going to play around with other people's
machines understood the fundamental ethics of hacking and that,
without being too pompous about it, I thought I could do along
the way in this book.

During 1985, the original Hacker's Handbook went through a

remarkable number of reprints and a fresh edition appeared just
under a year after the first. By 1988, rather a lot of things
have changed. In 1984 the home computers most likely to be owned
by the book's British readers would have been the Sinclair
Spectrum or the Acorn/BBC Model B. Increasingly, one must expect
that the domestic market is using clones of the IBM PC or, if
they have come to computing via word-processing machines, the
Amstrad PCW 8256 or 8512, or perhaps an icon-based machine like
the Apple Mac or Atari ST family. These machines simply have much
more power and many more features than their predecessors of
three or so years previously. Among other things, the disc drive
is no longer a luxury and very few people have to rely on
cassette players for program and data storage. The software such
computers can support is much more sophisticated. Again on the
equipment front, the typical modem was an unsophisticated device
which required the user to lever a telephone handset into some
rubber cups in order to make a connection to the outside world.
Today's modems are not only directly connected to the telephone
system, they have a large range of functions which can be called
into play and which increase their versatility and value. They
are also much more affordable.

The world outside the home computer has also changed. Electronic
publishing was still a tentative, self-apologetic industry in
1984; now it is operating with vigour and there are many more and
many different systems and services to be explored. There has
been an astonishing growth in the range of electronic services
available for customers of all kinds to use; some represent
substantial publishing activities, others allow large companies
to work ever more closely with their branches and men in the
field, or to communicate more effectively with retailers. The
keen competition to sell new financial services has made banks
and building societies place even more of their future hopes in
communications technology. Electronic mail systems are now
serious commercial enterprises. At the same time, the range of
network facilities - the railway lines or roads along which data
can travel from one remote location to another - has been
considerably extended both in terms of sophistication and the
number of people who expect to use it.

In 1984, a British home computer's first use of an external

service would almost certainly have been Prestel; now it could be
any of up to ten useful information and electronic mail
facilities. Prestel itself has been overtaken in the size of its
user base by Telecom Gold. In what is now the second extensive
rewrite (and hence the third edition), I am taking the
opportunity to give new readers the chance to appreciate the
world of hacking in terms of the equipment and experiences of the
late- rather than the the mid-1980s.

Perceptions about hacking have altered as well. In 1984 the word

was only beginning to shade over from its original meaning as
"computer enthusiast" into the more specialist "network
adventurer". However, in the last couple of years, sections of
the popular press have begun to equate "hacker" with "computer
criminal" or "computer fraudster". This has never been my
definition. At the same time, the authorities seem to have homed
in on hacking - in the sense of unauthorised entry into a
computer system - as the most serious aspect of computer crime.
That this is in defiance of all the research work and statistics
doesn't seem to bother them. Computer crime is most typically and
frequently committed by an employee of the victim. Accordingly, I
am taking the opportunity to explain more clearly what I regard
as the purpose of and limitations on, hacking. In 1984 I thought
I was writing for a knowledgeable elite; the first print was
5,000 copies and, if the book had only sold that number I guess
that both the publisher and author would have felt that things
had gone "alright". In the UK alone, ten times that number have
already been sold and there have been overseas editions also. As
it happens, I firmly reject accusations that the book has caused
any substantive harm, but obviously knowledge of the existence of
a wider readership has made me assume less about people's sense
of how to behave responsibly.

There's also been a change in my personal circumstances; I now

earn a good part of my living from advising on computer security
and systems integrity. Since hacking in the way I describe it is
such a small part of the overall range of risks faced by
companies through their computer systems, there is very little
conflict between those activities and the authorship of this
book. However I now receive a large amount of confidential
material in the course of my work. I must be explicit about the
simple rule I have always adopted in deciding what to include:
the confidentiality of information given to me in the course of
work is paramount, just as I have always respected the
confidences of hackers. But anything which has already been
uncovered by hackers and enjoyed circulation among them is fair
game for repetition here.

The aims remain the same. The book is an accessible introduction

to the techniques of making a micro speak to the outside world, a
rapid survey of the sorts of information and data out there
waiting to be siphoned through a domestic machine and a scene
setter for those seduced by the sport of hacking. It is not the
last word in hacking. No such book could ever exist because new
"last words" are being uttered all the time; indeed that is one
of the many attractions of the sport.

Literary detectives who possess either of the previous editions

of The Hacker's Handbook will have little difficulty in
recognising whole sections in this new edition, though I hope
they will also identify the many new features and details. While
re-writing the book I have taken the opportunity to update every
aspect of those earlier editions that have proved worth
retaining, in some cases considerably expanding on what had
previously only be hinted at, have replaced certain material that
had had to be omitted for legal reasons and have included some
completely new descriptions of major hacks that have either come
to light recently or where, for one reason or another, it is now
safe to offer a report.

As with the original book, various people helped me on various

aspects of this book; they will all remain unnamed - they know
who they are and that they have my thanks.

London, August 1987

INTRODUCTION

The word "hacker" is now used in three different but loosely

associated ways: in its original meaning, at least as far as the
computer industry is concerned, a hacker is merely a computer
enthusiast of any kind, one who loves working with the beasties
for their own sake, as opposed to operating them in order to
enrich a company or research project - or to play games. In the
compressed short-hand language of newspaper and tv news headlines, a
"hacker" has sometimes become synonymous with "computer
criminal".

This book uses the word in a more restricted sense: hacking is a

recreational and educational sport; it consists of attempting to
make unofficial entry into computers and to explore what is
there. The sport's aims and purposes have been widely
misunderstood; most hackers are not interested in perpetrating
massive frauds, modifying their personal banking, taxation and
employee records or inducing one world super-power into
inadvertently commencing Armageddon in the mistaken belief that
another super-power is about to attack it.

Every hacker I have ever come across has been quite clear where
the fun lies: it is in developing an understanding of a system
and finally producing the skills and tools to command it. In the
vast majority of cases the processes of 'getting in' and
exploring the architecture of the operating system and applications
is much more satisfying than what is in the end discovered from
protected data files. In this respect the hacker is the direct
descendant of the phone phreaks of fifteen years ago; phone
phreaking became interesting as intra-nation and international
subscriber trunk dialling was introduced - when the London-based
phreak finally chained his way through to Hawaii he usually had
no one there to speak to - except the local weather service or
American Express office to confirm that the desired target had
indeed been hit. Interestingly enough, one of the earliest of the
present generation of hackers, Susan Headley, only 17 when she
began her exploits in California in 1977, chose as her target the
local phone company and, with the information extracted from her
hacks, ran all over the telephone network. In one of the many
interviews which she has given since, she has explained what
attracted her: it was a sense of power. Orthodox computer
designers have to be among the intellectual elite of our time;
and here was a 17-year-old blonde, hitherto heavily into rock
musicians, showing their work up. She 'retired' four years later
when a boy friend started developing schemes to shut down part of
the phone system. Last heard of, after giving evidence to a
committee of the US Congress, she was working on a "government
project".

There is also a strong affinity with program copy-protection

crunchers. As is well known, much commercial software for micros
is sold in a form to prevent obvious casual copying, say by
loading a cassette, cartridge or disk into memory and then
executing a 'save' on to a fresh blank disk. Copy-protection
devices vary greatly in their methodology and sophistication and
there are those who, without any commercial desire, enjoy nothing
so much as defeating them. Every computer buff has met at least
one cruncher with a vast store of commercial programs, all of
which have somehow had the protection removed - and perhaps the
main title subtly altered to show the cruncher's technical
skills - but which are then never actually used at all.

But there is also a strong link with "hacking" in that earlier

sense as it existed around Massachusetts Institute of Technology
at the end of the 1950s and again in the Bay Area to the south-
west of San Francisco in what was becoming known as Silicon
Valley in the early 1970s. It is in the existence of this link
that one can find some justification for the positive benefits of
hacking as a sporting activity to counter-balance the ugly
stories of vandalism and invasions of privacy.

On a warm Friday afternoon in the late Autumn of 1986 I was being

conveyed in a shaking RV - recreational vehicle - past the
Silicon Valley townships of San Mateo, Palo Alto, Cupertino and
Sunnyvale up into the redwood-forested hills towards a
prototypical American Holiday Camp. I was on my way to the
Hackers 2.0 Conference, a follow-up the first Hackercon which had
been a class reunion for a group of people, some of whom had
known each other for nearly fifteen years, and who were linked by
their enthusiasms for stretching ever further the possibilities
of computer technologies. Among the just-under 200 attendees were
people who had invented computer lang