The Ghost Board (Autumn, 1994)
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By Autolycus

The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington is an "alternative" (aka
hippie) college that grew out of the academic counterculture of the late 1960s.
During the '70s and '80s, Evergreen was the home for a variety of innovative
phreaks and proto-hackers (testimony of this can be found in the campus
computer center occupying Room 2600 of the Evans Library building but how we
pulled that off is another story).

Some activities of this community are public knowledge due to individuals
entanglements with Telco cops and other powers that be. The busts by the FCC
over the campus radio station's (KAOS) bootleg phone switchboard system during
the era of Ma Bell's monopoly over such systems was, fortunately, the worst
bust we were ever involved in. A number of text files are circulating which
document Saladin's conversion of an elevator emergency phone to an active WATS
line, as well as his overdubbing the screech used in the Emergency Broadcast
System radio tests with 2600 Hz. But nothing has been written about the locally
infamous "Ghost Board." In the Pacific Northwest, the Ghost Board is legendary,
though much that has been written about it is more mythical than factual (no,
the Ghost Board never posted classified dialups for the nearby Bangor Missile
Base).

The Ghost Board was a parasitic bulletin board mostly a message system which
sporadically and temporarily operated covertly in a number of computer dial-up
systems without the knowledge of the sysop (though more than once the
assistance of a co-sysop was used). In the early days, this was accomplished
very simply (usually through shared accounts and simple encryption methods),
but with time more intricate operational procedures were used. Regardless of
the system used, the basic Ghost Board procedure was as follows:

1. Members would call the system in the wee hours of the morning and access
non-"advertised" message areas. (This was done in a variety of ways ranging
from simply typing an unlisted character at the main menu of a Wildcat system,
hitting ALT E, S, C on a LAN system, or using an ANSI bomb to drop to DOS.)

2. A message/database system was available where Ghost Board members could
communicate, and a rough date for the next Ghost Board was listed.

3. The system would (ideally) self-delete at a predetermined time and no trace
of the system would be left.

The Ghost Board only operated between midnight and 5:00 a.m. It was little more
than a floating database system collecting: compiled addresses and phone
numbers of every pay phone in the area, test loop numbers, information on local
computer systems and security flaws, flaws in local PBX systems, pilfered
system passwords and account names, etc.

The original Ghost Board never lasted for more than two or three evenings at a
time and only operated every sixty days or so. In the late 1980s, one ghost
board member operated an elite local text and phreak-utility based BBS called
the Ghost Board, but this was actually a separate entity.

th time, the method of notifying members where and when the Ghost Board was up
and operating was changed. The most common method was to use the free lost and
found classified ad section of the local newspaper where periodic messages
conveyed the needed information (i.e., "LOST Dalmatian puppy with tag reading
ATDT, call 555-7734 before 7/22, ask for Keith" where "Keith" was the name
needed to gain access to the system).

As BBS systems proliferated in the early and mid eighties the Ghost Board began
using simple ANSI bombs to gain superuser access to poorly tended systems. From
this vantage unused menu keys were assigned to access the hidden sub-board
system. At different times, work-study positions and academic "internships" at
State agencies were used to burrow out hosts for the Ghost Board. For half a
year, I periodically set up a message system on a state agency's computer
system and hooked up my own external modem. At a later date the local dialup
card catalog for the library was hacked and bogus book entries were used to
pass on information.

For a short period of time in the early '90s, one Ghost Board pioneer abandoned
an AT (he'd purchased it for $40 at the Goodwill) on the roof of a rural
supermarket. The AT was water-protected and hardwired into the store's power
grid and the 2400 modem was spliced into the store s phone lines. This system
operated for almost five months before it was (apparently) detected and shut
down.

At present the Ghost Board is still sporadically operating with the assistance
of various UNIX systems and child-operated BBS systems. With any luck, this is
the last you will hear of us!