American Art Auction, a first-edition book auction, book raffles, and a free book giveaway.
A book lover's dream come true.
There's a small donation, and children under 10 will be admitted free of charge.
Proceeds to benefit TALA, a non-profit literary organization.
For further information, call 212-714-5316.
That's 212-714-5316.
212-714-5316.
Thank you for calling the New York Times.
If you are calling from a touchtone telephone, please press 1 now.
Otherwise, remain on the line, and a New York Times operator will assist you.
Please hold while we transfer you to the operator.
New York Times?
Hi, is this the New York Times?
Yes, it is.
Is your website up?
I heard it was down for a while.
Really?
Yeah.
Do you know what's going on?
I don't know, sir.
They're closed, and I can't get an answer, but I could give you a phone number.
Maybe their switchboard might have stayed open later.
I checked it, and there was all this, you know, this obscenity.
I'm sorry, we have a bad connection.
I can hardly hear you.
I just got all this indecency and sexually oriented stuff.
Yeah.
I don't know if that's the kind of stuff the New York Times prints.
No, not at all, sir.
There is, like, we've been having trouble with hackers.
Uh-huh.
Is one of their names Kevin Starr, by chance?
I don't know the details.
That's where I saw all the sexually explicit material, and I was just kind of concerned.
Yes, we're aware of the problem.
I can give you the website's number if you want to inquire.
Okay, go ahead.
It's 597-8001.
Thank you very much for your help.
Thank you.
Good night.
Well, we have a busy night ahead of us, don't we?
A lot to talk about.
This is Off The Hook Emmanuel Goldstein with you. Stay tuned.
Hey.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Have you ever asked yourself who holds the key that winds up Big Ben?
Yeah.
And good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook and we've got our hands full tonight with all kinds of news reports and updates.
I'm sure everyone's heard about it by now.
I'm sure you've all gotten the updates from every media source there is that the New York Times website got hacked on Sunday.
Big time.
Oh, boy.
They didn't mess around this time, did they?
And basically, even though this is something that I think might have gotten Kevin Mitnick a little bit angry or upset or frustrated
because everyone thinks that he did this, that he's somehow the mastermind behind the whole thing.
Even with that, I think a lot of good has come out of it and that people are starting to ask questions.
So I was looking around on the Kevin Mitnick website, www.kevinmitnick.com, looking at the stats page.
And everybody can click on this if you go over to that site.
On Saturday, we had 13,534 hits.
That's just like a normal day.
On Sunday, 62,582.
And there's a little bar graph here and it just kind of goes all the way across the page.
It's really, really pretty wacky there.
So, yeah, that's definitely a cause and effect.
Now, of course, a lot of people were trying to access the website for sexually explicit material of a different nature.
And they weren't able to get it there and they were able to get it in all kinds of other places.
CNN, MSNBC, all the other places that had the Ken Starr report on there.
So it wasn't really that much of an inconvenience to the public.
The New York Times says it was a big inconvenience to them.
Let me read you the article that showed up on their webpage once it finally came back up.
A group calling for the release of an imprisoned computer hacker commandeered the New York Times site on the World Wide Web for several hours on Sunday.
They commandeered it.
They moved in there with tanks and troops.
And what a bloody battle it was.
The incident forced the newspaper's electronic edition to shut down at a time when traffic was particularly heavy
because of Friday's release of the Whitewater Independent Council's report over the Internet.
Now, speaking of that report, I just want to point out two things here.
Number one, that was indecent material by anyone's definition.
I mean, I was shocked by some of the things that were being done with all kinds of objects and people and things that are alleged in that report.
And the Republican Congress insisted that it be put on the Met.
I mean, that's amazing, isn't it?
They basically broke all their indecency rules and clauses and paranoia that they've been putting out for the last few years.
So apparently when it suits them, it's okay.
What the rest of us, we have to toe the line.
And the other thing, the other thing concerning this that I thought was really kind of amazing
is that when the documents were released to the, brought by Ken Astoria to the government
and locked up in that vault for 24 hours, they were already in HTML format.
Yeah, they didn't do all this in one day.
They didn't put it all in nice text format for HTML.
No, it was all that way to begin with.
So what does that tell you?
It tells you that they were ready for this.
They knew it was going to be going up on the web.
And that whole discussion where they sort of voted on it was kind of a formality.
They knew exactly where it was going from the beginning.
So I thought that was kind of interesting right there.
Anyway, getting back to the story about the Times site.
Instead of the Times opening screen, some visitors to the site early Sunday morning saw a logo marked HFG.
With images of nude women and a diatribe that included attacks on the Times' past coverage
of the imprisoned hacker, Kevin Mitnick, who has been in jail since his arrest in February 1995.
Except they don't say that he has not had any bail.
He has not been on trial.
Officials of the New York Times Electronic Media Company,
the division of the company that handles operations on the web,
shut down the site after the break-in was discovered
and didn't restore service until 7.35 p.m. after securing the site's computers.
Joseph Vigil, who was a member of the Times' press corps,
had opened an investigation into the break-in.
They're going to track these guys down.
Martin Nisenholtz, president of the division,
said late Sunday that the company did not yet know how the hacker organization was going to deal with the site.
Martin Nisenholtz, president of the division,
said late Sunday that the company did not yet know how the hacker organization,
HFG, or Hacking for Girlies,
yeah, had breached its security.
But he speculated...
He speculated that the attack was timed to coincide
with the increased traffic to the site
in the wake of the publication of the report by the Whitewater Information Agency.
in the wake of the publication of the report by the Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr.
This is a much more destructive weekend to be doing this than normal,
Nisenholtz said.
We were running 35 percent above normal on Saturday,
and typically Sunday is twice as big as Saturday.
Well, it certainly was for the Kevin Mitnick site.
The Times' attack appears to be the first time
the website of a major news organization has been penetrated by hackers.
But computer security experts noted
that attacks on high-profile targets are by no means rare.
The approaching trial in January of Mitnick,
who has been in jail since his arrest for parole violation
and several federal felony counts in early 1995,
also appears to have galvanized some members of the computer underground.
The group that took over the Times' site
directed some of its comments at John Markoff,
the Times reporter who covered Mitnick's arrest.
Don't say anything about him helping to orchestrate his arrest,
but I guess they'll cover that sometime in the future.
Earlier this year, Yahoo, the biggest Internet search engine site,
was hacked by a group proclaiming its support for Mitnick.
And this summer, the hacker magazine 2600 led a small protest
outside the Manhattan offices of Miramax Films,
which is producing a movie based on the book Takedown.
Well, once the trial date comes closer,
we're going to see a strengthened effort in hacking websites
to get the Kevin Mitnick name known,
predicted John...
Branisevich. Yeah, I said it right.
Founder of Anti-Online, a website that tracks hacker activity.
HFG buried additional comments within the source code of the page,
the computer instructions that underlie the page.
Those comments were less threatening,
lacked the creative spellings,
and included quotes from Tennyson, Emerson and Voltaire.
In case you don't know, those were hackers from centuries past.
They also got in a lot of trouble.
HFG also said they hacked the page because they were bored
and wanted to make people laugh.
The story made the front page of yesterday's New York Times
actually a little pointed to another page.
Hackers strike the Times.
The New York Times shut down its website,
webpage after computer hackers took control of the site, page A12.
Funny thing is, it wasn't on page A12.
I guess hackers moved it to page A18.
Who knows?
So we had articles in the New York Times about this.
A bigger piece in today's Newsday.
A tiny piece in yesterday's Newsday.
A brief mention in the New York Post.
Actually, no, a full-fledged article in the New York Post.
And a very interesting story in the Daily News.
Readers who logged on to the New York Times website yesterday,
perhaps to read more details of Kenneth Starr's impeachment report,
got something even more explicit on their computer screens.
A group of hackers calling itself Hacking for Girls.
They even got that wrong, didn't they?
That wasn't the right name.
Wasn't it Hacking for Girlies or something like that?
Yeah.
This is the Daily News for you.
Hacking for Girls took over the paper's website yesterday morning
and posted pictures of nude women.
Now, that's the other thing, OK?
Everyone's saying this.
Everyone's saying that there's obscenity and pornography
and that's not true.
Everyone's saying that there's obscenity and pornography on the site.
There wasn't any pornography.
In fact, Channel 4 showed the whole thing right on TV.
They didn't even censor it.
It basically had images that were sort of obscured.
And if you used your imagination,
you could imagine what they look like without clothing on,
but they weren't like that on the website.
And if you don't believe me,
go over to the 2600 website right now
and look at the mirror image that we have posted on there.
You'll see for yourself.
Maybe it's part of a nipple or something like that,
but come on, that's not pornography.
Sorry, it just isn't.
At least not in my book.
Anyway, OK, so they posted pictures of nude women,
according to the Daily News,
on a weekend when the site was receiving record traffic.
Times technicians reposted the site more than once,
only to see the hackers overlay the pornographic pictures.
Here we go.
Finally, the paper pulled the plug for the day.
The cyber outlaws also posted a manifesto
protesting against the Times' technology correspondent,
John Markoff,
and calling for the release
of incarcerated hacker Kevin Mitnick.
Markoff co-authored a book
about the 1995 capture of the hacker
who broke into the computer systems
of such companies as Motorola and Fujitsu,
and this reporter apparently
has never heard of the word, allegedly.
Mitnick also was arrested in 1983
for breaking into a Pentagon computer network
the prototype of today's intranet.
Yeah, people were kind of surprised.
You didn't know that, did you?
Well, hang your head in shame.
You didn't know that little fact
about Kevin Mitnick
that he was arrested in 1983
for breaking into the Pentagon.
It's pretty unbelievable, isn't it?
Well, you know,
the reason it's unbelievable
is because it never happened.
Never happened.
Never happened.
I mean,
this is just unbelievable
how the papers are able
to spread nonsense around
with absolutely no basis in reality.
No basis at all.
That was written by Bill Egbert.
He's the convicted dog rapist, isn't he?
I've heard of him.
Yeah, no, this guy was convicted
of raping dogs all over his neighborhood.
I can't tell you how I know this,
but that's what I heard.
So I'm going to go around telling everybody
that's what it is.
I mean, this guy has absolutely no basis in reality
for saying Kevin Mitnick broke into the Pentagon in 1983
yet he puts it into a newspaper story.
So from this point on, Bill Egbert,
that's what you're going to be known as,
The Daily News.
Call The Daily News.
Ask them how they can hire people like this.
I don't mean the dog rapist part.
I mean the reporting part,
but speaking of good reporting,
we have a real reporter on the line with us.
You may have heard the name Simpson Garfinkel,
reporter for the Boston Globe,
author of several technology books.
Simpson, are you still with us up there in Boston?
I'm here.
I'm sorry if I went on too long there.
We had you on hold the whole time.
Quite a story.
Quite a story this weekend, isn't it?
I can barely hear you.
Can you turn up the volume?
I don't think there's any way to turn up the volume,
about this.
How bad is it?
Can you make me out at all?
Yeah, you're like a 2 on the scale of 1 to 10.
Yeah, that's what a lot of people say.
But,
I don't think there's any way we can get you
any better than this.
So, hopefully,
I'll try to talk loud without over-modulating.
So now,
were you able to hear what we were talking about?
Oh yes, I heard it all.
When did you become aware
of what was going on with the Times?
Well, you know, I feel that I sort of missed out
on it because I was
walking around a supermarket
and my cell phone rang
and it was a reporter
from Ziff Davis
from ZD Online who wanted some quotes
from me about what had happened
and I first had to be briefed
on what had happened.
The surprising thing was
how little coverage
this hack got in other news
media.
It got a mention on
NPR and it got a mention
on NPR the next day.
But, on the whole,
I think that the implications of this
were really severe.
You see that the hackers, instead of
just putting up their black pages,
they could have put up a
fictitious New York Times
which looked like a regular New York Times
but had new articles in it.
That's definitely true.
That's the thing. A lot of people that
hack webpages haven't really thought
out the site that they
want to hack. They don't have it prepared in advance
so basically what they wind up putting on is
a spur of the moment type of a thing
or maybe even a copy of something that was
put up before someplace else.
I'm always very surprised that
in my book, Web Security and Commerce,
we talk about the hack on the Department of Justice
website and on the CIA website
and those are sites where
you could have really damaged
the character and the faith of the
United States government
by putting up very interesting
pieces of information.
That kind of thing has been happening over
in East Timor
where people have been hacking websites there
and it's been causing
quite a bit of controversy because
that's really where political things
are happening. People are getting shot for expressing
their opinions and things like that.
These websites are being hacked relentlessly
over and over again and the word
that is opposed to what the government wants
to be put out is being put out instead
on their dime.
That's true political action right there
using the net. I think you're seeing
the same thing down in Mexico too.
The second thing that
really surprised me about the New York Times
case was the
Times saying that they don't know how it happened.
I was in a
room with a friend who was reading the web
and he gave me a very detailed
description of how it happened just by
looking at publicly available websites.
I don't understand why
the folks at the New York Times don't have
access to those same websites.
It's interesting. I think they're kind of holding back
on some information there which is
kind of weird being a newspaper that you
suppress information but since they can't do it
let's do it for them.
What are some of the theories being
bandied about as far as how this actually took
place? Allegedly the
penetration happened using
the Times website
which was running on a computer
running the Unix operating system
and they were running an
unsecure service called
StatD.
I think about six months ago
a penetration, a vulnerability
in the StatD program was widely
circulated and allegedly
that's what the attackers used to
get access.
Sounds simple enough.
It sounds simple enough.
On the
National Public Radio this morning
John McJosney reported that
two years ago
the New York Times
we have a
second phone line in the house
that's my wife's line
allegedly the New York Times
had been audited
by Belcor
two years ago and Belcor at the time
said it was the
most secure site they'd ever audited
but that was two years ago
and things move fast. That's right, you gotta keep up
with the times, keep up with the exploits.
It's surprising it hasn't been audited since.
The thing
that we found surprising was that
they were running any services on
their website other than
their web server
because strictly speaking from a security
point of view that's not really a good idea.
Right.
The
interview
that they did Sunday night with National Public Radio
said how
the system administrators
at the times detected the change
they changed the page back
and then a few moments later it was changed
back to the hacker page. Right.
And this went back and forth and back and forth
tug of war. The hackers had
access to their computer and they finally pulled the plug.
But
in the
file itself
the hackers say that they had hacked the
crontab and that's a
list of programs that get run automatically
on a regular basis.
So
it seems that the hackers
had just left a program that copied
over the page into the
publishing directory. Well my
understanding from what I got from them, because
they sent a few people mail when they did this
my understanding was that
the New York Times had something funky
going on in their crontab
and perhaps that was overriding the efforts
of the hackers until they found out
how they were doing that and then they went in and
sort of fixed the crontab to do
what they wanted it to do.
That's my theory.
I'm not involved with these hackers in
any way so I
certainly don't know the actual story.
Well now
you were quoted in a story
on Excite
www.excite.com
is where I found
this and
basically there you said that
many people don't understand the importance of having
secure computers all the time.
The people really at fault are the people who
manufacture software that run their servers.
Now I guess you've probably gotten
a bit of heat for saying something like that.
You're fading out
but I believe that
Gene Spafford and I
Gene's my co-author on the Practical
Unix and Internet Security book
For a long time we've been saying
that manufacturers need to be held
responsible for security flaws
in their products. Right now
when you run a program
before you can run it there's this shrink wrap
software license that comes up that
basically says if we delete
all the data on your computer
we're not responsible.
If you lose important information because
of the running of this software
we're not responsible.
If they give you a guarantee at all, the guarantee
is for the replacement cost of the floppy
disk or the CD-ROM that the program
came on.
We think that computers are
extremely important in the
current running of the American economy
and the world economy and the people
who make these machines should be held
liable for the work that they
create. Right, I mean at the same time
these same people will say well if you
do something, hack a website
you should go to prison for five years or something like that
so they're treating it like it's something
really incredibly valuable but
they don't want to take responsibility for something
that valuable. They're saying oh it's only
a CD-ROM, it's only the media
that it comes on, that's all we're going to take responsibility
for. So it
seems rather two-sided there.
It's very troubling
that the companies
will not stand behind their products.
As far as getting the message out about
Kevin, do you think this was
I guess
a useful way of spreading
the information?
I think it gets the
message out to the people who already know
the message but I
think that it's probably the wrong
way to get the message out to the general
public because it looks like a
fairly destructive vandalizing
act and another
way of doing it might be going
through channels and
placing op-eds
and writing letters
and really trying
to make their case. I know
a lot of hackers don't
believe in the system and they
try to bypass the system
but this may be one case
where
a positive PR spin rather than
a vigilante attack might
be better received
because I think
there are a lot of very important issues
in the Michnik case and
those issues tend to be ignored
when the people making the point
do so with these means.
I do see your point but at the same
time I know firsthand
the frustration a lot of these people are feeling
as far as working within the system
because this system
has brought us books
like Takedown and movies
and lots of money for the people that
exploit the case
and no justice for the people
that actually are waiting
to have their side heard.
Three and a half years in prison
before a trial for something of this nature
is insane. Most people seem to realize that
but even with that realization
nothing's happening. We're getting the word
out. A lot of people are finding out about it. Everyone's
angry but he's still in prison and
there is no word as to when he can ever
hope to get out.
That's frustration
right there. You feel like the system isn't really
going to work for you.
People have told me that
Michnik's lawyers waived the right to the speedy trial.
Yeah and most people that
wind up in prison waive that right because
the alternative is to
go to trial immediately without having an
opportunity to look at any evidence whatsoever.
I think if Kevin had known what they had in
for him at the outset he never would
have agreed to that. But who has the
benefit of that?
That's something a lot of people don't realize.
He waived the right to a speedy trial
but that does not mean he said
keep me in prison four years before you manage
to bring me up on charges.
It's not really what he had in mind.
It is troubling.
Very, yeah.
I don't know if any damage was done
to the actual site.
What's your opinion on that? Do you think they
did something damaging or just hurt their pride?
You know, I don't have any way of knowing
if there was any damage done.
I also don't know if the site is
within the newspaper's
internal network or not.
New York Times hasn't released any information
along those lines and I don't expect them to.
It seems to get up to alternate
when I do a trace route to it.
It seems to get up to alternate and then there's
some kind of a firewall there I think.
I'm not sure if it was that way before it got hacked though.
It might have been a lot different.
Well, the New York Times
is a target and they've
known that.
People who
are targets should take extraordinary
precautions.
And not be surprised when something like this happens.
I find that very hard to believe
that they actually are shocked and
surprised by this.
People are not afforded the opportunity
to express themselves in lots
of ways. The New York Times has no
obligation to print everybody's
viewpoint because unlike
the public airwaves,
printing presses are owned by corporations
and they don't belong to everybody.
But by the same token,
people are going to feel frustration
by that and they're going to try and
use graffiti art
attempts to get their word out.
And it should be viewed as such.
There is a legitimate message that is being
conveyed here. If someone just went
in there and just erased everything and destroyed
things with the obvious intention of causing
damage, that would be a completely different thing.
But it's obvious that these people were trying to
communicate something. And I think they should
be listened to and I think the security
halls they found should be
looked at as well. Now the New York Times,
I'm looking at some quotes from them,
this is a very serious crime. Once
the hackers are identified, we will prosecute
them to the full extent of the law, said Arthur
Sulzberger, Jr., publisher of
the Times. Sounds like they're just after vengeance.
It is a very serious crime.
It's a serious crime, but it's not a serious
crime like rape and murder
and the real serious crimes out there.
This is something, it's a prank.
It really is a prank and it's easily
recovered from. It's a black
eye to their integrity. Okay, you
learn from it and you move on.
What's going to be gained here
from pursuing these people and
locking, I guess somebody's going to write another book
about this and maybe make another movie
so someone's going to gain something.
But I don't think it's going to be the people that did
this. I don't think it's going to be me or
you. It's interesting that all of these
website hacks have been against
high profile sites that were not
doing really commerce.
We haven't
seen or heard about these hacks
against bank sites
or against sites that are online
brokerage houses.
If this had happened against
E-Trade, the online
stock brokerage, I think there
would be a lot more people concerned.
Yeah, yeah, you'll see
some things hitting fans at that point when
that happens and it probably will happen at some
point.
We also have a statement from
Kevin's lawyer, press release actually
came out yesterday. Kevin Mitnick appreciates the
support and good wishes of those who speak out against
his continued state of incarceration for years
without bail. However, he does not
encourage any individuals to engage in
hacking pranks on his behalf.
Kevin believes other avenues
exist that can be more beneficial to his
circumstances. See
www.kevinmitnick.com
Donald C. Randolph, Randolph and Levanus
attorneys at law.
Like I said before,
it brought a lot of people to the website that might
not have been there before and
they may have learned something.
They may have learned something. I was reading
some feedback on
various forums.
I think it was
MSNBC.
MSNBC has a BBS that they're
running and
basically
this person
was one of the people who was a link
on the website.
He runs anti-Scientology
websites. I guess
these people had something in for them as well because
they put his link there too.
I am the creator of one of the pages
that was linked from the New York Times hacked
page. www.
Scientology-kills.net
In the hours following the hack
I received more than 3,000 hits to
my page and tons of email.
Needless to say, this rather baffled me
and it wasn't until someone mentioned the hack in an email
to me that I first became aware of it.
Also included among the links on the page
was another link to Scientology critical information.
I'm not quite sure what to think
of this. In one sense, I'm
thankful for the increased exposure that they've given
to the Scientology criticism
taking place on the net and in another sense
I question the methods.
Perhaps their causes are worthwhile. Kevin Mitnick's
situation is an injustice, throwing
every other reason aside. The fact that he
spent over three years in jail without trial
alone is outrageous beyond
words.
As for the publicity provided
to my page as a result of this, I wouldn't have asked for it
but I'll accept it with a smile and a slightly
confused shrug.
That person definitely feeling
the effects of the hack. And also
I'm finding a lot of the people that are commenting on
this are aware of the Kevin Mitnick case
and I think that's really good. They're saying, okay
this is an injustice. This should be
focused on. And I have to say, today
alone I got an excess
of five phone calls from
reporters interested in the Kevin Mitnick
case. This did not happen last week.
It didn't happen last month.
People weren't interested. Now all of a sudden it's thrust
in their faces and they're interested.
Everyone's talking about the demonstration outside
Miramax. Like it was this big, massive
1968 Democratic Convention thing
but it was two dozen of us
from the radio station, from the city,
from the 2600 meetings that just went down there
and showed our opinion and
made our opinions vocal
and
it's being looked at now
months later as something really significant
and we knew back then it was significant
but it's nice to see it get some recognition.
Here's another bit of feedback from
MSNBC
This is in response to people that
called the website hackers idiots.
This person said, you missed something
check the source. I wouldn't be so quick to brand them
idiots. If you look at the source code
and you can do this on the 2600 site too
in the mirror of the hacked page
you'll see that they
speak in normal English.
You might think by looking at the actual
page that they're incapable of speaking in anything
but all caps and numbers
but that's just
I don't know how to describe that. It's just a
colloquialism or something.
They speak in real English if you look at the
page source. In Netscape just click on
view and look at page source and you'll see that there's
actual real commentary going on there along with
all kinds of quotes from those hackers
named Voltaire and Tennyson and Milton
and people like that. Just because hackers
can't as a general rule spell doesn't
mean that they are stupid.
I'd like to see you, the person who commented
before this, take down the New York
Times. You have to understand that most of these people
don't give a rat's ass about what you think
about their spelling. Sometimes I
question their use of text that is so difficult to read
people often miss their message because
of it. However, if you are willing to look
the message is there. Hackers
only really want freedom. Freedom from large
corporations and governments mainly
but also freedom of speech, freedom of action
and freedom of information. They hate injustice
and greed. They don't want to destroy but
they want to explore and communicate.
Truly are their goals any different from
our own? Was there any permanent damage
to the New York Times site? All
HFG wanted to do was grab a few minutes
of air time to express their opinions
and have a little bit of fun doing it.
For those of you who may have missed the message
or messages, I would like to repeat what seems
to be the primary reason for the attack.
Kevin Mitnick, an admitted hacker, has been in prison
since 1995 without a trial or even
a bail hearing for quote unquote
crimes that not done using
would seem petty and would probably
be dismissed. However, the federal government
has decided to drag Mitnick's
name through the mud and make an example
of him to discourage others.
Since then, he has become a sort of folk hero
and many hackers support his efforts
to clear his name. For more information
www.kevinmitnick.com
is a good place to start along with news
and background information. They also have a
counter that records how long Kevin has been
unfairly imprisoned. As of this
writing, it stands at over three years, six months
26 days, 10 hours
31 minutes, 48 seconds. Actually, it's gone
over three years, seven months by now.
Believe it or not, hackers have feelings
too. And
really intelligent posts like this I'm
seeing on the feedback sections where people
are actually aware of the issues
and they're not just
going to the usual, lock the hackers
up, they're the biggest threat to society
you know, since Attila the Hun.
I'm glad to see people
are thinking this through and realizing, hey, there are
two sides to every story and actually reading
the information.
Kind of surprised by it, to tell you the truth, but
it's good to see.
Simpson, you want to stay with us for some
phone calls? Oh, I'd like that a lot.
Okay. We're at 212-209-2900.
The program is
Off the Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein here with you tonight.
We're talking about the New York Times
hack on Sunday. The New York
Times webpage was brought
down to its knees by
a bunch of hackers called HFG that
were spreading the news about Kevin Mitnick
among some other things as well, but Kevin Mitnick was the
main topic and
I think they really succeeded in getting
the word out in ways that I don't think we were able
to do. And that's got to tell
you something. Here we have a 50,000-watt
radio station. We've got a magazine
that has tons of distribution
throughout bookstores in the country
and we've had demonstrations
and bumper stickers and things like that, but I think
this one action, this one
thing that happened on Sunday got more
attention in that one shot than
anything that we've done before this.
I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a cumulative effect.
Maybe we've gotten to more people, but just
feels, maybe because it's hitting us all at once
that they really got through to
a lot of people. And, you know, maybe there are
other ways of doing this, of getting the word out,
of spreading information that won't
result in federal indictments. I don't know.
If people have ideas, please
let us know. 212-209-
2900. Let's take our
first phone call. Good evening. You're on the air.
Hi. You know, the Kevin Mennonite site was hacked.
Did you know that? Goodbye.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Yes. Okay. The New York Times
wants to prosecute
and convict the
people who hacked the website.
Well, here's a challenge. It goes out
to John Markoff and to
Shimomura. Go track them down.
If you're as good as you say you people are,
Shimomura and
Markoff, go find them. Markoff, of
all people, should take this personally
to heart, considering part of that page
was directed towards him, and that's all
I have to say. Okay. Thanks. Thanks for calling.
And, you know, I understand Shimomura's
beeper has gone off. He's canceled
a ski trip, which is
really pissing him off no end, and he's right
now on a plane heading for some unknown
town, and nobody knows what he's
going to do there, but he's already writing down what he ate
on the plane, so
I think the second book is almost out.
Well, you know, John Markoff was quoted
in National Public Radio this morning
saying that he believed he knew
the identities of the people who had done this, and
he had given that information to the FBI.
Now, you know, do you think
the FBI really needs to be involved in this?
What's going to come out of that?
It's not going to unhack their site.
You know,
that's a very good question.
I think that overall
the FBI is extremely
concerned about the
threats to the national
computer infrastructure,
and when there is a high
profile situation like
this, there's a lot of
interest in getting involved.
At the same time, I know that they're
very overextended,
and I was recently told that
there are a lot of cases that they're just
not following up because they don't have the
time or the manpower.
It's hard to
understand or hard to know where this will fall.
Right.
All right, let's take another
listener phone call. 212-209-2900.
Let's go over here.
Good evening. You're on the air. Hello.
How you doing?
I actually kind of have a legal question
if you care if I ask you.
Is it related to the thing on Sunday?
Well, actually, it's kind of like slanted journalism.
Same thing happened to me and my friend that
kind of happened. You know how they're blowing
the whole article out of proportion?
Right.
Me and my friend,
we got in trouble for harassment
through prank phone calls,
which was kind of little
and stupid.
Prank phone calls?
How old are you?
I'm actually 17.
It's the kind of thing that 17-year-olds do.
What do you think about that?
Yeah, exactly.
We actually got the article sitting right here.
The thing is,
we uploaded it and stuff on the web.
I can give you the address if you want to see it.
But the thing is,
it's so wrong.
The guy that interviewed me and my friend
is not even the guy that did the article.
What was in this paper that printed this?
It was actually the record.
The Bergen County?
It was in Saturday's paper
under the title, Law and Order
for Juveniles.
What record is this, since you could be calling from anywhere in the world?
New Jersey.
The Bergen County record?
Yeah, Bergen County.
Law and Order for Juveniles
Arrested for Terrorizing Phone Calls.
Did they put your name in?
No, they didn't.
The thing is,
How do you know that you're the person
they're writing about?
Yes, but the thing is, they totally distorted
everything that was said.
Yeah, but maybe they were writing about another
set of juveniles.
No, it was us.
They didn't say our names because we're underage,
but what they had said
everything that we had told the cops
they basically summed it up nicely and changed it around.
It felt like the article.
Apparently that stuff comes from
the police reports.
If they didn't put your name in, you're lucky.
Nobody knows
it was you, so don't tell anybody.
I think
what the caller is upset about is the fact that
he knows it's them, and he's upset
that the facts have been distorted
like this. He's not yet
aware of how journalism works
in some newspapers where the story
is written before they actually talk to the people involved.
We didn't even go to court yet.
That's why I was wondering.
Is that not wrong?
They can legally do this?
Just go and make up shit?
Almost definitely. The information in that
came from the police report.
You really don't have much
recourse in the way
if you're not identifiable
in the story. You should just be
glad that you're not identifiable in the story.
Can you just give us one
example of what it is that they distorted?
Here's one.
We're going to bash your heads in.
We're going to kill you.
Something that they had in quotes
that none of the four people that got in trouble said.
What kinds of things did you say?
We were just
I'll just
tell you what we said.
Me and my friend just goofed on them.
One kid had threatened to
kill their dog.
That's much better than bashing
your head in.
Another thing, they said
we know where you live
and what time you walk your dog.
That was in quotes
also. We said that.
That was another thing we had never ever said.
Were you calling somebody that you knew?
No, it was just some
phone number that this girl had given us.
And they had a caller ID or something?
Are you guys familiar
with the Phone Losers?
Phone Losers of America?
No.
Actually, we've heard of them, yes.
We went there
and got inspired. We made prank phone calls.
We got in trouble.
You learned your lesson. You're not going to do this anymore, right?
You advise people not to do this kind of thing
because it really does get people upset.
I say this.
Every newspaper report,
every TV report that I've been involved in,
there's always one thing I can point to
that's wrong.
They just don't get right.
If you plan on being in the media a lot, you better get used to that.
Try to stay out of the media.
Thanks for calling.
202-209-2900. Good evening. You're on the air.
Hi, good evening.
How are you doing?
I can hear how you're doing.
FCC
and appointed agencies,
when they
come down on someone, it's more like a citizen's arrest
because they really don't have
law power or legal
power in a sense, do they?
They usually bring federal marshals with them
if you're talking about raiding a private radio
station or something like that.
That's how they actually go and get physical.
But who makes
the law process
is a voted upon
thing, isn't it?
How do they compare
to the judicial
or criminal? It's really not
in there.
The FCC commissioner is appointed.
He's definitely not elected.
That's a good point. There is not much public say
in important things.
The important things that the FCC is involved in right now
is micro-broadcasting
and indecency on the air
to policies which are really
stifling freedom of speech like you would not believe.
What I'm getting at is
can't we attack them on
when I say attack, don't take
them away of course, but
for example, the Environmental Control Board
if you don't pay the fine
in their
notice to you, they say
that if you don't pay this fine
we will
file
against you in a civil court.
Okay.
So that means they're not really a court
but yet you go through this mock trial
there's really no justice there.
I mean, what happened to
anything that amounts
to more than $20 you have a right to a trial
by jury? What happened to the whole
system that we are supposedly
operating under?
I'm not well versed enough in the legalities
and technicalities to be able to say exactly.
Simpson, do you have any insight into this?
Well, you have to understand
that the FCC is part of the executive branch
and when Congress passes laws
they usually leave the implementation
of those laws up to particular
federal agencies.
So the agencies write
regulations that spell out
more details in the laws
and micro-broadcasting
might fall under that.
And then the violation
of regulations can be
criminal or it can be
civil and there are usually
advantages or disadvantages
to each
venue.
If you have a violation
of regulations and you're taken
to civil court, you might
owe money but you won't
go to jail.
Whereas the stakes are usually higher in a criminal court.
So what is this fellow in jail
for three years for? What are they charging?
You said that he hasn't been charged.
No, he's been charged. He has not come to trial.
What was he charged with?
What was it specifically?
It was
probation violations?
Violated in terms of previous parole.
He's been charged with
possession of access devices.
Which could be anything from passwords
to credit card numbers to
cellular phone information. It could be
virtually anything. I believe he's been charged
with cellular telephone fraud.
Well he pleaded guilty to
cellular telephone fraud in North Carolina and already
served his sentence for that.
So that's
pretty much it. There's not a whole lot there.
If you look at the indictment, the whole thing is posted on the
website. So you can see for
yourself just what it is he's charged with.
You'll be amazed.
Why is this guy in prison so long?
It's just because of computers.
Just because of technology.
It's just
wrong. That's the only way I could say it.
Anyway, thanks for the call. We're going to move on.
212-209-2900. Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Hello?
Speak up please.
How are you doing?
You've got to turn down your radio, Sandra.
Speak up a bit.
Your radio is not down because
I can still hear it.
You've had other people's opinions
of the hack
on the New York Times website
but you haven't said your opinion.
I think we've expressed
our opinion, haven't we?
I'm saying basically that
it's a fairly
effective way of getting
the word out. Honestly, speaking
personally, I'm kind of glad it happened
because it might wake
people up that hey, there's
other views out there and you'd
better start paying attention to them.
They're valid views and I think
what will make it valid in the eyes of the
Times and other media outlets
is the public's reaction to this.
If the public starts taking more of an interest
in the issues that were pointed
out, then they'll say hey, we
missed the boat on this and maybe we are
somewhat culpable for the way this whole thing
panned out in the first place and boy,
we better not let that happen again. Maybe
that'll happen. Of course, if the
public comes down on hackers and
wants to throw us all in prison, well then
of course they'll take that route.
I guess it's really in the hands of the public right now.
Okay.
Thanks for calling.
212-209-2900. Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
I want to comment about this.
First, one brief thing about
2600 telephone directory.
I called the other day to
leave a message about two things on last week's
show and I wanted to leave you voicemail
and I pressed Goldstein
and Goldstein and there was no one there with
that name, so is it broken or what?
We got the message, so it got through eventually.
It's not the best system in the
world. If anybody out there has a good voicemail system, please
I'm surprised, you of all people, but
I guess, you know. It's just we're so busy.
We have barely enough time to plug in a phone.
I guess like, you know, a physician healed
ourselves. Just briefly on the case,
that reporter from
the Daily News, what was his last name?
Egbert? The dog rapist?
Hang on, I've got to find that one.
Well, I think like everyone
should fax to the Daily News
the Voice of the People column
where they publish like a very
small, limited, one-paragraph
letter to the editor. If anyone
listening right now were to fax them
a letter to the editor and, you know,
point it at and maybe
one or two of the letters will get in their
Voice of the People column if everyone
listening now with a fax machine does that.
Bill Egbert. It's like
Dilbert, but Egg instead of Bill.
Yeah, that's what came to mind.
A letter to the editor pointing that at.
And also, but like they shouldn't do anything like
you know, harassing him
or tailing him or making his life
miserable. Just like fax or write a
letter to the editor because, believe it or not,
I had a letter to the editor in Saturday's paper.
And the last thing is a question.
Wow, we can find out who you are.
We can find out who you really are this way.
Oh, I mean, you know, I have CIA agents
off my wazoo, but a question
for your guest. You work,
I take it, for a mainstream
commercial publication in Boston?
I'm a columnist
in the Boston Globe. I put out a column
once a week called Simpsons Says.
Okay, and just I'd like to know, what is
the environment there? Because
I was listening to the show before this, but they were
talking about the connection with
the CIA and the media
and the famous quote by Catherine Graham
that there are certain things the government
does that people shouldn't know and
do you have sort of any
direct experience with editors
or the powers that be?
No, I've never had a CIA agent
visit me. No, I mean, just in terms
of telling you editorially what you
can or can't do, what you have basically
carte blanche to take even like
an unpopular perspective
or opinion. You ever get leaned on by people
in the parking lot? No, I never get leaned on by anybody.
Well, like my readers.
Like you won't get in trouble for being on this radio
show? Oh no.
Oh, okay, well, you don't know
this radio show. I'll tell you that
there is one thing that gets me in a lot of trouble.
Whenever I write good things
about Microsoft
I get a ton of people
writing me mail
and accusing me of taking money from
Microsoft. Well, on this radio station
they call them micro-Satan, but anyway
thanks for entertaining my call. Alright,
thanks for entertaining us.
Well, I guess, you know, you're allowed
your one fault
there if you want to say nice things about Microsoft
because you've said a lot of good things about other things.
So,
I'm joking by the way. Yeah.
Okay. 212-209-2900.
Let's take one more
phone call. Good evening, you're on the air.
Yeah, thank you. The FCC, it's true
what I was saying, they don't do the arresting
but in case, for example
like Napoleon Williams' Black Liberation Radio
the DA came
and they arrest the equipment. Right.
Which is silly, but
I think you said a very important thing
the fact that they're just trying
to get their message across and they were not doing
anything to harm people
and I think people at the Times may not even see
that. They actually might not even realize
that because they're so intent on saying
oh, hacking is this horrendous sin.
They're looking at this in the corporate
view and not
the actual message. Yes.
It's just that they didn't do anything wrong.
I think also a commercial advertiser
should sponsor Kevin.
They should just track how many
if you could track how many sites
were linked and that person that said they had
like 3,000 replies, you could get
a commercial sponsor for Kevin.
Seriously. That would be interesting.
That would be very interesting.
Might as well get him a lawyer with it.
Well, that's the primary thing right now is to raise money
for a lawyer and if you want to donate to the
Mitnick Defense Fund, all the information is right there
on the www.kevinmitnick.com
site and of course it is spelled
K-E-V-I-N-M-I-T-N-I-C-K
One word, no dash, no period
or anything like that. Let's take one more phone call since we have
a little bit of time. Good evening, you're on the air.
Okay, let's take one that doesn't sound quite so bad.
Good evening, you're on the air.
And one that maybe sounds a little louder than that.
Good evening, you're on the air. Okay, maybe
not that sound either. We're going through
them all. Okay, you're the last chance.
How are you doing?
I was just wondering
if you heard about the Fox News
report on Kevin on the site?
Tell us quickly. We have about 30 seconds.
Yeah, well, they
claimed that the reason they hacked it was
because Kevin Mitnick was their leader
and they were doing it because of him.
I heard about this. This was on the local Fox station
here in New York? Yes, it was.
Okay, so that would be WNYW Channel 5.
Kevin Mitnick is their leader?
That's exactly what they said. They placed
the calling card to their leader, Kevin Mitnick.
That's what the hackers did, they said.
I thought he was pretty much a lone
operator.
He definitely is not a leader
and he wasn't in any groups like that.
This is exactly the kind of thing I was mentioning though
is that the press gets these fundamental
facts wrong and this turns out to be a very big
one. Yeah, I'm surprised that they did this.
Well, imagine what people watching
Channel 5 News would think seeing that.
Exactly. They would think Kevin Mitnick is
a big terrorist. Yeah, John Gotti sitting
in prison there commanding people to hack
websites at will. That definitely
gets the wrong impression.
Kevin is very upset at these things and rightfully
so. He's a lot more upset than
I am, obviously, because I can sort of see
the humor, I can see the good in this.
He only sees the bad in it because that's all
he's going to feel. He's going to get blamed
by idiots at Fox.
I guess the best way to do that is
apply pressure to Fox if a lot of people
contact them and say, hey guys, you got
this wrong. Of course, they're not going to go on the news
and say, oh, we made a mistake. Kevin Mitnick
really isn't the leader. A couple people
from the Mitnick mailing list actually sent
a Fox News mail, including myself, saying
like, I don't know, I'm planning on emailing
every email address I find at
foxnews.com saying
to post an apology or something.
Have you gotten a single reply yet?
I've gotten the standard, oh, yeah, we'll
send this to blah, blah, blah. By the way,
we're sending you a free gift, blah, blah, blah.
See, people wonder why their sites get hacked.
Why? Right here. Thanks very much
for calling in. I appreciate it.
Simpson, I want to thank you very much for joining us tonight.
Simpson Garfinkel, columnist for the
Boston Globe. What are some of the books you've
authored? Well, we have a new book coming
out in a few weeks called Stopping
Spam. It's going to be published
by Reiling Associates and
the first quarter of it is all about the history
of spam and the rest of it is how to protect
yourself from unwanted junk mail.
Sounds good. Do you have an email address you want to give out?
Well, I have a website, actually.
Simpson.net.
Simpson.net? Not bad.
S-I-M-S-O-N period N-E-T
and if you click there, you'll be able
to find all the articles I've ever written.
Okay, great. Thanks so much for joining us.
Best of luck in the future. This is Emmanuel
Goldstein for Off The Hook. We'll be back again
next week with more updates on this story
and all the other ones that haven't happened yet.
Until then, have a good night.
Hi, I'm Barbara Nimri-Aziz, host of Arab Voices Crescent Rising.
That's our weekly magazine here on WBAI
featuring Arab Voices Crescent Rising
here on WBAI featuring Arab and Muslim peoples
And the time is 9.01.
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I'm Barbara Nimry-Aziz,
executive producer of Tahrir,
from 9 o'clock right through to 10 o'clock.
And today's show, we are going to be talking
to Hussein Ibish, our regular commentator
from Amherst, Massachusetts.
And we will also, well, we'll be talking to him
about particularly Iran and the growing tension
between Iran and Afghanistan.
Perhaps some of you have been.