Thirteen Years of Starting a Hacker Scene
by Derneval Ribeiro Rodrigues da Cunha
For those of you who don't remember me, I'm the one who wrote "Hacking in Brazil" in 12:1 and "Starting a Hacker Scene" in 13:2.
Maybe one or two of you have heard of Brazilians on the Internet.
Unfortunately, there are a great many of them calling themselves hackers and defacing websites. No, I'm not the one who bullshitted those guys into doing electronic vandalism.
What I did was to start writing the first Brazilian hacker ezine in 1994.
The Internet wasn't available back then - people could only learn about it at universities and in a few other places. It just so happened that I did know about it.
And there I learned about hacker ethics, viruses, phreaking, and all that stuff. I was involved in setting up an ecology Internet discussion among elementary schools.
Then I heard about a "Hacker and Virus Congress" in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
It ran for about four days, which I used to learn and talk with people from Hacktic and 2600 and with several Argentine people connected with computer security, among other things.
Few people in South America had Internet accounts. Most things happened in BBSes, on FidoNet or the like.
Computer viruses were the main subject when people talked about computer insecurity. But they generated a lot of press coverage in those days. It was, though, very difficult to get any information about anything like "dark subjects."
Myself, I had to hack my way into an academic internet account. I did this legally, not by using somebody else's account. I'm not going to talk about bad connection lines; phone modems were everything but reliable. (I wrote about this in "Brazilian Phone System" in 13:3)
I'm talking about people using 600 bps, maybe 1200 bps, sometimes 2400 bps modems. Instead of downloading big files from a BBS, you'd rather choose the files first, then go there yourself with floppies to pick them up.
I myself would use the Internet only from university computers; I never had to use dial-ups to access anything. Computer students themselves didn't know much about it except what they learned from movies like WarGames. That was in the second biggest university in South America. Those were the "golden years."
So, what was my goal?
Just to get people together, so they could exchange information. I had to have people to talk about. They had to know about hacking. I had to spread the word for that to happen, so that people all around Brazil - those that deserved to be called "hackers" - would know what it was all about and hold meetings.
Later on, the thing would be to prepare for a Brazilian hacker conference. So I started the easiest way: by starting an electronic publication. This was when everybody was just starting to know about the Internet, just before Brazilians could get commercial internet access. My ezine was the first on the scene.
My boss didn't fire me when he heard about my plans; he understood things.
But everywhere I heard of, a bunch of people joined and started things. I, though, had to start on my own. I borrowed articles from the public domain here and there, asked for permission to publish this or that, sometimes rewrote things, and did some writing on my own.
Some of the stuff was so good that it's still published today without my permission or anything else. And, even today, I haven't completely decided if I should sue the guys that did it. There were people who bought books because my article was in them.
Things worked just fine for the publication.
My choice of writing in pure ASCII code helped it to be uploaded to and downloaded from in BBSes all around the country and abroad, in Portuguese-speaking places like Portugal and Mozambique.
Barata Eletrica ("Electric Cockroach") spread everywhere like a disease.
It appeared in places like USENET, like the 2600 list and soc.culture.brazil.
Myself, I made it available for download from the EFF and etext.org.
Check Google for the current web address or visit barataeletrica.cjb.net.
The people from the computer science faculty of a federal university, UFSC, kept a mirror on their website for about a decade - and I've never set foot there; thanks to them! At my own University of São Paulo, they would not hear a thing about it; in fact, they hated me. I almost lost my access there but got it back months later.
Soon people started to write other, more aggressive publications, like the ezine Axur 05, Nethack, and a few others, mostly on BBSes. That was at the time of Mitnick's arrest. If someone wanted to be known as a hacker, he and his friends would write an ezine. Lots of good information started to be spread around, like philes about how to get free phone calls in the Brazilian phone system. (They eventually fixed that.)
The ezine grew quite complex.
For one thing, I started to enjoy writing. It became more than a hobby. It always took more time to write things. And if I could not enjoy reading it myself again, I would rewrite the article.
The ezine, originally meant to be something simple, grew complex, with sections like a FAQ, about, history, better articles, and a news sections that was so troublesome to make that I turned it in a blog (barataeletrica.blogspot.com). If I wrote something, there would be a reference or a link saying where I took it from.
People started offering services like how to improve my HTML (it sucks) and easy access of the web site - for free. I declined. I started it all alone; nobody wanted to spare time to help me.
Once I was famous, who cares?
Besides, a better ezine would involve getting more complex. My focus wasn't in delivering better things to the growing number of people who were getting Internet access. The way it was, I was getting three or four letters a day asking, "Can you teach me hacking?"
I could have gone corporate. But I would have had to charge for that.
In fact, when I started the ezine, the freeware concept was not understood. For me, it meant that I would not have to worry about paying wages, taxes, revenue, income, consumer rights, and so on.
I would have had to register the ezine; then I would have been a target. If anybody sued me and I lost, that would have been it. And the kind of articles I published were often in gray areas of the law. If you're a hired hand, you need to work eight hours a day, but if you're a boss, you work twice that much.
My opinion was quite respected.
Among other things, I can say I started the talk about Linux in Brazil. Phiber Optik came here; I told everybody to ask him to compare Windows security versus FreeBSD. Newswriters did not know anything about it. I was also there to give support when an activist from Amnesty International, Fernanda Serpa, started the "Free Kevin Mitnick" movement in Brazil.
Maybe I'll write about it someday. When there was talk about bringing Markoff and Shimomura to a US$400 per ticket conference to talk about "the pirate and the samurai," I wrote an article in the ezine. Later on, nobody talked about bringing those guys here to Brazil for a conference anymore.
My task was completed.
The "hacker scene" had happened. It was no dream anymore. There were some very strong meetings, 2600 meetings, and people were talking about it everywhere. And people knew the difference between good hackers and lamers.
But then the paper press started to run articles teaching bad things for fun, issue of the now-defunct Brazilian edition of Internet World surprised me in that way.
Mostly, it had articles telling everything about hackers' bad deeds. Put together, the articles gave knowledge about how to nuke other PCs. My good luck was I declined an interview.
Maybe I would have been considered part of the group. Other magazines also did similar articles. Some guys started to write books using material from the ezines. And these books were a hit, even if things in there didn't work anymore. I can trace today's Brazilian electronic vandalism back to those mags and books.
My "hacker" congress never came off.
The Internet was spreading fast, but I didn't have a computer science degree. My knowledge was mostly UNIX-based, and it was quickly devalued.
Like most dinosaurs, I didn't believe in a commercial Internet. Maybe it was a bad thing that I wasn't money driven. Instead of setting up an enterprise, I enrolled in a postgraduate course.
Don't think that the people who started Yahoo! were more gifted than me. I took my motto "I login therefore I am" - check Google; I said it first - and began to gather all my experiences with the hacker scene into an academic work.
People kept pressing me to write a book about all my exploits rather than a thesis. And the fact is that I collected enough data to write a lot about those days. I could fill two or three books just with information from the ezine.
Some day, I'll do it. But for the moment, writing a book in order to just earn money would be selling out. And I could already have done that even with a "I am a friend of Barata Eletrica's author" card. One ex-friend of mine got his US$20 debt pardoned just because he introduced me to his creditor - just like that.
If I wanted to write about "how to hack things," I could have done it much earlier. I maybe even could have earned cash doing lectures somewhere, and got a Masters degree. I could also simply have stopped hacking and got a good job in computer security. But, one can't write a thesis and do computer security at the same time. And I'm still thinking about it, but it has to be outside Brazil.
In fact, I soon found out that some people were sticking with me because of the "dark side." Sometimes I even lost "friends" because they gave up on me writing about them. I always warned about my focus on hacker ethics and the pursuit of knowledge. I changed my writing in order to avoid copycats.
The ezine is still about hacking, but it now takes a much broader view. How would you teach hacking without using computers? Hacking computers is not the only way to learn about hacking. Some people promised me that they would keep on reading. And I kept writing the ezine and a blog because it's such a waste to stop.
It sometimes pays off to do a blog.
Once I posted that I needed a few memory chips for my old-fashioned computer. I live in São Paulo. One guy from Rio de Janeiro read it, asked for my postal address and sent the chips, along with other things: about 16 kg of hardware, a complete CPU he'd made up of old pieces he gathered from friends.
He threw a party, people brought things, they set up a Pentium 233 MHz with a 30 gig HD, and they sent it and some other things to me, by FedEx. I couldn't believe it and sent him some t-shirts by way of thanks.
I still used that computer until last Christmas, when a big fan and friend of mine sent me a Pentium 4 with a 150 gig HD and a few science fiction magazines. Maybe that guy is one of the thirty-five that prevent God from destroying the Earth. I don't know.
The problem today with writing a hacker ezine and blog is that today, everybody's got much more access than at the time I started. And there are many people claiming hacker knowledge. Even YouTube has a video or two about computer insecurities.
One doesn't have to go underground to learn about "dark subjects." One has to have the conscience, which is the main subject about which I used to write, right from the beginning. If you write about how to do it, that will get old soon. When you write about how to think about it, it will stick. People still can get old issues of my ezine and find good thinking material. That might save their butts one day.
Unfortunately, I could not write a thesis about what I did. The Portuguese language is tough to read. My not writing a book is also something to blame myself for. How could I write a book about "starting a hacker scene" and then get a "normal" job anywhere but in computer security?
There was a "hacker" conference in São Paulo, where I live. I could not go. In the USA or Europe, it would be no problem. But not here. There were lots of TV cameras everywhere. No way.
At that time, I was working right next to an office where people were trying to sue YouTube. I even knew which books of legislation were being consulted. These people next door did not know about my past, and why should they? Yet, a few weeks ago, I attended another security conference, YSTS. But there were fewer cameras and none from TV.
Also, people always charge you more if they know you're famous.
For a time, I would even check famous people for stories about how to deal with fame. It's no easy task, but I believe that sometime in the future, everybody will have to learn about it, how to relate to the press and how to use fame for a purpose. People on the Internet don't know this, and they lose great opportunities.
It's like that: for one thing or another, you get famous. Before you know it, it's gone.
People have to consider that getting famous is no fairy tale. In order to make some good use of it, one has to know about it. If you publish something today in YouTube or in a blog, it will be remembered somewhere, sometime. You've changed, grown older, but your past is still there. Just like it was.
I was very fortunate the way I wrote things. I never used an alias to write, and I have no regrets about it.
When you get famous, some people get to know you because they are getting famous at the same time, but in different places, with other occupations.
Mauro Marcelo, who got appointed the chief of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN), did know me. I could have interviewed him there and then, but that's another story, and a sort of funny one. Eventually, he was kicked off the job because of the intrigue there, which makes me think he's not such a bad guy; those guys from ABIN aren't popular. When he was there, he bothered to answer an email of mine. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll contact him again. He might have some good stories to talk about. He was, after all, the first Brazilian "Cyber" cop.
He wouldn't catch me, for sure.
I stopped all "hacking" when I began writing the ezine. Maybe not all of it, but why bother? That magic word "please" works wonders. You just have to know who to ask.
If the guy doesn't know you, just play that song, "Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm a man..." You can't always get what you want, but sometimes you do.
I would never know how to stash things inside University of São Paulo computers without a little help from my friends. I would always sing "Don't you... forget about me." for myself, later. You can get high doing things like these. Believe me.
After thirteen years of Barata Eletrica, is anybody snoring out there? It's been a great experience, being famous for writing an ezine. I did it mostly because of the readers. What a feeling when you meet someone who got his life changed because of an article of yours! I never got laid because of it, but I did learn a lot about a lot of topics, from public relations to law and journalism. Maybe someday, I'll get a job out of it.
I think everybody should try it. Someone said that if you don't like the news, you should go out and make some of your own.
Everybody can help change the world with simple gestures. Just interact with your community. My ezine started like that: a publication for a few people using an Internet-connected computer lab nearby.
Think about it.
BARATA ELETRICA - The translation is something like Electric Roach - (not cucaracha, please, we talk portuguese here, not spanish). I'm writing this e-zine at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, which does not quite like it. However, last time i talked to the guys up there in the Administration, they let me distribute it by use of any means other than their computers. So, that's how it came here. This e-zine began after i attended a Hacker Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Internet was not available to common people back then, and i got very fond of seting up a Hacker Congress at my home country. Problem is that people should first know what's this all about, what's good and what's a bad thing to do. Besides, lots of people with some background in the area, don't even know what is "2600 hacker quaterly". Sure they heard about Mitnick, but don't know a thing about the guys who build the Internet. Talk about hacking and security subjects in my e-zine almost closed my access to the net, so i keep it quite tame. Still, people like it and write me from everywhere. Not bad for what i consider a pale shadow of other zines. I try to keep most articles in Portuguese, but am still the only writer, and once in a while (almost always) have to use articles i get in the Net. There are articles in English, but it's material most people reading Phrack wouldn't care to read. Here in Brazil, it's unknown. Take your chances, if you want. Don't forget to use binary, when doing a download. Then you don't have to g-unzip the file later. Just write something like: get be00.txt The file will come uncompressed, just like magick. Good luck. sig. Derneval R. R. da Cunha +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | I log in, therefore I am. Reality is for people without Internet access.| | Eu acesso, logo existo. Realidade e' para aqueles sem conta na Internet.| | Internet: rodrigde@spider.usp.br | | wu100@fim.uni-erlangen.de | | Snail-mail (friend of mine - check only once a week) | | Caixa Postal 4502 Sao Paulo - SP | | CEP 01061-970 BRAZIL | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ PGP key available upon request. Chave PGP disponivel sob pedido.