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War Dialing and Driving
PART 1 War Games, from 1983, starring Matthew Broderick, was perhaps the first film to deal with something serious in the world of videogames. Earl Green, in theLogBook.com, described the situation and made comments about a real hacking situation, war dialing, which later would become war driving.
Bob Sullivan, of MSNBC, describes what he calls "war-carding", a war dialing applied to creditcards: a hacker just keep running random credit card numbers until one of them comes back approved. "Ninety-five percent, even more, come back declined," said Scott Zielinski, a Web site consultant for Sebenza Studios. Several of his customers have been victimized, he said. Sullivan adds: " Behind each scam is a criminal's ability to pose as a merchant requesting authorization for a credit card purchase from Authorize.Net, the Internet's largest payment gateway system. Tom Arnold, chief software architect at Authorize.Net, confirmed that criminals have been attacking the system, and that his company has been working with law enforcement to track them down". And there are other issues at stake: Merchant Brian Harlin said: "Hackers got into the Authorize.Net system and began charging random card numbers 1 cent to see if the card numbers were valid numbers," he said. "Over the course of one weekend, the hackers tested over 13,000 card numbers on my account alone. I was charged for each transaction by Authorize.net and the card processing company for close to $7,000 which they conveniently withdrew from my account at the end of the month." Some of the money has been refunded, but $4,800 is still missing", Harlin said. And says Alan Rothberg in O´Reighlly´s Network: "In
the old days of computing, hackers used a technique called "war
dialing." The computer's modem was set up to dial lists of
phone numbers, hoping to reach another computer system's modem.
Once a computer answered, a hacker would try to gain access to the
network. This new laptop technique is called 'war driving', and
is actually much easier to do and easier to remain undetected. A
person attempting to gain access to a network could easily sit in
the parking lot across the street from the building itself and have
access to their internal network".
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"High
school misfit David Lightman, eager to find out what new games a
popular software company is about to release, sets his home computer
to randomly dial phone numbers, making a record of those numbers
which are answered by other computers. One particular number grabs
the young computer prodigy's attention, and convinced that he has
found a hidden modem number for the software company, he decides
to hack his way in. The only clue he has is a name - Falken, a brilliant
computer programmer who reportedly died some time ago. David cracks
the system, discovering a number of simple strategy games, along
with a game simply labeled 'Global Thermonuclear War'. He opts for
the latter, which turns out to be a surprisingly complex simulation
of the opening gambit of an open nuclear conflict between the United
States and the U.S.S.R. It's only when he attracts the attention
of the intelligence community that David realizes he's hacked into
a government computer - one which intends to play out World War
III for real...and only one person, the late Professor Falken, could
end the game before missiles are actually launched". Says Earl
Green in his review that War Games had a more profound impact on
pop culture than anyone gives it credit for. He introduces "war
dialer", a real program that seeks out modem connects from
a random selection of phone numbers, and says that War Games is
also to thank for introducing the "DefCon" scale to the
public at large. And he adds: "Where Tron showed hacking as
a noble endeavor, War Games painted it - perhaps more accurately,
depending on one's political and ethical leanings - as a dangerous
pursuit".
