««- · CWU MEMOiRS 0x94 · -»»
========================================================================== 0x94 - Kuopio - dArK sTuFfEr - 1997-11 - 255 lines ==========================================================================
My high school studies began mid-August at Kuopio Classical Gymnasium, and Othra started her own studies concurrently at Lapinlahti Gymnasium's art program. Consequently, we barely saw each other except on weekends.
Our phone calls dwindled as well. It was later revealed that Othra had experienced a so-called "love at first sight" incident in the early days of school, something she hadn't felt comfortable telling me about. Apparently, a male student from the arts program was considerably more eccentric and interesting than I was, making the temptation to switch to a new relationship quite strong. After a long and emotional phone conversation, I accepted our breakup, though with a heavy heart.
I was also disappointed by my own ordinariness. I had stood out from the crowd in Lietevesi, but in larger towns I simply blended into the mass, and none of the fascinating freak women were interested in me. I needed to significantly increase my eccentricity to maintain my competitive edge.
Around this time, not only did my romantic relationship end, but also did my access to the Messi server of the university. There had been a decision that "familiarizing oneself with computer systems" no longer sufficed as a basis for granting access, and those seeking Internet connections were encouraged to purchase service from one of the numerous commercial providers, like Picture Planet or KPY.
I refused to accept this cascade of losses. As a poor student, I couldn't even afford to start paying for my Internet connections -- the local calls and the monthly fees, let alone the cost of professional escort services. I began, before my account's expiration date, to search for security vulnerabilities in the university's systems, so I could continue using them.
The first vulnerability didn't require much searching; ls and grep commands were sufficient. The nslookup tool in AIX was suid-flagged for the root user, allowing me to create files within the file system with root privileges. After a few minor experiments, I found a way to relay arbitrary commands through these files, allowing me to build my own backdoor to Messi. With it, I hoped to be able to use the university's lobby terminals for at least a few more months before the IT center would notice my actions and patch the hole. Exploiting the local vulnerability was therefore only a temporary solution, and I needed to continue searching for vulnerabilities. Remote vulnerabilities would be particularly valuable, as they would allow me to return to Messi and access other Unix machines at the university campus and around the world.
I concealed my activities to maximize the lifespan of my backdoor. I started using Messi primarily as a proxy server to connect to other Unix machines I had rooted, and I moved my IRC activity to those other machines. I didn't even connect to the IRC server directly, but always used some of the SOCKS proxies I had discovered. These proxies were readily found by mass-scanning TCP port 1080, and especially the addresses of clone bots used by IRC warriors were worth scanning.
During the weekdays, I would head straight to the University after school, sitting at a terminal for as long as possible. As closing time approached, I would always try to sit at a specific terminal tucked away from the security guards' view. One weekend, I managed to exploit this blind spot and stay indoors for a full thirty hours straight. I probably could have stayed even longer, but I had to leave on Sunday to return to my dorm to watch that evening's Babylon 5 episode and pay my sleep debt.
I spent all my possible time at the terminals, even when I wasn't actively engaged in hacking activities. I'd chat on IRC, browse newsgroups, and read random text files. I realized I was doing this to avoid spending time in my room, as being there always brought to mind memories of Othra and the grief of losing her. Consequently, I couldn't even focus on crafting the C64 demo I had promised to CGK for the Zoo-party. I couldn't concentrate on making a demo at all, except when contemplating what Othra-themed elements I could incorporate.
One weekend when I hadn't been able to access the university premises and the walls of my room felt like they were falling on me, I decided to dial the university's modem node and reach out to DiCKiNSTASiA via IRC. DiCKiNSTASiA had previously been in CWU, and we had spent several summers together, but our relationship had cooled after the Generator'96 fiasco, and we hadn't written to each other for months. However, I managed to rekindle our friendship by reminiscing about old times and disparaging mR.mEgAsTuFf.
DiCKiNSTASiA still lived with his parents, so he had access to a considerably larger television set than I did. Consequently, I would often visit him on Sunday evenings to watch Babylon 5. He also had other cultural works worth watching on VHS tapes, including dozens of Star Trek episodes, which I hadn't seen before due to the lack of cable TV. DiCKiNSTASiA also owned low-quality VHS copies of various interesting films, many of which were completely banned in Finland due to their excessive violence and/or pornography. Especially Marack/ELC had been involved in trading banned film material, so the copies were often from him.
When I talked to DiCKiNSTASiA about trying to acquire new romantic relationships using IRC scripting automation, he immediately wanted to join the project and lose his virginity through it. However, I didn't want to give him independent access to my bot network, but to solidify our friendship, I granted him "rights" to a few Kuopio-based female IRC users that I had somewhat warmed up beforehand. I changed the nicknames of the bots I used for "warming up" so that DiCKiNSTASiA could take over and continue the conversation where I had left off. The log files from those conversations were, of course, available for reference.
IRC wasn't the only avenue available to us. With my root privileges, I could, for example, read the email messages of the university students and map out interesting women I could approach. A Finnish WWW site called deitti.net was also launched on the Internet in the spring, which I also explored, but it felt so hopelessly mundane and limited that I didn't even consider building any kind of scripting automation for it.
Our activities reminded me of the "pussy project" we started in early 1995, aided by a few text files from cULT oF pOWER, many of which were from the alt.seduction.fast newsgroup. We didn't really understand them then, and we failed miserably at applying them at our school's seventh-grader disco, but now they opened up in a completely new way due to our increased life experience. I started reading the newsgroup particularly carefully, taking notes on the IRL seduction algorithms presented there. The group was surprisingly active, and its members had started referring to themselves as "Pickup artists," or "PUA."
I started practicing the algorithms in front of the bathroom mirror to ensure my upcoming IRL dates went as smoothly as possible. I also changed my outward appearance to be more eccentric, acquiring a top hat, a long black coat, and eye makeup to make a better impression on women interested in art and occultism. I also added various kinds of occult symbols to my clothing: standard pentagrams recognizable to those whose occult knowledge is at the level of tabloid Satanic panic stories, and more advanced symbols like the Clavicula Noctis for the more advanced initiates.
Despite all of this, my intention was to map out suitable women first on the Internet and then move on to IRL dates. Acquiring them directly from nightlife was out of the question, as I would have to settle for a much lower expected IQ. However, I thought I could use nightlife for easy practice targets to verify the functionality of the PUA techniques.
DiCKiNSTASiA also participated in a few of my nocturnal adventures on Kuopio's market square and parks, but I suspect his wingman performance more hindered than enhanced our chances. One night, I told him that I would be operating solo from then on and recommended the same to him.
By the end of October, I had performed at least one penetration with a total of six different women. One of these penetrations happened at the same time as the Zoo-party demo compo, but luckily I wasn't even thinking about the disappointment I had caused to CGK. Gradually, I forgot my Othra-related sorrows, as I had been able to replace her with a new life of sex and relationships, a kind of life far more suitable for a Chaos Magick oriented occultist like myself because of its adventurous nature.
Once satisfaction had returned in my life, I began spending more time back in my room. I found I could concentrate far better on a multitude of pursuits when utterly alone in my chamber, without a constant IRC connection. Reading, especially, took on a wholly new intensity. There were moments I was practically consumed by the desire to dismantle Decrepitude entirely, to sever my landline connection and consecrate my room as a hermitage of utter seclusion, but I refrained.
I wasn't particularly enthralled by school textbooks; the material they covered was invariably addressed in class anyway. Instead, I started borrowing every scrap of esoteric literature I could find in the city library. Helena Blavatsky's "Practical Occultism" and Ior Bock's "Kalevala Mythology" practically leapt from the shelves, and a translation of Pythagoras's life, published by the Theosophical Society in the 1910s, was available in the archives. Douglas Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach," however, had to be ordered from Helsinki as an interlibrary loan, and unearthing the classics by Aleister Crowley and Peter Carroll felt nigh on impossible. I contented myself with the text file offerings of esoteric FTP servers and pirate EFnet channels specializing in books.
The computer science department library also held a few volumes of occult relevance, though I couldn't borrow them, as those privileges were reserved for CS students. I often frequented the department, reading works like Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" and a comprehensive textbook on graphics algorithms, "Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice." I also perused literature on compiler techniques, processor design, and neural networks, though it was often dense, and my grasp of the notations of matrix algebra and computer science was still somewhat lacking. Sometimes I'd lament the absence of a humanities faculty at the University of Kuopio; the libraries in humanities faculties were renowned for their veritable cornucopia of Latin grimoires, after all.
I generally took the books I found at the CS department library with me to the T2 computer lab, which was frequently deserted. Most students avoided the entire room, as they apparently had been brainwashed by Microsoft and Intel's consumer propaganda. The PCs of that room, based on 386 and 486 processors, were utterly obsolete in their estimation. The quiet and solitude suited me admirably, and one of the 386s even boasted a particularly pleasing Keytronic keyboard. I installed a Linux distribution called MonkeyLinux, based on UMSDOS, onto its hard drive, allowing me to pursue my system-cracking activities with full vigor from the T2 lab as well.
Having rooted the CS department's own Solaris server, "Majakka", I began spending time in the X terminal lab, or T3. However, I soon discovered, that a tool called "xtv" enabled one to spy on the display of any X terminal connected to the university network, and even gain control of their keyboards -- a possibility within the bounds of the X11 protocol. I swiftly returned to T2 due to this blatant lack of security. At my T3 installation, I could easily safeguard XFree86 from external intrusion while simultaneously using it to snoop on the displays of students. I also employed the tcpdump tool in conjunction with my own analysis script to readily harvest passwords from Telnet users. One never knew when all those known remote vulnerabilities would be patched, so a collection of additional passwords would end up being necessary.
By the end of November, I had at my disposal a veritable network of rooted Unix servers, encompassing machines from Kuopio's educational institutions, as well as countless others scattered across Finland and the globe. After breaching some of these servers, I found they'd already been compromised, so I decided to leave them for the original cracker's use. Nevertheless, I left my own "calling card" for the rest of the rooting scene to discover. I didn't want to use my demoscene handle in these contexts, so I adopted the moniker SLC, Satanic LamerCrusher.
Throughout the autumn, the #cwu channel grew. The reason was partly the start of the school year, but especially because we had decided to let non-CWU members join. I first invited DiCKiNSTASiA, Schistic, and the CGK members to the channel, but later started inviting random girls we had found using scripts.
However, once the number of girls increased, the influx of all sorts of clueless, mIRC-using Windows and MBnet dial-up lamers started to increase as well, and we had to set up keys and numerous auto-kick scripts to counter their lameness. The keys were, of course, announced to the sceners and underground-minded Unix gurus, but no subhuman, brainless Windows ape would get access to our "harem". Let the subhuman scum rot in their virginity and grammatical errors!
The most active participant on the channel was DaRK FuCKeR, who now seemed to be using all his free time on IRC, even skipping classes for it. mR.mEgAsTuFf and wArlord visited the channel less frequently -- the latter mainly to ask us to call Frontline BBS.
However, one CWU member was conspicuously absent: myXTer. I even kept his nickname in the server-side notify, hoping to notice his IRC visit, but to no avail. Was he still alive?
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