Free Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace by Michele Slatalla Page A

stop-him-before-he-hurts-himself tone. (Kaiser would always suspect it had been written by a relative. )
    The first thing he'd done when he got the letter, the first thing he always did, was to pull up the subject's billing records.
    And he got a surprise.
    The kid was calling AT&T switches, from his home, making no attempt to disguise his trespass.
    Up went the DNR on the kid's phone line. The black box was no bigger than an old-fashioned adding machine. It spewed out old-fashioned paper tape, too, making a reassuring clack-clacking sound all day and all night long. An old-fashioned machine to catch newfangled criminals. Over the years, Kaiser had become familiar with the noise; he could hear it from across the hall, and whenever he was on a particularly hot case
    a hostage standoff, say
    he would bolt from his seat at
    the sound of it. It is the same kind of device police agencies use in drug investigations. Unlike the police, however, phone companies don't need a court order to install a DNR on someone's line. That's because the phone company owns the line, and by federal statute has the right to monitor its property.
    AT&T's problem with the Bronx hacker had become New York Telephone's problem in early 1989, because one morning when Kaiser was reviewing the night's activity, he found that the Bronx kid had called New York Telephone computers.
    Now, this was something new. Kaiser knew all about toll fraud, of course, because for years he had been tracking people who stole phone calling card numbers. But in 1989, it was a relatively infrequent phenomenon to have people breaking into the phone company's computers. Kaiser had never before needed to become an expert in the internal workings of the phone company's own system. So he needed someone who was an expert.
    Coincidence saved him. (Kaiser is the first to point out that coincidence has long played a serendipitous role in his career.
    ) The day Kaiser needed to know about New York Telephone's own system, it so happened that an expert named Fred Staples was in the office. Staples was replacing the old clack-clacking DNRs with new equipment computer DNRs to
    track computer criminals. Nobody knew more about the phone company's computer security than Staples.
    They didn't know it then, but with this hacker case, Kaiser and Staples were going to be in each other's faces for the next few months, like a middle-aged married couple
    though they looked more like the Odd Couple. Kaiser is tall and thin and silver-haired, and Staples is shorter, dark-haired, and built like a pit bull. Kaiser's eyes smile and welcome you, reflecting his early years spent in customer service. Staples's eyes bore into you and analyze.
    Staples was an engineer and spent all his time building hardware and software for the phone company. He was New York Telephone's main defense against hackers, and it was his job to make sure that what he built was secure. If an unauthorized user broke in to the system, Staples took it personally. It was his system.
    Kaiser and Staples soon noticed an unusual pattern in the phone calls The Technician made from his Bronx home. First, the hacker would call a phone company computer, stay connected for ten or fifteen minutes, then log out. Next, he would call a certain phone number in Queens. Then he would call back the computer for ten or fifteen minutes. Then the number in Queens. Then the computer. Then Queens.
    They pulled the billing records on the Queens number and learned that it was assigned to the residence of Charles Abene.
    Kaiser and Staples concluded that someone at the Abene residence must be coaching The Technician. Whenever the Bronx hacker got stuck in the phone company computer, he'd log out and call the Abene residence for assistance, then try the computer again. All night long.
    Kaiser got the chill.
    He was familiar with the part of Queens where the Abenes live, a neighborhood near Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights. Law enforcement agencies often