is . . ." she said.
"New users' menu . . . sort of lets them get to know us and vice versa. This is a secure computer whose main service is to protect the identities of senders. They'll keep us in a protective shell, so we can't crack through to the inside where the good stuff is. We've gotta penetrate that. Sometimes, it's easier from a low-level program like a new users' menu."
"Never thought of that. Esta de pelos. Andamos con mcis despacho , chico," she rattled at him in Spanish, telling him, "That's cool, let's get started, buddy."
He looked over at her and they traded smiles of excitement. "You speak Spanish?" he asked, surprised.
"Spanish, French, Greek, Latin, and psychobabble. Lockwood might have been ready to let you talk to your mother in a language he didn't understand, but I checked out every word."
Malavida realized that if she had understood everything he had said to his mother without indicating anything, he would have to be more careful with her. She might not be as big a mark as he thought.
Malavida logged in as a new user. The system let him on, assigned him a new username, and made him choose a new password, then asked if he would like to see the new users' menu.
"Let's go for it." He typed "y" for yes and got a menu on screen of things new users could do on the system, among them:
E)nter Bulletin Board System L)eave message for SysAdmin
"Let's try the 'Leave message for SysAdmin,' " Malavida said. "He's a jerk. I've already had a brush with him."
" 'Cause you went right at him. I'm gonna look real harmless. The `Leave message' option should put us into electronic mail. That's a good one for us. E-mail is an easier program to use to crack out of this protective shell. Because e-mail has to be able to write to everyone's account, it's tougher for them to protect."
He typed "L" and the top of the screen now said:
PICO
"Yesssssss," he said and pumped a fist.
"What is it?"
"We're in e-mail. PICO is a little text editor, sort of a memo writer or scaled-down word processor used on most UNIX-based systems like Pennet for typing up e-mail messages."
"What now?" Karen said.
"Now that we're in and we know exactly what editor they're using for e-mail, we can use some of its own internal commands to break out and get to the underlying UNIX system prompt where we can talk directly to the computer, using its own language. This is where it gets tricky, but with a little practice and a jacker cracker, sus ordenes magnificos"--he bowed slightly--"I'm gonna make this jukebox do the right thing." And as he spoke, his fingers flew across the keyboard. He typed in:
Ctrl-X
That put him in at the exit options menu of PICO.
send; abort; e)dlt; . . .
In order to keep PICO running without having the system dump him back to the users' menu, he typed:
Ctrl-Z
They waited until the screen said:
Stopped (signal)
"Win-win! We're out of the shell," he said, grinning. "Compared to the Pentagon, this is like stealing from a cart vendor."
"Are you confessing to hacking into the Pentagon computer?" She smiled.
"Aren't you supposed t'read me my rights before askin' a question like that?" Then he grinned. "Some people get high smoking crack, I get high doing a crack. Right now, this system is good as jacked."
"What's next?" she said, still looking at the screen with amazement.
"We see who else is talking to this thing. First we type in `ps,' which stands for process or program and can show us everything running. We'll give ps three switches: an 'a,' which stands for all people using, `u' for user info, and 'x' so ps will even show us processes which have no controlling terminal." He typed:
ps-aux
And up on screen flashed:
USER PID %CPU %MEM. . . TT STAT START TIME COMMAND
lover 18083 76.9 0.5 . . . r5 R 23:06 0:00 ps-au x r at 18077 7.7 0.3 . . . pf S 23:19 0:00 /usr/ucb/bbs balsa 17024 0.0 0.0 . . . qb IW 00:06 0:00 /usr/ucb/bbs
The list went on for about twenty lines.
"What's all that?" she said.
"That's
"New users' menu . . . sort of lets them get to know us and vice versa. This is a secure computer whose main service is to protect the identities of senders. They'll keep us in a protective shell, so we can't crack through to the inside where the good stuff is. We've gotta penetrate that. Sometimes, it's easier from a low-level program like a new users' menu."
"Never thought of that. Esta de pelos. Andamos con mcis despacho , chico," she rattled at him in Spanish, telling him, "That's cool, let's get started, buddy."
He looked over at her and they traded smiles of excitement. "You speak Spanish?" he asked, surprised.
"Spanish, French, Greek, Latin, and psychobabble. Lockwood might have been ready to let you talk to your mother in a language he didn't understand, but I checked out every word."
Malavida realized that if she had understood everything he had said to his mother without indicating anything, he would have to be more careful with her. She might not be as big a mark as he thought.
Malavida logged in as a new user. The system let him on, assigned him a new username, and made him choose a new password, then asked if he would like to see the new users' menu.
"Let's go for it." He typed "y" for yes and got a menu on screen of things new users could do on the system, among them:
E)nter Bulletin Board System L)eave message for SysAdmin
"Let's try the 'Leave message for SysAdmin,' " Malavida said. "He's a jerk. I've already had a brush with him."
" 'Cause you went right at him. I'm gonna look real harmless. The `Leave message' option should put us into electronic mail. That's a good one for us. E-mail is an easier program to use to crack out of this protective shell. Because e-mail has to be able to write to everyone's account, it's tougher for them to protect."
He typed "L" and the top of the screen now said:
PICO
"Yesssssss," he said and pumped a fist.
"What is it?"
"We're in e-mail. PICO is a little text editor, sort of a memo writer or scaled-down word processor used on most UNIX-based systems like Pennet for typing up e-mail messages."
"What now?" Karen said.
"Now that we're in and we know exactly what editor they're using for e-mail, we can use some of its own internal commands to break out and get to the underlying UNIX system prompt where we can talk directly to the computer, using its own language. This is where it gets tricky, but with a little practice and a jacker cracker, sus ordenes magnificos"--he bowed slightly--"I'm gonna make this jukebox do the right thing." And as he spoke, his fingers flew across the keyboard. He typed in:
Ctrl-X
That put him in at the exit options menu of PICO.
send; abort; e)dlt; . . .
In order to keep PICO running without having the system dump him back to the users' menu, he typed:
Ctrl-Z
They waited until the screen said:
Stopped (signal)
"Win-win! We're out of the shell," he said, grinning. "Compared to the Pentagon, this is like stealing from a cart vendor."
"Are you confessing to hacking into the Pentagon computer?" She smiled.
"Aren't you supposed t'read me my rights before askin' a question like that?" Then he grinned. "Some people get high smoking crack, I get high doing a crack. Right now, this system is good as jacked."
"What's next?" she said, still looking at the screen with amazement.
"We see who else is talking to this thing. First we type in `ps,' which stands for process or program and can show us everything running. We'll give ps three switches: an 'a,' which stands for all people using, `u' for user info, and 'x' so ps will even show us processes which have no controlling terminal." He typed:
ps-aux
And up on screen flashed:
USER PID %CPU %MEM. . . TT STAT START TIME COMMAND
lover 18083 76.9 0.5 . . . r5 R 23:06 0:00 ps-au x r at 18077 7.7 0.3 . . . pf S 23:19 0:00 /usr/ucb/bbs balsa 17024 0.0 0.0 . . . qb IW 00:06 0:00 /usr/ucb/bbs
The list went on for about twenty lines.
"What's all that?" she said.
"That's
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