As a professional in the computing industry, I have often been amused by the naïve portrayal of computing capabilities in mystery novels, the way the computer is deployed to commit a crime, or aid in its investigation. In the olden days -- before hackers and online databases -- information was acquired through office clerks who served as the gatekeepers of special knowledge. The detective moseyed up to the counter in the records office, sweet talking his favorite gal-Friday for a victim’s car license number or a suspect’s home address. Bank clerks, insurance agents, and corporate secretaries were all vulnerable to the detective’s charms, dropping names and account numbers, revealing bank sums in a reciprocal love song. The public’s increased awareness of privacy issues has changed our collective attitude to the casual revelation of personal data.

             The whole world of information has changed and with it our basic assumptions about how it should be gathered, shared, and not shared. In the form of digital assets, information is held captive by complex computing machines and their connecting networks. The gatekeeper today is in the form of software systems, user interface screens, passwords, and databases. The machines and networks are linked endlessly to form an alternate universe, the stored information becoming a simulation of our lives.

             Even the most banal systems analyst carries around in his head a “wired” diagram of the system, a map, that allows him to slip in and out of the labyrinth like Neo in The Matrix. In a computer analyst’s thought processes are Matrix-like mappings connecting the "real" world to the cyberworld. The first computer hackers were most often intent on creating a personal universe of this type, on creating the ultimate dungeon to master. The cyberworld foils the corporeal world, tracking the objects and functions of daily life in real and unreal ways.

             Most people have limited knowledge and even less patience for computers. When delays or time-outs happen to us, we become frustrated or nervous. Cyber-plot twists evoke this edge of tension: vulnerable man pitting his highly developed brain against the perfect machine. At the end of the mystery novel we find that the machine wasn’t really testing its will against man’s after all -- that plot twist is for science fiction. In a mystery, the real perpetrator is the arch-fiend, the detective’s nemesis, supplying the brain power behind the electromagnetic impulses. His motive? Drawn from the same old pack, the seven deadly sins: sloth, gluttony, envy, greed, lust, anger -- with a double dose of pride.

             Although crime serves as the centerpiece for the mystery novel, non-criminal but unethical applications of computing technology can also add depth to the plot, foiling a villain’s plan or creating havoc with suspects, stirring in plenty of red herrings. Delicious plot turns can emerge around contentious civil cases as digital assets reveal bias, underground activities, suspicious motivations, and other unethical behaviors spawning the motive for murder and mayhem.

The Crimes

             Cybercrime in the popular press tends to involve cases such as child pornography and abduction, copyright piracy, consumer fraud, embezzlement, or extortion. Computing technology, especially the home computer, has facilitated these crimes, making them easier to commit while reducing the perpetrator’s risk of capture. Law enforcement sees this as one group of cybercrime -- those crimes covered under traditional law.

             However, Angela Bennett’s predicament in The Net reveals the more insidious, invisible side of cybercrime -- attacks on the digital assets themselves. A senator’s medical records are attacked and altered, a computer programmer’s identity is changed to that of a convicted criminal, the life of the investigator is erased, all by some arch-fiend.

             These constitute another category of cybercrime, in which the computer is the intended target. The law does not address this second group adequately; few laws exist to address them. Evidence is as invisible as the crime, and unwittingly the victim (person or institution) can wipe out traces as readily as the maid polishing the bedpost free of fingerprints before the orderly procedures of Sherlock Holmes.

             In Information Age novels, the gatekeeper is circumvented by the hacker who intrudes into the computer through telephone networks which he has manipulated to hide his originating internet address. Once in the system, hackers can download all sorts of files with names, addresses, financial data, approvals, security records, medical records.

             Some hackers are true vandals in that their goal is to merely deface websites, plant viruses or Trojan horses in the victim’s cyber-environment. They shut down operations by freezing the network with millions of messages looping through the mail systems. Hackers have cost companies millions of dollars in a single day. In a health clinic or hospital, or a military weapons installation, they can extract the ultimate cost: human life.

             In the 70’s, hacking was considered by most a benign crime, teenagers taking joyrides on the telephone wires. In the early 80’s, computer hackers were primarily interested in a game of "beating the system," creating that internal Matrix-like map of the vast telecommunications network. The virtual time stolen from the telephone company was looked upon as minor. Considering the major upheavels caused by the prior generation, hacking seemed a juvenile prank, causing little harm while educating the pranksters in technical skills potentially of value to mankind.

             In The Net, robbed of her identity, Angela Bennett races across San Francisco’s Moscone Center in search of a computer connection that will save mankind from ultimate betrayal and restore her own life. From my knot-hole, the imagination of the script writer is running amok. A cyber prankster crossing from cyberworld to the victim’s physical world? Fiction, I thought ... until I read Jonathan Littman’s exploits of teenage hacker Kevin Poulsen in The Watchman.

             The sixteen year old hacker starts his career with benign intrusions of local telephone networks, while confiscating discarded equipment and manuals from dumpsters and parking lots behind telephone company buildings. Eventually he crosses the line by breaking into the switch centers, expropriating equipment and internal code manuals. He learns internal codes to access phone company services and special purpose lines. The knowledge he acquires is the doorway to wiretapping and access to customer records including billing information and unlisted numbers. He is crossing over, graduating into the real world of crime. He stalks movie stars, sells fake IDs and telephone services on stolen lines.

             The sense of power and control gained from increasingly dangerous missions drive him to take bigger risks. The thrill of physical endangerment is an addictive compulsion. Thrill-seeking and ultimate power mark a new generation of computer intruders, breaking the attractive image of undiscovered genius glorified in Stephen Levy’s book Hackers.

The Cyber-Criminals

             Hackers start out targeting computers for the joy of hacking. Investigators, however, assume that another underlying crime is the true intent of hacking. Organized crime, corporate spies, counterintelligence agents and international terrorists all have potential interest in befriending a social outcast who hacks. Cliff Stoll, an astro-physicist turned computer systems manager, details the attack on the university-military internet via the Lawrence Berkeley Lab in The Cuckoo’s Egg, a non-fiction account of his investigation of a 75¢ accounting error, which he traced to a spy ring in Germany.

             According to Brian Harvey (in his web paper, "What is Hacking?") the term "hackers" originally referred to MIT students of the 50’s who eschewed class and study, sleeping all day and carousing the night away. Around this time, "phreaks" were testing their understanding of electromagnetic signals through the phone lines. An underground culture of electronics and signaling wizards was challenging the telephone networks by flipping control switches with simulated audio tones. Graduating from whistling, to whistles, and finally to automated sound boxes, phone phreaks were primarily focused on the challenges of learning the complex electronics networks.

             Stealing phone calls was a secondary issue for them. As a phreak learned the system, he was building his own internal matrix. Intrusion into the world of data networks was an inevitable next step. In those days, the internet was the product of joint efforts between the DOD and research universities such as MIT and UC Berkeley.

             The early phreaks were highly gifted individuals with a bent towards the engineering of electronic circuitry. With the advent of the personal computer (in particular the very cheap TRS-80 from Radio Shack) a new breed of computer hackers was introduced. The home computer leveled the playing field. All one needed now was a dose of curiosity (and a lack of ethics) to link up to one of the underground bulletin board systems, which were often hosted illegally on the DOD network machines. A resident guru hosted the site, attracting hundreds of fans. Enter the generation of the "script kiddies."

             Unlike their more talented and adventurous predecessors, the script kiddies download hacking tools offered by their gurus, according to Mike Finnie, a forensics specialist and member of High Tech Crime Consortium (HTCC), a coalition of law enforcement and security professionals sharing knowledge on cybercrime. Today’s hackers are small time hoods, petty criminals and vandals. Coming to the attention of the behemoths in the criminal world, organized crime and spydom, they are playing with fire.

             Computing has always been a world of "equal brain opportunity." No one in the cyberworld cares about the race, gender, age, or national origin of their peers. The individual brain is paramount; society and social mores are discounted.

The Law

             Archaic laws had been developed in war time for signaling and cryptology aimed at breaking counterintelligence, but they offered little protection against the self-annointed Robin Hoods attacking university research labs and military installations. When he was apprehended at sixteen, Poulsen’s acts were seen as vandalism, recycling garbage from waste bins, no worse than joyriding or writing graffiti on the walls at school. With the ongoing pervasive presence of hackers on the internet, Congress finally passed the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act of 1986, part of the U. S. Code on Crime and Criminal Procedure: Title 18. Several sections in the code address cybercrime.

             The Department of Justice has the primary responsibility for overseeing the agencies that prosecute and investigate computer crime. The site offers many different facets of law enforcement, prosecution, and prevention that can fill the mystery writer’s head full of visionary sugar plums: discussions of computer crime, intellectual property (think copyright protection) with actual cases and articles on apprehension and conviction, and more. A section on cyber-ethics provides the the writer with guidance on what is and is not ethical behavior for adults and for kids, thereby ensuring your villain will act in the most obnoxious way possible. (Here one also finds the DOJ’s guidance on computer crime and intellectual property, just in case you want to secure your own work on the net.)

The Investigators

             Increasingly, law enforcement agencies in metropolitan areas and at the state level are forming high-tech crime centers. When you consider the high cost of technology and its rapidly changing face, the restricted budgets of government and law enforcement and the proliferation of cyber-savvy pranksters, you begin to grasp the immensity of the problem for local agencies. For cybercrime local and state agencies are sharing knowledge and education through national coalitions such as the High Tech Crime Consortium or the High Technology Crime Investigation Association.

             The FBI becomes involved when the crime crosses state lines. In one of Poulsen’s escapades, his victim was a young woman who lived in the same city. To wiretap her telephone he used computers in New Jersey, thus enacting the crime across state boundaries, and bringing it under the purview of the FBI.

             The FBI site (www.fbi.gov) provides a library of documents that include the Freedom of Information Act, statistics on crime reports, and a variety of publications from forensics to terrorism. The FBI site cross-references to interagency programs such as the National Infrastructure Protection Center, the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, the White Collar Crime Investigation Team, and the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center. (For any lover of mystery and intrigue, the sub-website Freedom of Information Act is not to be missed!)

             Private investigative agencies have been come onto the scene in recent years in both the criminal and civil sector. Although concerned with civil law, Computer Forensics of Seattle (www.forensics.com) is at the forefront in developing methods and skills in evidence investigation and discovery. Civil cases can include trade secret theft, sex discrimination, white collar crime, insurance fraud, contract disputes, and family law.

             The biggest problem in enforcement of cybercrime law is the reporting of the crime. Fewer than 50% of companies hacked are likely to report the incident to law enforcement, according to Mike Finnie, a forensic specialist at Computer Forensics. Companies are afraid of losing public trust and the confidence of their investors. They are also reluctant to turn an investigation over to law enforcement because of the time and effort an investigation is likely to take. It is simpler, they feel, to reboot the system and go on with the day’s work. And in your mystery novel, how about the security manager who has a vested interest in the investigation not taking place?

             As long as there is new technology rolling out the door, there will be a cadre of hackers attempting to crack its secrets -- earning hackers of today the sobriquet of "crackers." Cybercrime, with its cat and mouse interplay, will be with us for years to come.

Conclusion

             With the right combination, the mystery writer can pit sinister hacker against ethical hacker, a 21st century take on Moriarty and Holmes. Research well, and don’t "hack" your hacker. For a genuine understanding of hackers, crackers, and script kiddies, refer to Generation at the Crossroads by Paul Rogat Loeb. A social documentary, this book takes a hard look at the generation following the boomers, from the 70’s to the 90’s. A self-conscious look at the same generation from two insiders is found in Generation 13: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? by Neil Howe and Bill Strauss. Then for a sense of hope, read about the N-generation, those kids born with a computer attached to their brains in Don Tapscott’s Growing Up Digital.

             Armed with knowledge and imagination, a crafty mystery writer can spin a plot with more twists and turns than the labyrinth of a phreak’s piggyback connections and the world wide web combined. Good luck and good spinning.

Copyright 2003 by Jo G. Meador

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The Web Mystery Magazine is an on-line quarterly journal dedicated to investigating the mysterious genre in print, in film, and in real-life. The Web welcomes well-researched, well-written articles and reviews. Writers are invited to send letters and inquiries to editor@lifeloom.com.

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