by Fred Theilig – @fmtheilig
We are not who we used to be. Well, mostly we are, but in a real sense we aren’t. Every minute cells die and are replaced. Neurons form new connections. Our experiences continuously change our perspective. We don’t make the same choices. We are all People of Theseus.
My introduction to computers began in the early 1980’s. It was a world of eight bit home computers and dial-up connections. The hacker world was one of mystery. This was before Stuxnet. Before ILOVEYOU and the Morris Worm. Before Kevin Mitnick and the Cult of the Dead Cow. It was the time of WarGames. Hackers knew all the things and played all the games. I wanted to be one without really knowing what it meant.
Knowledge was hard won back then. There was no Google, no YouTube, no Amazon.com. We had Radio Shack. Searching for technical material at the local Waldenbooks might net you an idiot’s guide to Lotus 123, if you’re lucky. Technical manuals at University were restricted and terribly written.
Fast forward to the early 2000’s. I was, among other things, the telecom admin for a three letter federal agency. We had a Definity phone system, which was a huge box full of comically large circuit boards each capable of handling eight telephone extensions. The system serviced two hundred and fifty internal extensions, plus maybe another hundred across the street. Also a PA system. Remember those?
We also had an old voice mail system. It was in the shape of an extra large PC and ran Xenix (user name root, password blank). It had a built-in tape drive for backups, which I used once. I seriously doubt I would have been able to restore it. In the dozen or so years it was in operation we never had an outage, and that fact absolutely astounds me.
Anyhow, I would move user’s phones, change display names, add extensions, replace blown boards, seldom anything more complicated. Occasionally service provider details will change or the operating system would be upgraded, and I would be involved. One day the Definity needed a software update and I escorted a technician from AT&T/Bell Atlantic/NYNEX/Lucent/Avaya into our telecom room. Upgrades went without a hitch and several weeks passed before I needed to touch the phone system again. And that’s when I found it.
Located next to the access terminal was a notebook, obviously left by the tech. In this notebook was a list. Company name, street address, dial-in phone number, username, and password. Pages of it, hundreds of Definity customers across New England. And it was in my hands.
These systems were not connected to digital networks. They predated all that. They were, however, connected to a POTS line and anyone with a Hayes modem and 9600,8n1 could dial a phone number and get a login prompt. And here I had all of the numbers, all of the user names, and all of the passwords.
Ten years prior I was in a different place. I was screwing around on college systems I didn’t legitimately deserve access to, learning what I could, and associating with some less than savory people. It felt strange holding this notebook. I could feel its value. Not a monetary value, although that too, but a value bestowed by scarcity. By desirability. My old contacts would have slit my throat to get hold of something like this, this free ticket for mass mischief. They could change the display name for the CEO to something rude. Forward calls to the wrong extension. Disable alarms. Or wipe out the entire configuration, change the admin password, then shut everything down. For hundreds of companies. This was serious stuff.
I can’t say for sure what I would have done ten years earlier, but by this time I had a wife, kids, a mortgage, a career, and a reputation. As always, a Person of Theseus. I paused to marvel at what I had, just for a moment, then handed it to the IT coordinator. There was no other option. To this day I wonder what he did with it.