Thursday, March 11, 2004 :::
 

beep beep beep beep beep...

I slam my hand down on my alarm clock. Hard. It falls to the floor and I hear the distinctive sound of plastic being shattered on cold tiles, and my battery rolling on the floor. There goes my snoozing. Half an hour later, I'm grabbing the necessary gear... my luggage, my personal cellphone, another cellphone, an old pocket PC, my train tickets and a good book, and head for the station. Its fucking freezing outside, and I hate being cold. Hooray for global warming.

Paranoia rises as I enter the station, even though no one knows I exist, I'm just a statistic. No reason for me to be under investigation, I never did anything illegal. Ok so yeah, i smoke pot. Sue me.
Train to Amsterdam CS, 09.40. Check my watch, its 08.59. Why am I always so early...

Relaxing in the freezing hall of Paris Nord Station, while you're sitting on metallic mirror covered chairs is not easy. I watch the crowds around me. Business men, beggars sleeping on the floor, military guys with their huge backpacks, families with children crying cause its early, its freezing... I'd be crying also.
All of these people... I no longer consider them as ants, or robots. I know I'm one of them. We all are. Its all about perspective.

...

My coat is neatly folded next to me, its nice and warm, and im speeding at above 300km/hours. I grab my cellphone callingcard, with a single unit left, cash paid, and stick the chip in my nokia. A few days back I dialed the green number, clickety click heard the electronic answering machine answer. The voice mail server was online. "Welcome to Axa Insurrance's free customer service. For english, press 1, for french press..."

This makes me wonder if there's any way to install a wardialer in my cell's firmware... but i digress.

Back to my high speed train. Take out the PocketPC from my pocket and lay it neatly on the table infront of me. Set up my cellphone parallell to it. Boot up my lame WinCE and start the IR connection manager. Hello phone.

I hypercomm back to the voicemail machine and wait for the pong. Pong. Ah sweet user interface. Enter the model's default password, everything going smooth.

"Would you like something to eat sir?"

I'm startled and immediatly turn to see what gun the Corporate Emergency Response Team dude is holding to my head...
Ah no, its a Thalys chick.
"Fuck your hot..."
Did I just say that? According to her facial expression, I guess not...

"Sir?"
"Ah yes please..."

Thats the cool part of travelling first class. A gouda snack.

Back to my blinking cursor. Select PPP session. And here it is, I'm connected to the World Wide Web. Munching on my holland cheese sandwich I launch good old fashionned telnet to a shell I set up a few months back on a corporate MacOSX I "innadvertently" had access to. Ownage. From there I download my sweet TARs to my shell, compile my code and get ready for action...

Here comes the truly dangerous part.

I've been roaming the underground and patiently waiting for months now, in search of the newest webserver exploit that'll give me access. Yesterday one sploit caught my attention. The PWebServer version 0.3.3 suffers from a directory traversal attack that allows a remote attacker to access any file outside of the webroot. Thats when I decided to buy my train ticket.

PWebServer.
Yes. Thats exactly what I needed. Your archives are mine.

Script kiddying time: tars have been downloaded, and compiled. Launch it. My target is a major paper and online newspaper read worldwide.

>http://[majornewspaper]:6789/../../../../etc/passwd

etc etc...

And hear I am. Im in. No need to be stealthy now, speed is of the essence. I transfer my other proggies, including a Remote Administration Tool and a MetaFileBrowser.

Of course the temptation of scribbling some ereet socio-politico-phylosophical message on the web server index is gnawing at the back of my brain, but I resist. That, and I dont have access. Im on a mission. I'm gonna change history. Before I do that I need Admin. Easy enough... I locate the fake "Administrator" account. I smell honey. Better not touch that. Ah.. John Krykowski. Its him. I already visualize him, an eastern european immigrant fascinated with puters and the american dream. Now sys op for this newspaper, addicted to caffeine, divorced and 4inch thick glasses. Its you. But what are you running?
Back to my mac. Switch console, launch the scans. System profiling started. I'll give it 3 minutes max.

I sit back and relax, and stare out the window. The country side is speeding by, and I'm suddenly very tired. The stress gets to me pretty bad. Take a look around me. 3 rows down a young couple, in their 30ish, are talking softly. I dont even lend an ear, they're probably discussing their future house mortgage, or tonight's cocktail party or kids or what the fuck do i care...
Turn my head 170 degrees, ouch... A young chick is 4 rows down, very cute. Very hype though, reading Cosmopolitan. 2 rows down is an old and tired business man, wrinkles carved in deep, and a cheap suit.
Do I belong here? Yes. More than they do. I've just started my life run. Lets just hope I dont end up like that old man. Got to be smart. Dont be stupid. Dont try stupid hacks like I'm doing right now.

Windows NT 4.0. SP6.
You got to be fucking kidding me. Need an http connection, fire up linx, straight to a random exploit archive, search for B. Found it. NT 4.0 VLogin Admin Remote Buffer Overflow Attack.
My fingers are trembling, need to focus. Stay cool. Dont look around you. Downloaded. Compiling...

Executing.
Password prompt just crashed. I'm in. Admin rights. I look up to the roof, and say "Halleluia".

What the fuck is the Thalys chick doing here? It's like she appears out of thin air...
"Is everything to your liking sir?"

"Blow me..." Ah no, as usual: "Yes everything is fine thank you."

Here I am. No time to think. Need to act. I launch the metabrowser. Simple enough program. It's going to switch 2 words in each article it finds, containing words such as "USA, 2000 election, Bush, Gore, Survey, winner, lead, votes, looses..."
In all the articles that correspond to the complex criterias I set up after viewing hundreds and hundreds of archive pages on all major Inet DBs, my proggy code named "Revisionism" is gonna switch "Bush" with "Gore".
And here it goes...

I stick around another 60seconds to see if all is in order. Hell, I'll stick around another 5min.
Longest 5 minutes in my life, but everything is working fine. Check my watch, its 10.23, wich means its 04.23 at my target's location. M. Krykowski is probably still in bed, dreaming of I dont know what. What do guys like him dream of anyway? His home country? Patatoes? Vodka?

I've estimated the modification of archives to take 4 hours max. He wont be in his office until 9ish. Yes I'm sure, I've called many times in the past. Thank you redbox. Everything is on schedule. Still have a hard time believing it.

I shut down the connection to my shell, and hangup hypercomm. Flash. It's like my soul's suddenly sucked back into my body. Look around, I'm in the train. Look forward, and I see the yuppie couple, look back see the tired old corporate man and the cute chick. Look down the hall and enjoy a wonderful view of Thalys Girl's behind.

I'm sweating. I need to chill. I still have a few hours ahead of me before I reach 'Dam, but I'm too hyper to sleep, or read or do anything that demands an attention spane of more than 5 seconds.

Bah, this is going to be expensive but what the fuck. I get up, walk down the aisle, hello Thalys Girl, and head to the bar, by some liquor. Quite a bit of it. Dont really remember.

Grab my personal cellphone, hook it up to my PocketPC, connect. Schling Schling I can feel the cash being sucked off my bank account, not that I care. Im online, legally, and connect to my desktop. Launch IRC. Usual server. /j #Usualchan.
#eSM has joined #Usualchan
oi oi
arriving in a few hours, get ready to partyyyy

This is my second home.

::: posted by Esamurai at 1:41 PM

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