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> Reading through the thread it’s a real shame to see the decline in our ability (willingness?) to have civil and thoughtful discourse. If you can read German,

> Reading through the thread it’s a real shame to see the decline in our ability (willingness?) to have civil and thoughtful discourse. If you can read German, I recommend reading the usenet threads of Kim Dotcom (Megaupload founder). They will show you the opposite of thoughtful discourse. :D https://www.babsi.de/KIMBLE.txt https://www.babsi.de/KIMBLE.txt

netsharc 3y ago
His email was @aol.com, ha, typical... I remember seeing his website in the olden times, where he put up pics of cars and parties from Monaco/Cote d'Azur. And when the NZ police raided him on behest of the FBI, it seems he got actual hero status. It makes me wonder if crime does pay after all...
- bboygravity 3y ago
  Crime?
_rsp7 3y ago
Schmitz got arrested first in 1994, but he wasn’t the only one. I can share some info from back then. In the early 90’s an employee at AT&T downloaded millions of calling card numbers at work and started distributing them through a worldwide network of invite only bulletin boards (lots of warez trading and other black hat related stuff). The fraud cost AT&T around $18 million and stretched across around 300 conspirators. As backstory, the US had started cracking down on hackers based in the US in the early 90’s and they were getting long prison sentences. As a result, there was still contract hacking work available, but fewer and fewer people in the US that weren’t serving long sentences who were up for it. As a result much of that work started being offered abroad outside the US. Naively (it was assumed) out of reach of the US authorities. Around the same time, many telephone networks in Europe started switching their PSTN networks from analogue to digital, rendering system 4 blue boxing dead, and international dialing went back to being prohibitively expensive. Hacking PABX’s with toll free numbers was the only (laborious) option (which Schmitz also sold). Therefore these calling cards quickly became immensely valuable in the scene, for making free calls wherever you wanted to and replacing that lost access. When the fraud was discovered the US Secret Service got involved. The conspirators were tracked down and rounded up within a coordinated series of worldwide arrests. The US tried to extradite as many as possible. Many however were barely out of their teens, and many countries didn’t want the negative publicity of sending 20 year olds to serve life sentences in the US. The raids included the local serious crimes division, US Secret Service and field office based FBI liaisons. They were pretty annoyed about it and there were a fair few bulletin board owners and card traders that were also hacking US domestic networks, including government agencies, on contract, so they were really enjoying themselves rounding everyone up. I believe that Schmitz came under BND’s radar at that point and they applied the pressure to turn him. I don’t think it would have been particularly hard to do so. The guy would have sold his grandmother for a couple of Deutschmarks and he fancied himself as some kind of James Bond. I think part of his 2 year suspended sentence deal was the condition that he had to turn agent provocateur within the CCC. That’s why his subsequent actions and self publicity always had an air of being untouchable. So he just grifted whilst setting people in the scene up to keep BND happy and working for the CCC hated lawyer Gravenreuth. Until people in the CCC figured it out and they cut him loose. The pertinent part of that page translated is as follows: https://pastebin.com/24vACUzp https://pastebin.com/24vACUzp

netsharc 3y ago

His email was @aol.com, ha, typical... I remember seeing his website in the olden times, where he put up pics of cars and parties from Monaco/Cote d'Azur. And when the NZ police raided him on behest of the FBI, it seems he got actual hero status. It makes me wonder if crime does pay after all...

bboygravity 3y ago
Crime?

_rsp7 3y ago

Schmitz got arrested first in 1994, but he wasn’t the only one. I can share some info from back then. In the early 90’s an employee at AT&T downloaded millions of calling card numbers at work and started distributing them through a worldwide network of invite only bulletin boards (lots of warez trading and other black hat related stuff). The fraud cost AT&T around $18 million and stretched across around 300 conspirators. As backstory, the US had started cracking down on hackers based in the US in the early 90’s and they were getting long prison sentences. As a result, there was still contract hacking work available, but fewer and fewer people in the US that weren’t serving long sentences who were up for it. As a result much of that work started being offered abroad outside the US. Naively (it was assumed) out of reach of the US authorities. Around the same time, many telephone networks in Europe started switching their PSTN networks from analogue to digital, rendering system 4 blue boxing dead, and international dialing went back to being prohibitively expensive. Hacking PABX’s with toll free numbers was the only (laborious) option (which Schmitz also sold). Therefore these calling cards quickly became immensely valuable in the scene, for making free calls wherever you wanted to and replacing that lost access. When the fraud was discovered the US Secret Service got involved. The conspirators were tracked down and rounded up within a coordinated series of worldwide arrests. The US tried to extradite as many as possible. Many however were barely out of their teens, and many countries didn’t want the negative publicity of sending 20 year olds to serve life sentences in the US. The raids included the local serious crimes division, US Secret Service and field office based FBI liaisons. They were pretty annoyed about it and there were a fair few bulletin board owners and card traders that were also hacking US domestic networks, including government agencies, on contract, so they were really enjoying themselves rounding everyone up. I believe that Schmitz came under BND’s radar at that point and they applied the pressure to turn him. I don’t think it would have been particularly hard to do so. The guy would have sold his grandmother for a couple of Deutschmarks and he fancied himself as some kind of James Bond. I think part of his 2 year suspended sentence deal was the condition that he had to turn agent provocateur within the CCC. That’s why his subsequent actions and self publicity always had an air of being untouchable. So he just grifted whilst setting people in the scene up to keep BND happy and working for the CCC hated lawyer Gravenreuth. Until people in the CCC figured it out and they cut him loose. The pertinent part of that page translated is as follows: https://pastebin.com/24vACUzp https://pastebin.com/24vACUzp