Wisconsin State Journal from Madison, Wisconsin • 17

1 I I1 Wisconsin State Journal, Sunday, September 15, 1996 FORUM 5B Master hacker leading low-tech life 0 Pyifojfe yJ-Kf I Only A $4.95 II Session Fee Also Includes 1-10x13 3 8x10s 5-5x7s 25 Wallets 64 Keepsakes Kevin Lee Poulsen considers his megabyte machinations an art form, like so many oils and brushes in the hands of Picasso. But to prosecutors, putting the 30-year-old in the same room with a computer is like handing a baseball bat to Al Capone. By Carol Morello Knight-Ridder Newspapers LOS ANGELES Kevin Lee Poulsen can do amazing things with a computer and a modem, many of them illegal. He can tap the FBI's phones, rig radio call-in lines to win big prizes, even make his own calls traceable to the bowels of the phone company itself. Sure! l4 No Charge For Additions Subjects.

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1L "To be physically inside an of-j fice, finding the flaws in the sys- tern and what works, was intellectually challenging," said Poulsen, recalling the time he crawled through the transom to break into the local phone company's security office. "It proved irresistible. It wasn't for ego or money. It was for curiosity. A need for adventure.

An intellectual challenge and an adrenalin rush. It was And at the time, it seemed pretty harmless." Eventually, Poulsen got word 1 that the FBI and the phone-corn-! pany police were asking questions about him at work. i Poulsen went into hiding, but he set up a voice mail where the feds could leave messages for him. He learned they were talking espionage, accusing him of infiltrating federal investigations of mobsters and former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. Poulsen felt he was being set up, and figured out both low- and; high-tech ways to elude capture.

He rented an apartment and an office under an alias, dyed his hair and tapped FBI phones so he -could determine which of his friends and family they were tap-; ping. When his case was profiled on the television show "Unsolved Mysteries," he called in a tip that the real Kevin Lee Poulsen was the actor playing him on the pro-I gram. He desperately needed cash to live on. So, using his computer expertise, he jimmied telephone lines during radio contests so he was guaranteed to be whatever number caller would win. He raked in $30,000 cash, a Porsche and a vacation in Hawaii.

In the end, all his subterfuges came to nothing. He was caught in 1991 when authorities staked out the supermarket he frequented. In his contact-lens case, the FBI found a handcuff key he had stashed in case he was caught Ultimately, the government dropped its espionage charges and Poulsen pleaded guilty to computer fraud, mail fraud, intercepting wire and electronic communications, money laundering, and removing property to prevent seizure. He spent five years in jail before his release in July. Ordered to pay restitution for the prizes he swindled, Poulsen believes he should be permitted to get a degree in computer science so he can eventually get a well-paying job.

His friends have designed a Web page in which he outlines his case in a letter to the judge: http:www.catalog.com kevin The prosecutor who handled the case believes Poulsen needs supervision at the keyboard. STORE CLOSING Mov30o75oO But he is forbidden to use any computer for three years, even for schoolwork or a job. In a world increasingly driven by computers and plagued by a spreading rash of security breaches and viruses, authorities fear sophisticated hackers such as Poulsen can outwit all the barriers they conjure. Even among hackers, Poulsen's computer shenanigans are legendary. And that is why authorities made an example of him and he landed more hard time than any hacker in history.

Fresh out after five years in prison, Poulsen now is forbidden to so much as touch a keyboard for three years. Under the terms of his probation, itchy fingers around a PC could send him straight back to jail. The irony is not lost on him. In libraries, he pointedly laments the demise of the card catalog and asks librarians to look up books for him in their computer indexes. Wanting to pursue higher education, he chose a field English literature that doesn't require computer literacy.

He needs work, but most office jobs are out of the question, so he's pursuing an opening for a boot salesman at a country-western store. For now, he lives with his parents, although on the advice of his probation officer they stashed their new computer in a warehouse before he moved in. Fearful of crossing the line unwittingly, he has gone to the extreme of seeking permission to use automated teller machines and drive automobiles equipped with computer chips that regulate the engines. Poulsen has found being com-puterless such an impediment to normal life that he has asked the U.S. district judge who sentenced him to grant a little leeway to enroll in college courses as a student, not a teacher in computer science to get his degree.

"I can do without computers for three years if I have to, but it's where my talents lie," said Poulsen, a slender, clean-cut blond who looks as though he belongs at a fraternity party instead of sitting outside a Santa Monica Starbucks swapping prison stories with a homeless ex-con who tried to cadge some change from him. "I have to pay almost $70,000 in restitution, and I have no chance of doing that without a computer job. There are a lot of legitimate opportunities in computers. I'm a reformed guy." Poulsen already lost one chance to prove it As a teen-ager, he was a bril- in Kevin Lee Poulsen liant hacker who went by the handle "Dark Dante." Working on a cheap Radio Shack TRS-80, he got his thrills penetrating the Pentagon's computer web of military and research centers, as well as various universities and think tanks that work on classified military projects. It was all reminiscent of "WarGames," the hallmark movie of teen-age hacking culture.

He was just 17 when the FBI and UCLA campus cops caught up with him in 1983. He was never charged because he was a juvenile, but his $200 computer was seized. As Poulsen tells it, he was ready to give up clandestine hacking for a legitimate job with a prestigious think tank near Stanford University that recruited him after publicity over his exploits. The job initially was boring, but he quickly advanced in pay and responsibilities. The Pentagon even approved his security clearance for military projects.

Although he had made a smooth transition from renegade to government-approved hacker, Poulsen was surrounded by other computerphiles who talked about their hacking exploits. The llth-grade dropout was hanging out with men who had master's and doctorates, but they were all hackers at heart "We started swapping war stories about the trouble we got into and how to avoid it," Poulsen said. "It got the old juices going. I like something Soon Poulsen and a colleague were picking the locks of phone-company buildings and entering at night to purloin manuals, passwords anything that got him access to pearls such as the unlisted phone numbers of the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco. In essence, Poulsen was living out a fantasy computer game, going in stealth to explore dark rooms filled with exotic goodies.

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