36C3 preroll music Herald Angel: Good evening, everyone. Our next speaker is a historian and she is rolling back time for us, 30 years to the very beginnings of the Chaos Computer Club and taking a closer look at the KGB hack, the infamous KGB hack and what Karl Koch did back them. So let's journey back to the 80s with Anja Drephal. Applause Anja Drephal: Thank you. I was hoping to see my presentation. laughter Drephal: Why am I not seeing my presentation, my slides? Yes. Thank you. Dial-up noises Drephal: Thank you. Applause. Drephal: That applause, guys, goes to my amazing hacker who did this little video as a start to my presentation. Thank you. Why? No ... Laughter Drephal: I guess we'll have to do it again. No, no. What is happening? No, no, no, no, no. Okay, okay. Welcome to 1989. Before I start, I have to say, when you start researching a topic like the KGB hack, you suddenly find out there are so many sources, not just books that have been written, movies that have been made, documentaries. There's articles in newspapers, on the internet. There's podcasts you can listen to that go into every little detail of this case, every little detail of the early history of the CCC, the early history of the Internet as it is, and due to time constraints that we have, I'm going to have to simplify quite a few things to just, you know, give you an overview and tell you a story about this topic. And I'm counting on you to raise questions, in the end, at our Q&A, to maybe go into more detail if you find out, OK, there is something that should have been a little more detailed is something that, hey, I know about - something about this because I'm sure a lot of you know maybe more than me about this story. So that's something that I'm hoping we can do in 45 minutes, 40 minutes. First of all, I'd like to ask a question - two questions to the audience. Does anyone here think that this talk might mention their name? Yes. Who are you? Laughter Drephal: Well, I'm not going to mention any real names except for one. So maybe you would like to join us in the end. Or you know, if not, then not. Second question, is anyone here who attended Congress in the 1980s? Excellent. Well, personally, I did not because I was busy with kindergarten and elementary school and stuff. My first Congress was in 2012 when a friend of mine introduced me to the Chaos Computer Club. I went to Hamburg. I spent four amazing days at Congress, and in the end I thought, oh my God, this is so great. And I thought, OK, what could I give back to this amazing community? What could I add to this experience? And I'm not a hacker or very much into tech, but I'm a historian. I can tell you history, and I'm very thankful that the content team has now invited me for the fourth time to tell you about history. I'm very thankful that this talk has gotten a slot on day one, because I think it's the perfect time to take a look back at what was, to take a look at what has changed, to remember those who unfortunately cannot be here today and then spend three more days in the present, at this Congress. So let me set the scene for you. It's 1989, especially it's March 1989. In March, 1989, the world was still very much divided. Germany was still divided into West Germany and the German Democratic Republic. And looking at Leipzig in March 1989, we had the spring fair. Not here, but in the old fairgrounds. And the German Democratic Republic proudly presented their latest and greatest in technology. They had just developed a four megabit hybrid memory - four megabits. Unfortunately, it was way too expensive to make it on the world market. But they were proud. West Germany had its own issues. Laughter Drephal: Difficult times. People had to wear stone washed jeans and pastel colored sweaters. Number one hit in the West German charts in March was David Hasselhoff, Looking for Freedom. And Bill and Ted were going on an excellent adventure. Sequel is coming out next year, don't miss it. Laughter Drephal: Speaking about television, private television in West Germany was still very much in its infancy. Most people still had three television channels first, second, third and they got their information from the television. The first program showed the news every night at 8:00. People watched it, much more than today. And sometimes the first German television had a special program called Im Brennpunkt, In Focus. That always came out when something was so exciting, so newsworthy that it couldn't be sufficiently dealt with in the normal news. So on March 2nd, 1989, the first German television showed this. Music Drephal: Why isn't it moving? Oh, come on, please. It's moving on my screen. TV moderator speaking in German Drephal: Would have been nice, if... TV moderator speaking in German Drephal: Well, okay, if it had been moving, you would have seen a dude in a suit telling you that the biggest spy case since Günter Guillaume has just been uncovered. Günter Guillaume was an East German spy who worked closely in the offices of German Chancellor Willy Brandt in the 1970s. He worked for the East German Secret Service, and when he was uncovered, the Chancellor had to step down. So apparently in March 1989, we have a spy case of German hackers working for the KGB that is as big as Günter Guillaume. Spoiler: It was not. But anyway. How is that even possible? How can you, how can German hackers work for the KGB in 1989? How can they hack anything over the Internet? Well, there is no Internet. What there is, is basically this. Let's say, in the mid 1980s, you're a teenager and you've got a computer for Christmas. Lucky you. So what can you do with it? There's no Internet. There are computers that are connected. Big computers made by IBM and by VAX that are standing in universities, research institutions, military institutions, big companies. And you have, in the 1980s, a network that you can actually dial in to from your home. So you have a phone that's connected to a wall, usually, if it's not cut off, and you have a computer and if you're lucky, you have a sort of modem. It's called an acoustic coupler. We have one here for the C64. The most famous one was the data phone, it's bigger, but this one basically works the same. You strap your phone to it and you call your local post office. And your local post office in the 1980s has a network called Data XP, which stands for data exchange packet based. It's based on the X.25 protocol and it gives you the opportunity to connect to computers all over Germany and all over Europe and actually all over the world. What you need is a network user identification, a so-called new NUI, which is expensive. The call to your local post office, not so much, especially in West Berlin, which was known as sort of a hacker's paradise because local calls cost only twenty three Pfennig, twenty three cents, not per minute, but per call. So if you had a network user identification from somewhere, you could just call your local data XP office and connect. These NUIs were expensive, but you could find them, for example, at the computer fair in Hanover because people weren't watching their screens, their terminals, and maybe you could look over somebody's shoulder and see their log in and use it and run up charges of thousands of marks and then you can connect to message boards, which is a bit, well, not so exciting. Much more exciting is the big computers standing at institutions and companies. And so, through this, possibility, these possibilities, this network comes a hacker scene in the 1980s of mostly young people, teenagers, young guys, not so many girls, who connect to these big computers because they can, because they're there and they're interesting. And you just want to see what's on them. Especially infamous was CERN, the nuclear research organization in Switzerland, where at some point hackers were actually having kind of parties in the system connecting to the computers and chatting with the systems managers who were a bit annoyed because they had work to do, but not that bothered because it wasn't really seen as anything that could harm them. And the point was to go into these computers because you can to show that you can and to have some fun and not because you're a criminal or you want to take some data or make money off it, but just as a sport. And now... and in this scene, the Chaos Computer Club also established itself as sort of a mediator between these hackers and the institutions and companies that were being broken into. Always stressing that when you're hacking, you should do it with an ethical approach. Never, you know, doing any harm. Being excellent. Not making any money. And for God's sake, staying away from military or Secret Service computers, don't touch those. Here's a quote on one of the first Congresses, which I think sounds pretty much like today. This amazing experience and the news crews interested and reporting on what's happening with these sort of harmless tech freaks and hackers that were just having fun. And this is the scene where a group of young men met in the mid 1980's and started hanging out, started sitting in front of computers, hacking together, talking, consuming drugs, also, and just, you know, having fun. And these are their nicknames. They were all, sort of, some were programmers, some were teenagers who were into hacking. One of them, the last one here, wasn't really a hacker. He worked at a casino and he made some money on his side selling drugs. And they were just hanging out and and just feeling like they were the greatest. They were... Someone has compared them to sort of graffiti kids. They did it because they could, just leaving their mark everywhere in the computers. And... Well, they were just, you know, talking and somebody had the idea, OK, what can we do to get recognized as the greatest hackers or how can we make something off it? There's always the issue of money problems that you might have, stupid ideas that you have when you're a teenager or a young kid. And one of them came up with the idea, Hey, I know somebody in East Berlin who might be interested in what we're doing and maybe we could sell that. I know someone, a Russian, and it might be, you know, it might actually be a contribution to world peace because the Russians need technology that they don't have and we have it. We could kind of equalize the scales a bit. It's a stupid idea, of course. But this guy, Pedro, his name was Peter, he actually went to East Berlin, walked into the Soviet trade mission and said he wanted to talk someone about a deal, super stupid, walking in the front door and someone actually listened to him. A guy who introduced himself as Sergei, who officially worked at the trade mission, which in my opinion means KGB, was willing to listen and our hackers offered, OK, we can get you like log-ins to computers in West Germany and even America. We can even teach you how to hack, you know, for like a million marks. How about that? And Sergei was like, Okay, that's nice, but I need something else. Because he had a shopping list which came pretty much directly from the embargo list made by the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls. There was an embargo, technology and, yeah, electronic parts. Computers weren't allowed to be sold into the Soviet Union or the Eastern Bloc in general. And that was basically his shopping list. What the Soviets wanted was not so much, you know, log-ins to military computers. They wanted source code, for example... According to the sources, he actually had a list that said, OK, UNIX source code, twenty five thousand marks, maybe a compiler for this and that, five thousand marks. And our hackers were able to provide. They didn't exactly make a million, but about ninety thousand marks exchanged hands in the following months. Until a systems administrator in California noticed something. And now I have to tell you, the legend of Clifford Stoll. Clifford Stoll has become famous for uncovering the KGB hackers, and a sort of legend has been built around him, telling his story again and again. He, there was a funny documentary made. He had a book coming out. And there are some weird aspects in this story, but maybe we can talk about them later. So, first of all, I'm just going to give you the story as he tells it. And I would like to show you, because you can describe this man, but you just have to see him. And if this video isn't working again, then I'm gonna be a really, really sad. Please. TV announcer: Tonight, on Nova... Drephal: Are you fucking kidding me? TV character 1: Where's Decker again? TV character 2: He's in an Army Base. Gibberish TV announcer: A lone scientist is on the trail of a computer spy... Drephal: Yeah, because that would be really awesome if we could actually watch it. Shouting Drephal: Huh? Oh, man. Um, can we just go to the slide that we need, maybe? This is... okay. Should we try it? Well, it shows a picture at least. That's good. Yeah. Let's just try this. Do some-thing. Technical Angel: You have to start the presentation. Drephal: Yeah, I'm trying. Here, right? Oh, no. Come on, come on. Well, we're going to get there. TV announcer: Tonight, on Nova... Drephal: Yes! Applause TV announcer: A lone scientist on the trail of a computer spy. The hacker is out there somewhere, raiding computers, stealing government files. Clifford Stoll: Hi, Manny. Some computer hacker's looking for him. TV announcer: The true story of Cliff Stoll's real life adventure, featuring the actual participants recreating the events is The KGB, The Computer and Me. Laughter Drephal: I like his hair. Okay, so, Clifford Stoll's story is that he was a systems administrator at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and he noticed in his accounting system 75 cents missing because some user had accrued 75 cents of computer time and not paid for it. And he found out that there was a weird user he didn't know. And he just deleted him. A couple of days later, somebody else was on his computer and had system privileges. And he says, he just got interested. He didn't want to shut this person out, he wanted to know who it was and what they were doing. So he started tracking whoever was coming into his computers for months, actually a whole year in the end, that he was tracking this person. He got help from a friendly district attorney who got him a warrant to trace the phone lines. And, long story short... Can you actually see something? That's nice. He found out that his intruder came in through TimeNet, the equivalent, the American equivalent of Data XP. And he wasn't even in the US. He was in Germany. He came in through Data XP at the University of Bremen. And the trace ended in Hanover. And in Hanover, the problem was that they had really old switches from the 1950s, and it would have taken about an hour to track the hacker back to his own phone at home. And the problem was the hacker never stayed long enough on Stoll's computers. He used them as a gateway to get into much more interesting computers. For example, the Pentagon database at the Pentagon, the Air Force, the Navy, the Army, even Army computers in Japan. Computers in the Ramstein, Germany. So Stoll was at a loss: How to keep him in a system long enough so he could actually, or the German post could actually track this person back to his own phone line. So he says that his girlfriend came up with the idea: If there's nothing on your computer that interests him, then then put something there. Put some files there that look super secret and are super big so that he needs time to look at them. And that actually worked. They made up a bunch of Big Data and they even put in a mailing list that said, OK, if you want more information about Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as Star Wars, send us a letter because it's so much data, we have to send it through the post. And surprisingly enough, that worked. First of all, The German post was able to track Clifford Stoll's hacker back to the house of one of our KGB hackers, Urmel. His apartment was searched, his office was searched, but the police didn't really know what they were looking for because they didn't find any disk that said Super Secret SDInet Files or something and nothing much came of it. And the second thing that happened was that somebody actually answered this mailing list. A Hungarian immigrant in Pittsburgh sent a letter to Clifford Stoll asking for information on SDInet files. Was he working for the KGB or was he working for somebody else? It's a weird story. In any case, so, in the summer of 1987, Clifford Stoll finally knew, OK, there's some dude in Germany who's been hacking my computer, but nothing much happened of it. And it kind of calmed down a bit until the media got interested. Who got the media interested is another interesting question. But in any case, in April of 1988, German magazine Quick reported on the case using Clifford Stoll's notes. In May 1988, he published a paper suggesting that this hacker in his system had something to do with the KGB and our hackers got a bit nervous. At this point, we have to talk about about Hagbard. His name, his real name was Karl Koch. And in 1988, he was in a difficult place. He had psychological issues, he had drug issues, he had money problems. And he started talking to journalists, offering to tell wild stories about the KGB and what he could do, offering to hack into nuclear reactors, which obviously was not possible. But he just wanted to get a lot of money for it. And the others got a bit nervous. And in July, the youngest in the group went to the authorities and offered to be a witness if he got immunity for anything that he might have done. And this led to the video I wanted to show you in the beginning when in March 1989, arrests were made, all five of them were arrested. Two had to stay in jail because they had prior convictions. Houses were searched and the media descended on the Chaos Computer Club because these five guys were somehow related. And suddenly, the Chaos Computer Club was not this harmless group anymore. But the media portrayed them as, you know, working for the KGB, hacking basically everything. And dramatizing the whole situation. What actually came out of it was not so much. The process, in early 1990, focused on questions like if any classified information was actually transferred or stored anywhere, downloaded. Nobody could prove that. If the USA or Germany were actually compromised in any way. Not really. And how... The main question was how did this Hungarian immigrant get this mailing list? Because only Clifford Stoll and the hacker could have had access to it. And the question is, did he actually get it from the KGB or was it, as one of, one of our hackers suggested a couple of years ago in a podcast, maybe it might have been, he might have been an agent provocateur, he might have been set up by somebody to push these investigations after the German authorities didn't really do much with it. That's the question. So this biggest spy case since Guillaume ended with probation sentences and some fines because there was no proof that any real harm had been done. The most tragic outcome maybe was the death of Karl Koch, who was our hacker Hagbard. He was a very troubled young man. He was orphaned early. He inherited a lot of money when he was young, which is always difficult. He bought a computer. He had a nice apartment. He had parties with his friends. He consumed drugs. And he was from a young age obsessed with the novel Illuminatus!, and the number 23. A movie was made about him in 1998, it's nice, you can find it on YouTube. I didn't include it in my links because I'm not sure about the copyright situation. But it's interesting, nice soundtrack. And this whole situation in 1989, the media pressing down on him and him having these illusions... He thought the Illuminati were in his head controlling his thoughts. He thought they were controlling the international networks and he had to do something about it. Ended on May 23rd, 1989, when he was 23 years old. He officially committed suicide by burning himself. And that is such a gruesome way to die that immediately there were conspiracy theories that maybe he didn't commit suicide, maybe he had help doing it. And that's something I cannot answer, obviously. The much more lasting result of this whole case was the image loss that the Chaos Computer Club suffered. Because suddenly they weren't harmless pranksters joyriding through computers and, you know, showing companies flaws in their systems, showing the post flaws in their BTX system, for example. Suddenly they were portrayed as dangerous hackers, selling secrets, being spies, and, you know, they can't be trusted. And as far as I read, the club almost dissolved about this issue in 1990, but luckily survived. But this is an image that is still lingering today. And I think this image of hackers being somehow untrustworthy and being somehow dangerous, you don't know really what they do and why they do it, but they're dangerous, that is still lingering today. Whenever the media tells you something about hackers, they always show you something like, hi. Something like this. An anonymous, Anonymous dude with a hoodie sitting in front of a computer. Some random numbers flashing. They don't make any sense, but it looks dangerous. And, oh, yeah. And these hackers, they're everywhere. They won't stop at anything. Laughter Drephal: Just two days ago on Christmas. Laughter and applause German supermarket chain REWE had to call back their chopped almonds because they've been hacked. Beware. And so I was interested in taking a look at how the media portrays hackers these days. So I did some Google searches. I thought, okay, what are famous hacking groups that you read about a lot? And for example, you know, we were talking about the KGB. So what about Russian hackers? So the first results I saw was Russian hacking: How did it affect the 2016 elections? So apparently Russian hackers are still very much busy with the United States and the elections leaking documents, supporting Trump for some reason. That's what you find on the media about Russian hackers. And then I thought, OK, what else is there today? What about China? Chinese hackers sounds dangerous. What are they doing? So Chinese hackers apparently are busy hacking two factor authentication these days. They're in your phone, beware. Hacking you, right now, as I speak. But what about German hackers? We've been talking about these German hackers who basically crashed the image of hacking forever. So what are they up to today? When you google German hackers, the first result is Clifford Stoll. Laughing Drephal: After 30 years, really, still? That's the news? I don't know, maybe it's time to make German Hacking Great Again. Laughter and applause Drephal: Very good. So. And finally, what about the Chaos Computer Club? What has changed in the past 30 years? Here's another quote that I've found of a Congress and the issues that were discussed at Congress. Someone standing up and telling the audience that he was unhappy with where he saw Chaos going. The political direction is unacceptable. Concentrating on things like environmental protection, climate change or something, is diverting the group from its technical origins. And it's little wonder that truly talented hackers are beginning to abandon the club. This is from 1988. So are we still having the same issues today? Are we still discussing the same thing? Where is the CCC going? Is it too political? Should it focus more on real hacking, on the technology or what? But fortunately, a lot has changed. For example, when you think about those guys who were at the Congress in the 1980s, how many people were there, like 400? At a Congress in 85? How many people are here today? 16.000? I mean, not in this room, but I think last year was 16.000. That's amazing. And something else I mentioned, when I was this big, I didn't attend Congress. But today you walk around and there's tiny hackers whizzing on scooters everywhere, which is awesome. People are bringing their kids and you have a much wider cross section of society today. And something else... I don't know if you noticed, but when I told you the story about the KGB hack, what was missing? There was something that did not show up. Women. The only women, the only woman in this story is Clifford Stoll's girlfriend, who allegedly came up with the idea of planting a honey pot in his system. There is no other woman in this story. It's all young dudes hacking away. And that certainly has changed. There are... I don't know the percentage. I can't tell. But there's so many women and other non male participants that, like I said, it's a much wider cross-section of society today. But apart from these issues, what else what do you think are the issues we have today and we're going to have in the future? That's my question to you. And I would like some answers. And if you want to confess about hacking something, my DECT is 6623. You can telegram me or tell us now. Applause Herald: Thank you very much for this excellent talk. We do have six microphones here in the hall. Please line up there. Are there questions from the Internet via our Signal Angel? Signal Angel: No, there are none. Herald: There are no questions from the Internets. Do we have questions here? We have question at microphone three. Question: Yes. Oh, my goodness. Thanks a lot for a talk. It was amazing. Can you please just show us the first video? Laughter Drephal: Oh, yeah. I hope so. Herald: Yes, we have plenty of time. Drephal: Yeah. Let's just try to... Herald: In the meantime, if you have questions, please line up at the microphones. Drephal: I don't want to... Okay, getting close. Getting close. Getting close. Okay. You mean this one? Audience: No! Drephal: Yeah, that one doesn't work. Oh, not this one? Oh, yeah. The next one. Let's try. Intro music Ah! Applause Laughter TV announcer: Guten Abend, meine Damen und Herren, zu so später Stunde. Sie haben es ja gerade eben schon gehört. Laut Programm sollten sie jetzt einen Wirtschaftskrimi mit dem Titel Tanker sehen, den bringen wir heute abend nicht. Dafür aber einen Spionagekrimi, und zwar einen echten. Einen authentischen Report über den schwersten Spionagefall seit der Enttarnung des Kanzleramtsagenten Günter Guillaume. Drephal: You can find the whole Brennpunkt on YouTube. It's very interesting. It's like 30 minutes. There's a lot of the same images as in the other documentation I showed. Dudes in black sunglasses, the CIA and stuff. Also, this documentation about Clifford Stoll is hilarious. Not just the scene where where he runs out the shower in his towel to his computer because the hacker is on. It's hilarious. Herald: So do we have any more questions from the Internet, from the hall. Drephal: No? Herald: No, it does not... Well, then there is something up at microphone 5. Question: Can you hear me? Yeah. Drephal: Where? Ah, there! Q: Do we know anything about the rest of the group? Drephal: Yes. Q: Working today, for example? Drephal: Yes. Well, about... let me, go back or go front. Well, I did... I looked into them. DOB, I could not find anything about him. He was actually one of the two who had to stay in prison for almost a year because he was fleeing the army service and they were looking for him. I couldn't find anything about what he's doing today. Pengo is very active. He has a Twitter. He's into vintage computing. And he's, he's the one who's always been interviewed. You know, every 10 years, 10 years after the KGB hack, 20 years after the KGB hack, he's been on TV, he's been on podcasts. You can find a lot about him. But, about 10 years ago, he was on Tim Pritlove's podcast. Very interesting. It's two hours long, but it's super interesting, very detailed in, into the beginnings of the Internet. And there he said, OK. He's being asked about this again and again. And sometimes you just don't want to talk about it anymore. I can totally understand that. Well, you know what happened about, what happened with Hagbard. Urmel, I couldn't find out anything either. Also, Pedro, no. Not so much. Herald: So we have another question on microphone three. Question: Hi. Well, first of all, thank you very much. I did read The Kuckuck's Egg. Drephal: Excellent! Q: And thank you for posing the German perspective towards it. It really elaborates the story quite a lot. You finished your presentation with the question, what is missing, currently, at the Chaos Computer Club. I love it probably as much as you do. I come from the Netherlands and I have the feeling that in Holland, hackers collaborate much more with governments and companies. Drephal: Okay. Q: It's good to be critical against government, but to criticize everything and to shut out government for everything doesn't solve the problem. So what I'm hoping for is a more constructive collaboration with the German government and I hope I'm not making myself very impopular here. I perhaps do, but I'm Dutch. Laughter Drephal: Thank you. Applause Herald: Another question, microphone one. Question: Hi. Just to get the facts straight. So, I mean, I guess we all know here the story, the development of the term hacking since the IT hacks, et cetera. Would you say that explicitly, the story with the German hacking is the thing that stained the name of hacking in our mainstream consciousness? Drephal: Not, not alone. I mean, there's obviously when you look at the US, there's cases of hacking. I mean, talking about Kevin Mitnick, for example, Robert Tappan Morris, who shut down all the computers in the US for days. That's something that, obviously, formed the image of hacking in the US and I, I'm not sure about other countries to be, to be honest. But I'm thinking that it was around the same time, so end of the 80s, hacking kind of lost its innocence through various infamous hacks like the KGB hack. Q: Thank you very much. Drephal: Thank you. Herald: Next question, microphone three. Question: Yes. Thank you, interesting talk. And is there a list or has... Herald: Please talk a bit closer to the microphone. Thank you. Q: Has anyone a list of which kind of information has been leaked or which kind of facilities have been compromised? And second questions, have the Russians ever confirmed this hack? Drephal: First question. Yes. Well, there's the official documents that came out in, in the process. There's actually, if you, if you read German, there is an interesting book that came out in 1990 about this case. And it has very detailed information about what kind of institutions have been hacked and what kind of information has been given to the Soviets. But most of it, I guess, is, is, comes from confessions, because there was no proof. The Russians did never confirm that, yeah, OK, We got this and we got that. No, of course not. And so most of it is what the hackers actually confessed. Herald: Do we have any more questions? It does not look like that. So for anyone who left already. You're going to miss out on the outro video. Drephal: Yeah. Herald: Take it away. Drephal: If I can actually do that because there's no more questions. Are we seeing this? Excellent. It's just one thing, for me, left to do. Why am I... Drephal: Thank you! Applause Herald: Thank you. Big one, round of applause. Applause postroll music subtitles created by c3subtitles.de in the year 2019. Join, and help us!