==Phrack Inc.==
 
                            Issue XIV, File 9 of 9
 
           PWN ^*^ PWN ^*^ PWN { SummerCon '87 } PWN ^*^ PWN ^*^ PWN
           ^*^                                                   ^*^
           PWN                Phrack World News                  PWN
           ^*^                   Issue XIV/2                     ^*^
           PWN                                                   PWN
           ^*^               "SummerCon Strikes"                 ^*^
           PWN                                                   PWN
           ^*^          Created, Written, and Edited             ^*^
           PWN               by Knight Lightning                 PWN
           ^*^                                                   ^*^
           PWN ^*^ PWN ^*^ PWN { SummerCon '87 } PWN ^*^ PWN ^*^ PWN
 
Welcome to Phrack World News Issue XIV/2.  This issue features the exclusive
coverage of SummerCon '87, which took place in St. Louis, Missouri during the
weekend of June 19-21, 1987.  Before we get to the bulk of the issue I'd like
to make a note that most of the people who originally claimed that they would
attend did not show up, but this didn't stop us from having a great time.   -KL
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
PreCon'87; Tuc                                            Sunday, June 14, 1987
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It all started Sunday with the arrival of Tuc from New York.  He checked in at
the Executive International Best Western and then later went to visit the
Volkswagon Car exhibit that was currently appearing in St. Louis at the
National Museum Of Transportation.
 
Taran King and Knight Lightning went to meet Tuc at the hotel unaware that he
had not yet returned from his visit.  In the meantime they contacted several
other associates to learn more about other guest's plans of arrival.
 
Sometime later, Tuc returned to the hotel and fell for a trick pulled by Knight
Lightning and opened the door to his room.  From here, PreCon'87 began and
before too long Forest Ranger joined KL and TK.  After some more greetings, Tuc
unvailed some of his surprises including a few of his business cards.
 
The gathering broke up for a few hours and then regrouped (with the addition of
Cheap Shades) back at the hotel.  From there, Forest Ranger led the rest of us
on a trek into Illinois (where they sell alcohol on Sundays).  We finally
reached a place called "Fast Eddie's," which served not only as a liquor store,
but as a bar and whorehouse as well.  Tuc and FR made their purchase and the
party left for the hotel.
 
Things remained pretty calm for a while, as we contented ourselves with the
consumption of alcoholic beverages.  However, as the night lingered on, we
became restless and loud.  It wasn't long until lawn furniture started to
disappear from the hotel's pool patio and this is when we received our first
call from the hotel desk.  Soon afterwards, we decided that is was time to eat
and so we sent out for pizza.
 
Now, although we tried to keep the noise level down, apparently there were
still complaints about us.  About 27 minutes after we ordered the pizza, we
received a visit from FR's sister-in-law who brought us a warning.  "Get the
hell out of here, the police are on their way!"  Thats all we needed to hear.
Beer cans were grabbed and we were running for the door, when the hotel manager
and security arrived.  We explained that we were leaving and ran down the
hallway.  All of the sudden, the Domino's Pizza deliver man shows up.  FR
yelled, "Yo, Domino's dude.  If you want to get paid, come down here!"  There
was no reaction.  "Hey, you can deliver it to us here now or to jail, and then
you won't get a tip."  He finally got the point.
 
We grabbed the pizza and headed for a field north of Lampert Field (St. Louis
International Airport).  The place was known as the PVA (Private Viewing Area),
but FR informed us that it was really a PFA (Private Fucking Area) as we
noticed when we arrived.  However, we were content with eating our pizza and
drinking what was left of the beer.  The hotel tried to get Tuc to pay for the
room next door to his because the occupant complained that he didn't get any
sleep.  Tuc refused and checked out of the Best Western.
_______________________________________________________________________________
 
PreCon'87; The Clarion International Hotel              Thursday, June 18, 1987
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This event was hardly as eventful as the previous one, but at least I can fill
in a few blank days.  Monday, June 15, 1987, we all saw the movie "The Witches
of Eastwick" and visited North West Plaza.  Tuesday, June 16, 1987, I don't
know about because I wasn't there.  Wednesday, June 17, 1987, KL, TK, and Tuc
visited Union Station (a luxurious shopping mall) and Tuc picked up souvenirs
for friends back home.
 
On Thursday we had several guests arrive.  Dan The Operator (a real geek)
arrived the earliest and Lucifer 666 and Synthetic Slug arrived a little later
(together).  Excluding Cheap Shades at the time, we all converged at Taran's
house where the excited crowd wanted to see Metal Shop Private.  Sadly though,
a disassembled shell was all that remained.  It wasn't long before we became
bored and left for the hotel.  L666 and SS got a room and we killed the rest
of the afternoon at North West Plaza. Afterwards we began to party it up in the
room while watching TV.
 
Some hours later, we received a call from Bill From RNOC, who was traveling
with a friend named Eric.  They were at The Clarion International Hotel,
downtown and nearby Union Station.  The Clarion is one the most expensive
hotels in the city and we were all anxious to see it.  KL, TK, Dan The
Operator, and Tuc left to go visit Bill and Eric.
 
After some misadventures in downtown St. Louis, we arrived at The Clarion,
which was a pretty secure building.  The elevators required a room key to be
operated.  It seems kinda silly though when you consider that the stairs
didn't.  So up we went to the third floor where Bill and Eric were actually
staying as guests of a friend of theirs who was passing through St. Louis.
 
The rooms at The Clarion aren't a whole lot bigger than at Best Western, but
they are quite a bit nicer.  They have a TV and a phone in the bathroom.  The
main TV is remote control and gives you a billing readout on channel 3.  It was
different.
 
Bill came well prepared for the Con, he had stacks of old and new issues of
2600 Magazine and other propoganda and material.  He had several other
interesting items as well including his mysterious notebooks that never left
his sight.  However, the most intriguing item that he had with him was his
"bible."  "Engineering and Operations in the Bell System" published by AT&T
Bell Laboratories.  You can guess what was inside.
 
So we all talked for a while and then said our goodbyes.  The rest of the
evening was for the most part uneventful for us, however, back at Best Western,
Forest Ranger was lighting everything on fire and L666 attempted
(unsuccessfully) to breath fire.  I guess he wanted to live up to his name.
SummerCon '87 was about to begin.
_______________________________________________________________________________
 
SummerCon '87; The Beginning                      Friday Morning, June 19, 1987
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This was the day we had been waiting for.  Dan The Operator had shared a room
with Tuc (and he still hasn't paid his share) and Bill From RNOC and Eric got a
room at the Best Western.  Everyone soon gathered in Bill's room and decided to
order pizza.
 
So we called Pizza Hut, which was just down the road and Bill was very
surprised to discover that they did not have "BIG Igloo Jugs."  After harassing
the lady on the phone for a while, Tuc, TK, KL, Shades, and Dan left to go pick
up the pizza.  We didn't know Dan was taping us, but that story will be told
later.  We messed around at Pizza Hut for a while and then headed back to the
hotel.  On the way we had a drag race with some guy who thought he had a cool
car, we won.
 
It wasn't much longer until Sir Frances Drake arrived bearing surprises.  With
him was Dr. Strangelamb (named for Dr. Stranglove, who wasn't too happy about
it), a small stuffed black sheep that makes a "baa" sound when turned over.
Lucifer 666 had a lot of fun at the Con playing with it.  Sfd also had several
pictures of Oryan QUEST, his car, and Aiken Drum.  As far as QUEST's pictures
go, well lets just say that The Executioner's file in Phrack 13 was totally
correct.
 
While back at the hotel, we had some problems with the management.  They didn't
appreciate our attempts at putting up signs in the lobby for SummerCon people.
We worked something out, but on a nearby payphone was perhaps the strangest
person we encountered the whole weekend.  It was some weird lady who barked and
scream and kicked the wall, while on the phone.  FR was on the phone next to
her and she screamed the word "COCKSUCKER!"  He looked at her and she said "My
son-in-law, what an asshole."  FR's response was, "Uh yeah, I think I know some
people like that."
 
We relaxed for a while back in Bill's room (We couldn't stand to stay in L666's
room because of the lingering smell of Synthetic Slug's shoes).  As we became
bored, things started to be taken apart.  Like the TV, phone, and the internal
speaker system in the room.  Throughout all of this, Dan The Operator had been
taping us, but again that will be explained later.
_______________________________________________________________________________
 
SummerCon '87; Lets Party!              Friday Afternoon-Evening, June 19, 1987
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lex Luthor and The Leftist arrived at St. Louis Center and called for further
directions.  After a long and tiring ordeal, they finally learned how to reach
us.  Unfortunately it was rush hour and it would take them some time.  We
killed an hour and before long they joined us at Best Western.
 
After introductions were made, Tuc called Lex out into the hall, and then they
in turn called me, Taran King, and Bill From RNOC as well.  The topic of
discussion was Dan The Operator who had hinted earlier that he was going to get
a picture of Lex Luthor, without his knowledge.  Less than 3 minutes later,
Eric followed by Dan The Operator (tape recorder on) snuck out the window and
tried to reenter the hallway undetected.  Eric had no way of knowing what we
were discussing and thus allowed Dan to come with.  Suddenly we all started to
run towards Dan with the intention of beating the hell out of him.  However, he
snuck back into the room through the window.
 
Once the excitement was over we headed out to dinner.  It was mostly
uneventful, except for the conversations on the way.  I don't know what went on
in Tuc's car, but in mine we discussed Dan.  We split into two groups, one went
to Imo's (a pizza joint) and the rest of us (Bill From RNOC, Eric, Lex Luthor,
Tuc, The Leftist, and myself) went to a regular sitdown restaurant.  We
discussed all sorts of different things both phreak and non-phreak related,
but again the main topic was Dan.
 
Soon we were joined by the others and we left to go back to Best Western where
we found The Disk Jockey, LOKI, and Control C.  These guys came extremely well
prepared.  They rented a station wagon somewhere in Michigan and filed it with
a cooler (you can guess what was inside that), tons of magazines, manuals,
electrical equipment, a mobile phone transmitter/receiver, and Control C's IBM
PC, hard disk drive, and modem.
 
Afterwhich, Phantom Phreaker, Doom Prophet, Data Line, Forest Ranger, Bit
Master, and another friend of FR's showed up.  SummerCon '87 had begun.  It was
just a big party from then on, with the regular hotel party actions.  Data Line
had brought lots of TeleComputist back issues to the TeleComputist room and was
distributing them around.
 
At different times during the night, the elevators were jammed and several
people at the Con decided to go up on the roof.  However, many of them also
decided to search for the hotel's PBX system.  Somewhere along the way, Control
C, The Leftist, Lucifer 666, Cheap Shades, and I found ourselves locked inside
the staircase of the main building.
 
The doors only opened from the outside, except at the bottom.  Unfortunately
opening the door at the bottom would result in sounding the fire alarm in the
building.  This was bad news because that was the last thing we needed.  Even
if it wasn't our fault there would be complications.  So the five of us split
up and each took a door to bang on.  The hotel was mostly empty in these areas,
but I knew that there were people on floor ten.  So Lucifer 666 and I ran up
ten flights of stairs and pounded on the door until we finally got a response,
several in fact and many of the people weren't happy (it was after 11 PM).
Before too long we had rounded up the rest of our crew and made it back to the
rooms just in time to say goodbye to Phantom Phreaker and Doom Prophet who were
leaving for home (they would return for the Con tomorrow).
 
Several more hours of partying commenced, as well as hourly pizza deliveries.
Everyone was having a great time, however as the night dragged on, the concern
regarding Dan The Operator and his camera (and other things) grew.  He had been
found already talking to John Maxfield once that night on the payphones and had
been caught asking questions about several of the people at the Con.  It wasn't
long before the word "TeleTrial" began to be chanted by most of the Congoers.
 
The interested parties gathered in the TeleComputist room and the interrogation
began.  Dan The Operator's explanations of events that evening had been proven
false as they contradicted each other.  The next step was to search his
belongings.  Forest Ranger led the prosecution and started through Dan's
notebooks.  In it was information about several of the people at the con and
Taran King's and Forest Ranger's addresses (Dan had been to both their homes
where he could have found the addresses).  There were also phone numbers
belonging to people that several Congoers called.  Obviously Dan had been
keeping his eyes and ears open in order to gather information.
 
Dan became worried when FR wanted to search his suitcase and they stepped
outside for a moment.  For some reason Dan was worried about us seeing his
dirty underwear.  Now why would he become so frantic about dirty underwear
unless there was something especially dirty about it.  You can come to your own
conclusions about this one.  Anyway, Dan brought all sorts of electrical
equipment with him, including welding equipment and light switches and things.
The most hilarious item that he brought was Garfield the cat, a stuffed animal
that he slept with.  I guess thats where he gets "pussy."
 
The camera, tape recorder, film, and tapes were confiscated for later examining
and being that is was around 4 AM, everyone decided to get some sleep.
_______________________________________________________________________________
 
SummerCon '87; Conference Time                          Saturday, June 20, 1987
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Taran King, Cheap Shades, and I arrived back at Best Western around 12 AM.
Most of the other Con people were either still asleep or out for breakfast.  By
12:45 almost everyone was back and we proceeded to the "Kitty Hawk Room."
 
Some of the clothing worn at the Con reflected the person's interests.
 
                    Bill From RNOC - Computer Hacker (pic)
                    Lex Luthor     - VAX/VMS Rules!
                    Tuc            - UNIX Bozo
 
The Con started off rather slow as no one really knew how to get it started.
Finally Lex Luthor decided to discuss the current rumors about the BBS decline.
From there the topics included;
 
Bulletin Boards
Busts (Texas, Virginia, New York)
Fiber Optics
Automatic Number Identification (ANI)
REMOBS
Laws
Handles
Groups
Broadway Hacker
Methods of blowing 2600 Hertz
SCCS
Fortells
800 Clid
 
Later, Bill From RNOC told some stories about his exploits and proceeded to
draw diagrams of whatever came to mind.  Phantom Phreaker and Doom Prophet were
upset that no one wanted to discuss CAMA.
 
In the meantime, I noticed that Dan The Operator had disappeared.  Forest
Ranger and I investigated only to discover that the tapes had disappeared as
well.  We caught up with Dan later and discovered that the tapes were now in
Control C's rented station wagon.  LOKI let me in and I took the cassette I had
been looking for and a roll of film.  The tape had all of my SummerCon article
memos on it and this article is partially the result.  We didn't know about
side B, but more on that later.
 
After the Con, Taran King, Control C, Lucifer 666, Bill From RNOC, and I headed
out to my house where we had some serious copying to do.  Control C brought his
computer and we began to copy Metal Shop Private on to his hard disk drive.
While this was going on, Lucifer was receiving a copy of my very own PWN
software to aid him when he takes over with issue XVI.  I left the cassette and
film at my house, its a pity I didn't play it right away because this article
would have had a very different end.
 
Anyway, we finished up and then headed to Chesterfield Mall, a nearby shopping
center.  From there we proceeded to the local CO and recovered some interesting
artifacts.  Our next stop was to pick up some hardware that we needed and then
more trashing.  We returned to Best Western and learned that Lex Luthor and
The Leftist had left due to Leftist's tight schedule.
 
The rest of the afternoon was mostly uneventful.  Lots of rain and not much to
do.  As night approached, the party part of the Con began to restart.  Several
of us got bored with this and decided to explore parts of the hotel.  We found
a Navy wedding reception and decided to take in the food.  The management
didn't approve and we were bounced.  So then we decided to take a look at the
telephone wiring boxes in the hallways of the buildings.  The problem was that
to open them you had to rip out part of the wall.  Nevertheless, things have a
way of happening and the residents of several wings of the hotel found
themselves without phone service.
 
The management didn't like what was happening at all and called the police to
investigate.  They spotted several of us running around the hotel and it was a
mad dash back to the rooms for cover.  LOKI was spotted going through an open
window into Lucifer 666's room and the police decided to investigate it more
closely.  After an hour of panic and excitement, things cooled down and most of
the people in Lucifer 666's room either went to sleep or were playing with
Control C's computer and logging on to Metal Shop Private.
 
We were bored and so Eric, Bill From RNOC, Taran King, Tuc, and I decided to go
throw ice on Dan The Operator.  We ran down the hall and banged on L666's door.
Suddenly one of the hotel managers appeared and threatened us that if we didn't
go to our rooms and keep quiet he would call the police.  We left the hall and
went to the back parking lot.  Eric started a wheel rolling towards the
building and we all knew what the result would be <CRASH!>.
 
Before it hit we ran at full speed around to the front of the hotel where we
were greeted by a hefty officer of the Bridgeton Police Department.  He was
sort of leaning on his car facing us.  It was so erie because it almost seemed
as though he knew we were coming and was waiting for us.  We slowed down
considerably until he said, "Run to me boys."  No one really reacted until he
said it again, "C'mon run to me boys."  Ten seconds later he was joined by the
asshole manager that had yelled at us not more than 60 seconds ago.  "How old
are you!?" he asked checking for curfew violations.  Our replies varied from 17
to 21.  "Where are you from!?"  Bill and Tuc replied New York, the rest of us
kept quiet.  "Lets see some room keys!"  We showed him two keys and then he
looked at the asshole manager and said, "They belong here."  "Why are you
outside, what are you doing!"  Taran replied, "Going to get something to eat,
is that ok mister!?"
 
Our car was parked next to his and we took off for a while.  He tried to follow
us, but we quickly left his jurisdiction.  While we were out we found the home
of Bigfoot (the truck).  We messed around there for a while and then returned
to Best Western and walked around some of the vacant floors of the hotel.
 
The only other interesting activity we did that evening was a 3 AM trip to a 24
hour food store.  Bill From RNOC, Taran King, Tuc, Sir Francis Drake, and I
went to a Super Schnucks and messed around there.  It was huge and we almost
lost Sfd.  After making a few purchases, we went back to the home of Bigfoot
and Taran decided to play bumper car with some of the super huge tires in the
parking lot.  We returned to the hotel for the last time and found Eric on the
phone with L666's current girlfriend.  We harrassed her for a while and then I
fell asleep.  Taran and a few others made a few other trips around town and
woke me up at about 6 AM Sunday morning.
_______________________________________________________________________________
 
SummerCon '87; Goodbye & Good Luck!                       Sunday, June 21, 1987
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forest Ranger dropped by early to take Bill From RNOC and Eric to the train
station, Taran King went along for the ride.  It would be over 24 hours before
they got home.  Tuc took Dan The Operator to the airport around 7 AM and at
about 8 AM Cheap Shades and I dropped off Sir Frances Drake who was on his way
to Boston.  I took Cheap Shades home and then went back to my house to crash
out.
 
Forest Ranger went back to Best Western to find everyone in Bill's room.  Bill
and Ninja never checked out because of an excessively large phone bill that
they didn't want to pay, so everyone took advantage of this situation and
started to to order room service.  Sometime later a bellboy appeared to collect
the money due for the room service and everyone left leaving Forest Ranger
behind.  "Hey, I'll be right back, I left my wallet in my car, hold on a sec,
ok?"  FR never returned and everyone went home except for Tuc who was at
another hotel (He took a room at Ben Franklin because he wasn't welcome at Best
Western after what happened the Sunday previous).
 
Around 10 AM, I decided that I didn't feel like sleeping and started playing
the tape only to find several unauthorized recordings.  Dan had been taping us
all throughout the Con, but the interesting parts came later.  There was part
of an Alliance teleconference on the tape where Dan tried to act like he was
some real important person (what a joke!) and a botched up social engineering
job.  The BIG shocker hit when I flipped the tape over to discover 45 minutes
of a conversation with John Maxfield aka Cable Pair of BoardScan.  I won't go
into details about the conversations right now, but the scary part is that the
tape ends before the phone call does.  In other words we don't know exactly how
much information was passed, but we do know that it has been an ongoing thing,
perhaps for months. An actual overview and possible transcript of these
conversations will appear in PWN XV.
 
I was in shock.  I couldn't believe what I was hearing!  It especially hurt
when information was passed about people that I actually knew and had met.  If
only I had played that tape the night before, this would be a different story
entirely.  I didn't know exactly what to do.  I had stopped calling out, but I
was willing to pay for a few calls to spread the news.  The only problem was
that the majority of the people I wanted to contact were still en route home or
unreachable.  I finally was able to reach Tuc who was still in St. Louis.  He
dropped by and I played him the tape.  Since then, Taran King and Forest Ranger
have also heard most of the tape and preliminary investigations have begun.
 
We have discovered some information linking Dan The Operator to the FBI, but
more on that next issue.
_______________________________________________________________________________
 
PWN SummerCon '87 Quicknotes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SummerCon Promotional Posters were created by Lucifer 666.  They featured many
tradmarks of well known telecommunications companies as well as different plans
and schematics for boxes and other equipment.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Southern Baptists were in town during the week for some National convention
of their own.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Johnny Rotten was supposed to appear at SummerCon '87 and called to confirm his
plans on Friday Evening, June 19, 1987.  He never appeared.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The full guest list of SummerCon '87 includes;
 
   Bill From RNOC / Bit Master / Cheap Shades / Control C / Dan The Operator
   Data Line / Doom Prophet / Forest Ranger / Knight Lightning / Lex Luthor
       LOKI / Lucifer 666 / Eric / Phantom Phreaker / Sir Francis Drake
       Synthetic Slug / Taran King / The Disk Jockey / The Leftist / Tuc
 
In closing, SummerCon '87 was a fantastic success and anyone who missed it,
missed out!  See you next year at SummerCon '88.  Plans are already being made!
 
:Knight Lightning