<
https://www.theverge.com/c/22889425/susy-thunder-headley-hackers-phone-phreakers-claire-evans>
"She was known, back then, as Susan Thunder. For someone in the business of
deception, she stood out: she was unusually tall, wide-hipped, with a mane of
light blonde hair and a wardrobe of jackets embroidered with band logos, spoils
from an adolescence spent as an infamous rock groupie. Her backstage conquests
had given her a taste for quaaludes and pharmaceutical-grade cocaine; they’d
also given her the ability to sneak in anywhere.
Susan found her way into the hacker underground through the phone network. In
the late 1970s, Los Angeles was a hotbed of telephone culture: you could
dial-a-joke, dial-a-horoscope, even dial-a-prayer. Susan spent most of her days
hanging around on 24-hour conference lines, socializing with obsessives with
code names like Dan Dual Phase and Regina Watts Towers. Some called themselves
phone phreakers and studied the Bell network inside out; like Susan’s groupie
friends, they knew how to find all the back doors.
When the phone system went electric, the LA phreakers studied its interlinked
networks with equal interest, meeting occasionally at a Shakey’s Pizza parlor
in Hollywood to share what they’d learned: ways to skim free long-distance
calls, void bills, and spy on one another. Eventually, some of them began to
think of themselves as
computer phreakers, and then
hackers, as they
graduated from the tables at Shakey’s to dedicated bulletin board systems, or
BBSes.
Susan followed suit. Her specialty was social engineering. She was a master at
manipulating people, and she wasn’t above using seduction to gain access to
unauthorized information. Over the phone, she could convince anyone of
anything. Her voice honey-sweet, she’d pose as a telephone operator, a clerk,
or an overworked secretary:
I’m sorry, my boss needs to change his password,
can you help me out?
In the early ’80s, Susan and her friends pulled increasingly elaborate phone
scams until they nearly shut down phone service for the entire city. As two of
her friends, Kevin Mitnick and Lewis DePayne, were being convicted for
cybercrime, she made an appearance on "20/20", demonstrating their tradecraft
to Geraldo Rivera. Riding her celebrity, she went briefly legit, testifying
before the US Senate and making appearances at security conventions, spouting
technobabble in cowboy boots and tie-dye. Then, without a trace, she left the
world behind.
I went looking for the great lost female hacker of the 1980s. I should have
known that she didn’t want to be found."
Via Esther Schindler.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
