Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of My Heart Radio Elizabeth Dot.
Speaker 1: Uh you know it's ridiculous, Yes, I do. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: almost Thanksgiving and I was thinking back about the Macy's
Speaker 1: Day Thanksgiving Day parade, which is a big family favorite.
Speaker 1: Do you guys watch it now? Okay? Well, my family
Speaker 1: used to always watch it, and I was thinking back.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, I remember there being some crazy things.
Speaker 1: I looked it up in there was an absolutely hectic
Speaker 1: Macy's Day Thanksgiving Day parade. So what happens is there's
Speaker 1: winds whipping around. The winds are like at forty three
Speaker 1: miles an hour that day, they decide we're gonna do
Speaker 1: it anyway. Now, these are huge, exactly, and it takes
Speaker 1: like teams of people to hold them down. So I
Speaker 1: watched the footage right, and this was like amazing because
Speaker 1: they lost multiple floats in the parade. The Pink Panther
Speaker 1: goes out like a street the Quick Bunny, the cat
Speaker 1: and the hat they both go down at thirty six Street.
Speaker 1: But the one that I loved the most happened to
Speaker 1: be Barney the Big Purple Dinosaur. So after the Pink
Speaker 1: Panther had been you know, taken out with a knife
Speaker 1: by the NYPD. Barney comes down the path and Barney
Speaker 1: is like getting whipped around and the handlers have to
Speaker 1: lose control of him, right, and it comes this menace
Speaker 1: where the wind is going so fast the handlers are
Speaker 1: literally lying down on the street. Another handler is lying
Speaker 1: on top of them trying to hold them down because
Speaker 1: the wind is lifting them. Wondering if anyone got flung
Speaker 1: over on the roape completely not that good, but there
Speaker 1: were some people like things fell and stuff people got
Speaker 1: actually hurt. But aside from that, there was when Barney
Speaker 1: goes down and I quote one lady said, everything turned purple. Right,
Speaker 1: So what happens is like as the balloon handles are
Speaker 1: trying to fight to hold Barney, he hits this like
Speaker 1: light post and then all of a sudden rips open
Speaker 1: his side. So now Barney the kind of story's eviscerated
Speaker 1: in the air, flailing away and the wind is going
Speaker 1: right into his torn open side, and so people are screaming.
Speaker 1: Children's yeah, the families are screaming, And so what did
Speaker 1: people do? Because now also the wind is starting to
Speaker 1: whip this thing around like a kite. Handlers are trying
Speaker 1: to hold it down, so they're able to cut the
Speaker 1: ropes that are tied around one lamp post. Now Barney's
Speaker 1: flapping around and he's down at like street level, so
Speaker 1: he's getting close to like hitting people. Then White Pet
Speaker 1: once again rushes in. Someone's like, give me a knife,
Speaker 1: and then so they get a knife and they go
Speaker 1: at Barney with knives and they cut a heart. Stop it.
Speaker 1: They cut a heart Barney in front of all the
Speaker 1: children who were there, and then all the children watching
Speaker 1: the millions at home. And it is one of the
Speaker 1: funniest things I've ever seen. Is there a documentary about this? No,
Speaker 1: you can find it on YouTube. Oh I don't really.
Speaker 1: I don't know that. I think there should be. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to be very solemn the day that Barney
Speaker 1: went down. Oh it's insane. Yeah, I would watch that
Speaker 1: if you want to see it, it's on YouTube. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well that's ridiculous. Do you know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 1: Hit me with it. Two kids hacking major military installations
Speaker 1: in search of UFO intel. Oh, I love these kids.
Speaker 1: This is ridiculous. Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
Speaker 1: heists and cons It's always murder free and one ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I am not particularly computer literate. I mean, I'm proficient
Speaker 1: in Microsoft Office Suite applications, says right there on my resume.
Speaker 1: But I'm kind of I'm in awe of hackers. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm in all of the nineties version of them, you know,
Speaker 1: like they were more adventurous than now. It's like malicious
Speaker 1: and financial, right, but like to know the back door
Speaker 1: operations of things like that, and back in the day
Speaker 1: with people would be cracking in just because they wanted to.
Speaker 1: I could get in if they wanted to see what
Speaker 1: was being held in there, and that stayed these UFO
Speaker 1: to know how to do that rather than only know
Speaker 1: the front facing things. Um, I'm going to focus on
Speaker 1: the golden age of hacking, late eighties early nineties. Do
Speaker 1: you remember that Angelina Jolie film Hackers, Yes, the one
Speaker 1: you mentioned often. It had a really good theme song,
Speaker 1: hacking on a Star Really yeah, Randy Newman sang. It
Speaker 1: had other classics on the soundtrack, Nights of hackst Asia
Speaker 1: Are you serious? And then Computer Pooper You're not kidding?
Speaker 1: Disc is how we do it? I t are you kidding?
Speaker 1: I'm completely kidding. I had I could have believed you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what, Well, okay, I shouldn't joke. But in
Speaker 1: all honesty, there were three soundtracks for that movie. Did
Speaker 1: you know that? So? And that's a hundred percent true.
Speaker 1: They just couldn't stop. Do you know what was songs
Speaker 1: written the movie? Well, I don't know what. There's track one,
Speaker 1: Disc one is called Original Bedroom Rockers by Cruder and Dorfmeister. Okay,
Speaker 1: so now I have to assume you're telling the truth.
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard of it, but I listened to that
Speaker 1: song for the sake of research. It's the music that
Speaker 1: you play when you're like in the nineties and it's
Speaker 1: dark and it's wet, and you're in the city scape
Speaker 1: and you're sneaking. That's what that it's for. You're like
Speaker 1: wearing a choker and thick sold Doc Martins and you're
Speaker 1: just hacking it at That's what that's for, Just poking
Speaker 1: around and you have tiny bangs of course male female,
Speaker 1: none of the above, tiny banks. Do you know? It
Speaker 1: was track one on disc two? Um, this is how
Speaker 1: we do it? Firestarter by the Prodigy. Like, if that
Speaker 1: doesn't take you back, I don't know that. So in
Speaker 1: the movie, they talk about the essay Hacker Manifesto, which
Speaker 1: is also known as the Conscience of a Hack. It
Speaker 1: defined the whole hacker business that you know, the biz
Speaker 1: as we like to call it. Yeah, it was written
Speaker 1: by a hacker, a hacker named the Mentor. Yes, he
Speaker 1: was a hacker. His MoMA named him Lloyd Blankenship. He
Speaker 1: called himself the Mentor. Can I read you the very
Speaker 1: end of it? Um? Should I do it? In my
Speaker 1: junior high drama kid voice, I was going to ask,
Speaker 1: this is our world now, the world of the electron
Speaker 1: and the switch, the beauty of the bad. We make
Speaker 1: use of a service already existing without paying for what
Speaker 1: could be dirt cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons,
Speaker 1: and you call us criminals. We explore, and you call
Speaker 1: us criminals. We seek after knowledge, and you call us criminals.
Speaker 1: We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias,
Speaker 1: and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you
Speaker 1: wage wars, you murder, cheat and lie to us and
Speaker 1: try to make us believe if it's for our own good.
Speaker 1: Yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My
Speaker 1: crime is that of curiosity. My crime is out of
Speaker 1: judging people by what they say and think, not what
Speaker 1: they look like. My crime is that about smarting you
Speaker 1: something that you will never forgive me for. I'm a
Speaker 1: hacker and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,
Speaker 1: but you cannot stop us all. After all, we're all alike.
Speaker 1: Reminds me of the Simpsons. Joker Ed Bakley drives a
Speaker 1: car that's powered off of his sense of self satisfaction. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's like serious Jean Valjean and doesn't make you want
Speaker 1: to go to coding class and just pop off once
Speaker 1: I get done. Waiving this flag over my head makes
Speaker 1: me want to go back to seventh grade and do
Speaker 1: a play. So Hackers, that was a real star turn
Speaker 1: for all. Angelina Jolie, Oh yeah, I think guess how
Speaker 1: she met and married Johnny Lee Miller sick boy. I
Speaker 1: think you're actually right about that. I'm right about hackers.
Speaker 1: It came out. It was in the public consciousness. Hacken. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it'd been there for a while. You know. He had
Speaker 1: Matthew Broderick in wargames the Net, that's right. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was like the sanitized version. That was like the Kelly
Speaker 1: her out or visit her outlook, Hello Microsoft Excel and
Speaker 1: proficient Microsoft Office Suite. Um, yeah, no, that was the
Speaker 1: net is like the panera version of hackers and hackers
Speaker 1: is like the hot topic everything. So hackers. In six June,
Speaker 1: there was a U. S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
Speaker 1: that held a hearing on security in cyberspace. So you know,
Speaker 1: let's protecting as internet we got to. UM. Hearing was
Speaker 1: really all about the National Information Infrastructure as well as
Speaker 1: America's dependency on said infrastructure, the NII. It's basically, according
Speaker 1: to Senate staffers, quote, the advanced computer systems, databases, and
Speaker 1: telecommunications networks throughout the United States that make electronic information
Speaker 1: widely available and accessible. Start talking about like the Internet, cable, wire, satellite.
Speaker 1: So this was the telecommunications follow up act. I guess
Speaker 1: cell phones. Um, it's just a part of the global infrastructure,
Speaker 1: just the US. And so this this subcommittee, they put
Speaker 1: together a report and they figured out like what the
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities were for this infrastructure weakness in hardware and software.
Speaker 1: This week weeksauce human factor and then a lack of
Speaker 1: security culture. Ah, that's like the whole my passwords passwords. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like the I have the people who put a
Speaker 1: post it note with their password under their keyboard or
Speaker 1: people do that. You you don't work in office. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about office. That's like if you, yeah,
Speaker 1: you just lift a keyboard, you're probably on a on
Speaker 1: some people's Yeah, you're probably going to find there. But
Speaker 1: I don't even tape it underneath their desk draw They
Speaker 1: might do that too. I mean, if I were really
Speaker 1: trying to look for someone, that's what I would do,
Speaker 1: not that I would. Um So. In an example, the
Speaker 1: congressional staffers, they said, quote, the staff requested from various
Speaker 1: agencies the name of the individual or office in charge
Speaker 1: of computer safety. Most agencies responded that they did not
Speaker 1: know who that individual was, or that they did not
Speaker 1: know if such a position existed, or that the position
Speaker 1: was spread over numerous departments. Like who's in charge of
Speaker 1: security at the State Department? They're like department like like
Speaker 1: security security and the front door diversity. He plays a
Speaker 1: lot of games. Um so, but this is lot's changed
Speaker 1: since then. But still, um so, this subcommittee, were they
Speaker 1: just reacting to the smash hit movies hackers? Likely? No,
Speaker 1: there was a specific hack that was detailed in Appendix
Speaker 1: B to the report, and this is a cautionary tale, um,
Speaker 1: they said, quote the following case study is a good
Speaker 1: illustration of the type of threat facing our Department of
Speaker 1: Defense information infrastructure. Although the incident has been fully investigated
Speaker 1: by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, numerous questions
Speaker 1: remain unanswered. So now we're not just talking like random
Speaker 1: business at at the at the government level. We're talking
Speaker 1: about Air Force. So it's like some war games kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, like the attacked into the d D and
Speaker 1: they're like getting nuclear. Do you want to play a game?
Speaker 1: So let's talk hackers. My story today. What's important is
Speaker 1: what I'm going to talk about. It's a grouse him
Speaker 1: to some a buddy story. Two young hackers taken on
Speaker 1: the world. The first guy someone you've already heard of,
Speaker 1: Angelina Jolie, Yes, her, No, it's Matthew Bevan. He was
Speaker 1: the name sounds familiar. He was, Yeah, he was on
Speaker 1: that British TV show The Heist, starring our Personal Savior. Um.
Speaker 1: He was a Welshman, or is a Welshman internationally known.
Speaker 1: He's still he's permanently internationally known. Hacker started young, he
Speaker 1: eventually became a white hat security expert who knows what
Speaker 1: he's doing today, we're hoping for his best life. But
Speaker 1: let's go back to the start. Born four Whales, Europe.
Speaker 1: His dad was a cop. So he gets his first computer,
Speaker 1: first real six during when he's twelve, and when he's
Speaker 1: fifteen he gets his first real mode M from my
Speaker 1: fellow math deficients. Right, okay, so it seems kind early
Speaker 1: for modems in such eight nine, at least for like
Speaker 1: the average person. Yeah. I had a friend whose father
Speaker 1: was a journalist and he used a modem to send
Speaker 1: his newspaper column in and we thought that was why
Speaker 1: had put a phone on this thing? Yeah, the little
Speaker 1: cradle thing. Well there there's little Matthew scouting and computing.
Speaker 1: You know. I mentioned it in the heist episode that
Speaker 1: he got his modem and he started freaking freaking out
Speaker 1: with the girl, free phone calls, hacking the phone, mainframe
Speaker 1: and the so on the week. So that then got
Speaker 1: him internet access. And since it's the early days, not
Speaker 1: everything is online, everything college networks. Yeah, but the stuff
Speaker 1: that is connected, he's just tuting right on in now. Um,
Speaker 1: he picked his hacker name Cougie. Yeah, comes from cougi kiri.
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with that? Hell? No, that's I'm ashamed
Speaker 1: for you. Um as we as the rest of us
Speaker 1: all know it's ninja sign language. Is it really that is?
Speaker 1: I'm not making that one up. It's hand signs that
Speaker 1: ninja's used to call upon their powers when they're in danger. So,
Speaker 1: according to my new favorite website, Way of the Ninja
Speaker 1: dot Com, kuji means nine symbols, and kirie refers to
Speaker 1: the cutting motion, and the nine symbols are written pyo, toe, shah, kai, jin, retzu, zai,
Speaker 1: and zen. I know I'm saying things wrong and I
Speaker 1: deep apologies for that. Each symbol, according to this website quote,
Speaker 1: each symbol has a specific meaning, so to invoke a
Speaker 1: specific ability, you have to perform the correct symbol. For example,
Speaker 1: if a ninja gets injured, he'd performed the kujie symbol
Speaker 1: for healing while in a meditative state. In other words,
Speaker 1: kuji kiri is like a meditative prayer. The combination of
Speaker 1: hand signs, breath and visualization induces a powerful mental state.
Speaker 1: There's no proof of people gaining extraordinary senses or healing powers.
Speaker 1: What cougie does is to trigger a specific mental state.
Speaker 1: For a shinobi, this optimal state of mine helps him
Speaker 1: function well under stress. It may also create the ideal
Speaker 1: conditions for his body to recover tad faster. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of embarrassed to admit, but at one time I did
Speaker 1: know this when I was a twelve year old boy,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, I know, you can't. You
Speaker 1: know you can't be a twelve year old boy and
Speaker 1: I have a little bit of ninja. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of ninja and like folding up
Speaker 1: throwing stars. Yeah, we used to go down to Chinatown
Speaker 1: and buy them. In fact, one of my favorite memories
Speaker 1: is coming back from Chinatown throwing them up in the
Speaker 1: air and we were wearing, you know, flip flops, and
Speaker 1: the ninja star fell and hit my friend in the
Speaker 1: foot and blood spread it up higher than his head.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about how that's here one of your
Speaker 1: favorite memories, you said, because we were so happy to
Speaker 1: get the ninja stars, And it's about the ninja stars,
Speaker 1: not about the blood, not about the guys are of blood.
Speaker 1: But he was impressive. He was impressed. It sounds it well.
Speaker 1: So Matthew called himself, Guji go on um, I need
Speaker 1: to take a break right now and practice my cog kitty. Um,
Speaker 1: let's listen to some ads. When we come back, I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you about Cougie served from the Web
Speaker 1: in search of alien life. All right, Saron. When we
Speaker 1: left off, Matthew Bevan a k a. Cougi was crafting
Speaker 1: a mission, my favorite hacking in Ninja. Yes, he's doing
Speaker 1: a hacking mission. He started small colleges businesses because not
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff was online like the Prodigy network
Speaker 1: back then. Yeah, he and his hacker pals, they'd race
Speaker 1: each other to see who could hack the most systems
Speaker 1: in two hours. So that's fun. In an interview at
Speaker 1: the BBC, he said that hacking was quote perhaps the
Speaker 1: feeling that a parent might get if they find their
Speaker 1: child's diary. They know they should not read it, they
Speaker 1: know it's wrong, but they just can't help themselves. Wow. Right,
Speaker 1: kind of an apt analogy, I think. Yeah. But also
Speaker 1: it's like, so he has a cop for a dad,
Speaker 1: he probably doesn't have a whole lot of like privacy
Speaker 1: and homes. He's like, I know my parents are going
Speaker 1: to get off reading this. Um, they know they shouldn't,
Speaker 1: but they can help themselves. So he and his pals
Speaker 1: hacking it up hack in the USA, well, uk, okay.
Speaker 1: One of his pals is a teenage boy and he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, Matthews and his early twenties at this point,
Speaker 1: teenage boy named Richard Price who called himself data stream cowboy,
Speaker 1: data stream cowboy. Huh. Now what I love is that
Speaker 1: the government kind of insults him and only calls him
Speaker 1: data stream. How can you drop the cowboy, dude? I mean,
Speaker 1: it reminds me of drug Store Cowboy, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite nineties movies. I can never hear the words drug
Speaker 1: store that. Secretly my head, I think they're just dropping
Speaker 1: it so that first of all, it makes him feel
Speaker 1: a little familiar and he's a kid, and then they're
Speaker 1: like insulting him. But I'll so maybe because in those
Speaker 1: days you had to print things up in hard copy,
Speaker 1: if you took the word cowboy out, it would reduce
Speaker 1: over time the page count and you could save money.
Speaker 1: Really No, we're going to talk about all data stream
Speaker 1: seed later, but um, it was the nineties. Matthew was
Speaker 1: a young man, not a whole lot of real life friends.
Speaker 1: So of course he's a big fan of the X
Speaker 1: Files and he's fascinated with the Roswell incident. I'm not
Speaker 1: capping on him for that at all. Fascinated right, and
Speaker 1: I loved the x He'd hear about hackers breaking into
Speaker 1: army and navy bases to find information about UFOs. He's like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna give it a try. Why
Speaker 1: not me? So so I want in. So there were
Speaker 1: rumors of forty previous hackers who tried this to get
Speaker 1: into all these military things, and then they disappeared. They disappeared,
Speaker 1: get out. But you know what, Matthew, how did they
Speaker 1: know the hackers disappear? Like did hacker community say like
Speaker 1: they stopped all of a sudden, they're not logging on.
Speaker 1: They're like, well, yeah, but is that okay? I don't know.
Speaker 1: They weren't like disappeared, disappeared like black helicopters. It's a rumor.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure that some people heard that, yeah, black
Speaker 1: helicopters came or they were thrown in vans. Other people
Speaker 1: are like, I haven't seen them online in a while,
Speaker 1: so you know yeah. Um, Matthew took my informal motto
Speaker 1: who knows who cares? And he just went with it.
Speaker 1: Who knows who cares, I'm going to try it. So
Speaker 1: he summons data stream Cowboy, and I just like to
Speaker 1: imagine they're both wearing like crushed velvet capes. I don't
Speaker 1: know why. And then they get their freak on. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's just a couple of freaks off the leash.
Speaker 1: Am I right? People, is this thing on? Um? They
Speaker 1: wanted to know what the FEDS had on the UFOs,
Speaker 1: the UFOs, as we say in the biz. It was
Speaker 1: the nineties X files, the rage Internet spreading out like
Speaker 1: a cancer across the globe. And there's kan data stream here,
Speaker 1: cancer totally righting the cancer. He ha, Okay, so Matthew,
Speaker 1: a web of cancer, a couple of freaks off the leash.
Speaker 1: Matthew hacks into the computer network at Air Forces Rome
Speaker 1: Laboratory at what was then Griffith's Air Force Base in Rome,
Speaker 1: New York. Did you know I've been to that Air
Speaker 1: Force base? I did, and I wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: you about that. No, I had no idea. How would
Speaker 1: I know about? Because, my good dude, that's where they
Speaker 1: held with stock yours truly right there. The whole time
Speaker 1: I forgot you suffered through I was working for Mother
Speaker 1: Jones magazine at the time, and we're doing like marketing
Speaker 1: stuff there but also very loosely covering it for the
Speaker 1: Mojo website and as a whole other story for a
Speaker 1: whole other time. You've written about this medium, ye, so
Speaker 1: that Yeah, I've been to this Air Force base. I
Speaker 1: haven't been in like the brain center of it, the
Speaker 1: computer because it was decommissioned when I was there. You
Speaker 1: just suffered anyway, Oh yeah, smelled terrible anyway. Time in
Speaker 1: the hack Row Lab was quote the Air Forces Premier
Speaker 1: Command and Control research facility. Its projects included artificial intelligence system,
Speaker 1: radar guidance system, and target detection and tracking system. Why
Speaker 1: is this description side? It comes with a slow gin
Speaker 1: fizz like it happens when you when you go into
Speaker 1: the Internet now and you type it in. That's what
Speaker 1: comes out of your computer. That sound the voice anytime
Speaker 1: you want a description of anything important. Did you ever
Speaker 1: notice now if you go to look at anything for
Speaker 1: the Internet when you research it's like, oh, did you
Speaker 1: want to buy that? I'll go and research anything. It's like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: did you want to buy that Air Force base? I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I just wanted would you like to buy a black
Speaker 1: hole hook me up, So Maddie bevans uh, he said.
Speaker 1: His quote soul tool was a Commodore Amiga loaded with
Speaker 1: blue boxing program called rocks Box Hell. Yes, shout out
Speaker 1: to the Amiga I had. My brother and I had
Speaker 1: an Amiga when we were growing up. Yeah, my neighbor
Speaker 1: Ja had when we loved it are it was so
Speaker 1: way too sophisticated for our use, Like we played kids
Speaker 1: educational games like he had to solve math problems and
Speaker 1: collect carmins to like navigate a castle. That was what
Speaker 1: I did on there. My grandma got us that computer
Speaker 1: at this craziest store in Berkeley that was half computer
Speaker 1: store half tennis store. It was called it was called
Speaker 1: Winner's Circle. It legitimately sold computers and tennis gear interests.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, I thought I was misremembering it and
Speaker 1: like confusing two stores, and I was like, hold on
Speaker 1: a second. I had to look it up their old
Speaker 1: YELP reviews at this place that it doesn't exist anywhere,
Speaker 1: but it existed. Then I got my rackets restrung there.
Speaker 1: But then we'd also be like can I get a
Speaker 1: cool educational game like popular kids would do? Like I
Speaker 1: may have been wearing orthoped or like orthodontic net gear
Speaker 1: when I went in there. I don't know who's to
Speaker 1: say whatever. So Matthew, he had an Amiga shout out
Speaker 1: to him. He goes um he hacked the Rome Lab.
Speaker 1: He said he was doing it because he wanted to
Speaker 1: like prove UFO conspiracy stuff. He said, I was not
Speaker 1: interested in weapons codes, just the UFOs um. He thought
Speaker 1: that they were totally hiding UFO information. He wanted to
Speaker 1: find out what it was. He said, quote. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of weird coincidences which add up to the
Speaker 1: possibility of it most likely being true. I like to
Speaker 1: think what I saw was not misinformation. He saw some stuff.
Speaker 1: Did he tell the blink when a D two guy?
Speaker 1: That's my question. So the Air Force figured out pretty
Speaker 1: soon that there were two people they didn't know who
Speaker 1: who had hacked into seven of the computer systems at
Speaker 1: Rome Labs and gained complete access to all the information
Speaker 1: in their systems. Just waltzed right in. They downloaded data files.
Speaker 1: They installed sniffer software programs on each of the seven systems,
Speaker 1: which meant they were able to read, copy and delete emails,
Speaker 1: read and copy sensitive unclassified battlefield simulation programmed data like
Speaker 1: they were just poking around where they really shouldn't have been.
Speaker 1: So the Air Force realizes, okay, we got to two
Speaker 1: creepers in here. They figure, we're going to leave a
Speaker 1: couple of these hacked systems open, but secure the other
Speaker 1: one so that we can trace them if they come
Speaker 1: in again. So April four, the Air Force they see
Speaker 1: Cougie Sneak Sneak Sneak doing little hand signs into the
Speaker 1: Goddard Space Flight Center at green Belt, Maryland, and they
Speaker 1: said they were able to cut his connection before he
Speaker 1: could take any information. That same day, the Air Force
Speaker 1: said he also attempted to hack into Write Patterson Air
Speaker 1: Force Base. Now Right Patterson is where a lot of
Speaker 1: UFOs allegedly stored. So the next day, on April fifteen,
Speaker 1: the Air Force said that they saw him trying to
Speaker 1: break into Right Patterson again, as well as NATO headquarters
Speaker 1: in Brussels. You know why listen, It's like you're wandering around.
Speaker 1: You see a nice little shop, like, oh, I will
Speaker 1: go in there for a second. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: you go to the store and when they're like did
Speaker 1: you find everything? Okay? You know what actually I found
Speaker 1: more than I needed. That's him poking around. So there's
Speaker 1: this guy named Ryan Sprague, and he's a regular on
Speaker 1: such hit shows as Mysteries Decoded Ancient Aliens, one of
Speaker 1: your favorites, hard hitting stuff. He wrote a piece on
Speaker 1: medium about this, so well vetted um. He said that
Speaker 1: Matthew realized, after spending some time on those computers that
Speaker 1: he quote had the potential to single handedly launched missiles
Speaker 1: from the base. Wisely, he decided to veer his focus
Speaker 1: away from warfare and concentrated solely on trying to find
Speaker 1: any information related to highly advanced aircraft searching for space
Speaker 1: related activity. He first looked at Goddard Space Center. He
Speaker 1: began to download and copy dozens of files that he
Speaker 1: had found about space related technology. But this did and
Speaker 1: seemed to satisfy his appetite, and then he shifted his
Speaker 1: focus to a base that held a hefty reputation for
Speaker 1: supposedly storing the wreckage of a down UFO Right Patterson
Speaker 1: Air Force Base. So Matthew admits, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: just doing it out of curiosity. But my call, Lee,
Speaker 1: it's so easy. That's the other reason. It's like takes
Speaker 1: no effort. There's this website great spacing dot com. I
Speaker 1: found the Yeah, they said that Matthew found information from
Speaker 1: Right Patterson because they're the ones who supposedly had the
Speaker 1: Roswell incident stuff. And then he also supposedly found a
Speaker 1: description about um the powerful engine that was in the
Speaker 1: Roswell Incident Technology vehicle UFO Space Sky thing is so
Speaker 1: much fun. So he also found files about Room eighteen,
Speaker 1: and he was heavily questioned about what he knew about
Speaker 1: Room eighteen when they finally caught him. Did you know
Speaker 1: there's a Megadeth song called Hangar eighteen that is about
Speaker 1: it's about this place. Yeah, Hangar eight teen, Room eighteen.
Speaker 1: It's supposedly an area fifty one where they keep all
Speaker 1: the special all the alien interstellar I'm sorry, but if
Speaker 1: Mega Death wrote a song about it, it's Legit has
Speaker 1: never lied once, and it's not only knows is the
Speaker 1: truth and guitar licks. Yeah, that's it. Pure. So the
Speaker 1: Air Force they finally figure out who these people are, right,
Speaker 1: and they figure they're working together. Cougie data stream cowboy
Speaker 1: or just data stream to the overly familiar FETs or
Speaker 1: Mr Cowboys. You're nasty, So they figured that Cougie was
Speaker 1: like coaching data Stream via online chat sessions when he
Speaker 1: would have a trouble and then data Stream would try
Speaker 1: again successfully. So per the Senate Subcommittee hearing a few
Speaker 1: years later, quote Cougie was a far more sophisticated hacker
Speaker 1: than the sixteen year old data Stream. Air Force investigators
Speaker 1: were able to observe that Cougie would only stay on
Speaker 1: a telephone line is short time, not long enough to
Speaker 1: be traced successfully. So he's just you know, pushing him
Speaker 1: and go on out there. You you poke around, You
Speaker 1: tell me what you find, uh, data Stream, though he wasn't.
Speaker 1: He did big dog stuff on his own too. He
Speaker 1: hacked into a couple of NASA's systems, Lockheed Martin and
Speaker 1: then allegedly another NATO computer. Um. But his next hack
Speaker 1: is what really got him on the radar for US officials.
Speaker 1: He somehow got into a system in Korea and obtained
Speaker 1: all the data stored on the Korean Atomic Research Institute system,
Speaker 1: and then he took it and deposited it in Rome
Speaker 1: Labs files. So, like the people of Rome, all this
Speaker 1: Korean stuff pops up, and at first they don't know
Speaker 1: North Korean, South Korean. It just says Korean, and I mean,
Speaker 1: I I don't understand how they get confused by this,
Speaker 1: but what have you? Um. They were probably waiting on
Speaker 1: a translator. They're like, Okay, this is Korean, but I
Speaker 1: don't know what stripe so um. But the problem is
Speaker 1: if it's North Korea, the North Koreans are going to
Speaker 1: think that this is like an aggressive act of war. Luckily,
Speaker 1: a few hours later, I suppose they wrestled up a translator,
Speaker 1: they figured out that he had hacked into the South
Speaker 1: Korean Atomic Research Institute, so they're able to smooth it over, like, hey, look,
Speaker 1: we had a problem on our end. Uh. The US
Speaker 1: believed that that these hacks had quote caused more harm
Speaker 1: than the KGB and made him a number one threat
Speaker 1: to the world. Were they being a little hyperbol slightly slightly,
Speaker 1: but I mean because they're thinking, he has all this
Speaker 1: free access. If he did this under our noses, totally unexpectedly,
Speaker 1: what else could he do? According to Matthew, Special agent
Speaker 1: Jim Christie at the Air Force Office of Special Investigations
Speaker 1: claimed that the work of Kujie and Dad Stream quote
Speaker 1: nearly started a Third World War and then a Pentagon
Speaker 1: source allegedly said that he was possibly the single biggest
Speaker 1: threat to world peace since Adolf Hitler. Don't hope her stated,
Speaker 1: I mean like a couple of other candidates, but whatever,
Speaker 1: a couple a few. So in a twenty six day period,
Speaker 1: these two then unknown hackers, they struck more than a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty times. So they're just one after another.
Speaker 1: Military didn't know who they were, where they were, and
Speaker 1: then an informant steps up. I would love to know
Speaker 1: who that was and what their motivation. If we don't
Speaker 1: know who this niche was, it's probably like a you know,
Speaker 1: a hacker who wasn't invited into this cool hacker was
Speaker 1: somebody who knew them. It was like, oh yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: watch this, tell everybody what you're doing. It'll see how
Speaker 1: long that last. Well, thanks to this snitch the FEDS,
Speaker 1: they get pointed towards datastream Cowboy, who is a sixteen
Speaker 1: year old boy named Richard Price lives in the UK.
Speaker 1: He said he liked to attack military sites because of
Speaker 1: how insecure they were. A man named Dick Price, who
Speaker 1: is going to talk about he's bullying the mill. He's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're insecure, I'm gonna attack you. He's a bully. Let's
Speaker 1: just put it that way. Now, let's take a little
Speaker 1: look at old the data stream cowboy teen in North London.
Speaker 1: He got a d in computer science, which says a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, is what it tells me? Is that like?
Speaker 1: Is that a good metric? Well? Is that a good
Speaker 1: metric of your abilities? His family said he'd only been
Speaker 1: like hacking and scooting and rebooting for like six months.
Speaker 1: That's a quote as a direct. I don't want to
Speaker 1: get to. Yeah, I'm sorry. I got two technical there
Speaker 1: pretty second scutin freaking. I'm just learning so much. Everything
Speaker 1: then comes crashing down. Zareny close your eyes, Okay, I
Speaker 1: want you to picture it. It's May of by the
Speaker 1: Crash to stummies somehow clinging to the middle of the
Speaker 1: UK pop shirts shoot by Salt Pepper has just been released.
Speaker 1: It's that time. You live in Collingdale, a suburban district
Speaker 1: in the north of London. You're you're a retired woman,
Speaker 1: You're a handsome woman. You're outside of your semi detached house.
Speaker 1: You sweep in the walkway when a bunch of unmarked
Speaker 1: cars comes screeching to a hall in front of your
Speaker 1: neighbor's house across the street. They're a nice family, Nick
Speaker 1: and Allison. They have a boy named Richard. He's a
Speaker 1: quiet sort. He's tall and slender, with that like grown
Speaker 1: out nineties Prince Valiant Bob haircut. You know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about? It right, I'm gonna grow my hair. Um,
Speaker 1: you wonder what in the world could be going on here?
Speaker 1: But you're not ashamed of your curiosity. What you're like
Speaker 1: one of those hackers you might have read about in
Speaker 1: the paper. Your only crime is curiosity, Mrs dar You
Speaker 1: lean against your broom, you adjust your glasses. The men
Speaker 1: knock on the door. When Allison answers, they enter. Deuced
Speaker 1: themselves as investigators with the Scotland Yard Computer Crime Unit.
Speaker 1: I was hoping for Flying Squad Allison. Yeah, Allison seems confused.
Speaker 1: She invites him in. But you're criminally curious, remember right,
Speaker 1: So you hike up your nylons and scurry across the road.
Speaker 1: You like leap over the low brick walls around their
Speaker 1: back garden, just like take it with one hand on
Speaker 1: the wall and jump over. Um. You I mean, like
Speaker 1: you clear that sprit thing and you just like spring
Speaker 1: down like a lynx. You are. You creep over to
Speaker 1: the window to Richard's room. I don't want to know
Speaker 1: how you know that's his window and he doesn't have curtains,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to know how you knew that.
Speaker 1: You're so creepy, oldy, So you peek in and you
Speaker 1: see as Allison leads the cops into Richard's room, he
Speaker 1: looks up at him. One says data stream cowboy. I
Speaker 1: presume that's not what he said. Uh, it was probably
Speaker 1: way more clumsy than that. But we're having an imagination exercise. Richard,
Speaker 1: just like Crump, was to the floor whaling and crying.
Speaker 1: That part not that is true. Um so you old
Speaker 1: ladyes Saron, you you fear the net is closing on
Speaker 1: YouTube if they caught data Stream, maybe they're after your
Speaker 1: hacker persona giga juice, and then you'd be next. So
Speaker 1: you go sprinting off towards your secret bunker. I've got
Speaker 1: machine back to data Stream. Okay. So his family totally confused.
Speaker 1: They can't imagine that he'd be a hacker. He's on
Speaker 1: the floor crying. He's charged Bundle and he's charged with
Speaker 1: twelve counts of gaining unauthorized access to computer systems, all
Speaker 1: of them US sites. He go on to plead guilty,
Speaker 1: pay a fine, but he wasn't the mastermind. That was Coogee.
Speaker 1: And where's Cougie Right when we come back, I'll let
Speaker 1: you know if Cougie Ninja Power is kicked in. He's Aaron.
Speaker 1: You like those ads. I'm sorry I was adjusting my nylons.
Speaker 1: You miss out. There's those Those commercials are really good
Speaker 1: this time. Oh nice, Well, you can tell me about
Speaker 1: them later. We'll just you know, we'll play him over
Speaker 1: and over. When we left off datas Stream Cowboy he
Speaker 1: got pinched for hacking, but Cougie a k a. Matthew
Speaker 1: Bevan still in the wind US and UK officials have
Speaker 1: no idea who Coogi is, so they get well, they
Speaker 1: got the informant on data Stream, but they didn't have
Speaker 1: any informants for Matthew. I'm guessing datas Dream told one
Speaker 1: of his young friends, and a young friend told their
Speaker 1: parents and their parents cops or something or you rat
Speaker 1: it him out or me. Yeah, because I didn't want
Speaker 1: to find my machine and I was like to take
Speaker 1: a kid exactly. So at first all of the FEDS
Speaker 1: they think it's an Eastern European spy. Of course, that's
Speaker 1: always blame the Eastern Europeans, or that they were working
Speaker 1: for Chinese intelligence. Again, always just go right there. By
Speaker 1: the end of the summer of ninety four, Matthew had
Speaker 1: quit the game, though he stopped hacking on his own volition.
Speaker 1: As we talked about in our heist episode. He said
Speaker 1: it was because he met a girl and that he'd
Speaker 1: be more interested in spending time with her than on
Speaker 1: the computer. Which, you know, that's fair enough. Um. Why
Speaker 1: he couldn't find a girl who was into hacking and
Speaker 1: then they could sit next to each other and hold
Speaker 1: hands while hacking. I don't try it out romantic, not really.
Speaker 1: So within a few years he married the girl he
Speaker 1: met online. He didn't find a girl. He found a wife. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fifty six days after their first chat they got married. Um,
Speaker 1: and he got a job as a computer programmer for
Speaker 1: an insurance company. You know, he went straight. I'm sure
Speaker 1: British and American intelligence officials, though they had not stopped
Speaker 1: looking for him. June of ninety six, a British official
Speaker 1: was sorting through the documents that they found on data
Speaker 1: Stream's hard drive. God only knows. There were enough documents
Speaker 1: to fill forty filing cabinets, and so it took him
Speaker 1: like three weeks to get through it. But like three weeks,
Speaker 1: I'm going to guess it wasn't all interesting hacking stuff.
Speaker 1: I bet a lot of it was not putting recipes basically.
Speaker 1: Um So, at the bottom of one file they finally
Speaker 1: find a name, Cougie and a phone number, and that's
Speaker 1: how they were able to find Matthew Bevan. Data stream
Speaker 1: dropped the ball. He Matthew gave him a pudding recipe
Speaker 1: and he put a note at the bottom. Cougie gave
Speaker 1: this to me, call if you have questions. Um So,
Speaker 1: they arrest Matthew Bevan June. He's in his office. That's
Speaker 1: got to be fun. The insurance company here, the computer program.
Speaker 1: Um they brought him in due to the hacks of
Speaker 1: the U. S. Air Force, NASA and NATO. That's another one.
Speaker 1: Like you know, you get a rest, did it work?
Speaker 1: But then that's that's a big arrest. So you're kind
Speaker 1: of thinking like, yeah, this is this is cool. Like
Speaker 1: when I get back, I should ask for more money, right, look,
Speaker 1: how good I am? Come on, So he's held in
Speaker 1: question for thirty six hours, charged with two counts of conspiracy,
Speaker 1: which his alleged partner in data stream um conspiracy to
Speaker 1: access and modified data held on US Air Force and
Speaker 1: Lockheed Computer Systems, and then later for installing the sniffer
Speaker 1: program into computers to collect login information, and then also
Speaker 1: intent to impair operations. So polking and hacken scooting and
Speaker 1: computing and rebooting. Thank you for putting that in technical terms.
Speaker 1: You know, I just want to be precise. I like
Speaker 1: specificity of language. I'm learning so much. I appreciate you
Speaker 1: so in that Kevin Sprague medium piece, he said quote.
Speaker 1: Bevin complied with every question, spouting answers about the information
Speaker 1: he had uncovered about supposed anti gravity propulsion technology. He
Speaker 1: was asked if he had any political motivations, in which
Speaker 1: he replied he had none. Clearly this was boiling down
Speaker 1: to a case of espionage and possible military implications. Bevan
Speaker 1: remained truthful, explaining that he was simply searching for information
Speaker 1: pertaining the UFOs. With this, the authorities began to ease down,
Speaker 1: their tone, becoming a bit more light as they began
Speaker 1: to peg this hacker is nothing more than an x
Speaker 1: files idiot is one Scotland yard number one status, so
Speaker 1: he's actually going for really interesting things like all this
Speaker 1: crazy technolog Oh he's an X files idiot. He's not
Speaker 1: a threat. One of those telling Devin gets threatened with
Speaker 1: fifteen years in prison. He tells David Glover, remember one
Speaker 1: of the producers of the heist um, that he would
Speaker 1: have pleaded guilty to his exact hacking crimes, but they
Speaker 1: were trying to tie him to bigger conspiracies that didn't exist.
Speaker 1: And he's like, why would I plead guilty? That's not
Speaker 1: you know what's going to happen. Eighteen months later, case
Speaker 1: dropped smart the crowd decided quote, it was not any
Speaker 1: public interest to prosecute him. I bet the thoughts about
Speaker 1: the internet changed. So the prosecutor on the case said,
Speaker 1: the court's hands are tied as to sentence and the
Speaker 1: role of this defendant was secondary to that of another
Speaker 1: who was dealt with by a fine. So like we
Speaker 1: we find data stream, this isn't worth it. I think
Speaker 1: they just they would bring out too much in court.
Speaker 1: That's what I imagine. I mean the discovery alone, Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: and then the exposure of all these all the ideas
Speaker 1: of the secrets and how you got there, and the
Speaker 1: fact that they were there too. You did basically give
Speaker 1: a wish list to more hackers to come front exactly.
Speaker 1: So when this it's all over, Matthew keeps a low profile.
Speaker 1: He worked as a security expert. He also possibly helped
Speaker 1: on viral marketing campaigns for companies like Nintendo or a
Speaker 1: TV channel E for their digital site. At the time
Speaker 1: of the heist, he was working as a computer security
Speaker 1: and I T consultant, and he had his own company
Speaker 1: called Kuge Media Corporation. But I looked and in public
Speaker 1: filings it looks like that was dissolved in I have
Speaker 1: no idea what he does now bets with computers. I'm
Speaker 1: sure he's listening. What's up, dude? Uh A stream cowboy.
Speaker 1: He flew straight right away, like he had a lot
Speaker 1: of like. So he goes to the Royal College of
Speaker 1: Music in London, studies double bass and he's currently a
Speaker 1: member of the London Tango Quintet. Oh he's a tango musician. No,
Speaker 1: let me read you the bio from his from the website.
Speaker 1: Richard was awarded a scholarship to study at the Royal
Speaker 1: College of Music, where he won the Eugene Croft Solo
Speaker 1: Double Bass Prize and went on to do the post
Speaker 1: graduate Jazz course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Speaker 1: Since then, he's been in demand as classical studio and
Speaker 1: jazz musician, appearing at venues from Ronnie Scott's to the
Speaker 1: Royal Opera House. Richard has worked with artists including the
Speaker 1: Dixie Chicks, Jamie Cullum, Nitt and Sonny and Shirley Bassie
Speaker 1: and he I thought you were going to say that
Speaker 1: about the Dixie Chicks, and he regularly invited although there's
Speaker 1: just the Chicks now, Yeah, yeah, I was impressed. I
Speaker 1: was just yeah. And he's regularly invited to play electric
Speaker 1: bass with ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra and
Speaker 1: the Philharmonia. Richard was a member of the improvising string
Speaker 1: court Quintent Basquiat Strings, which which was nominated for a
Speaker 1: Mercury Award in two thousand seven. During the past five years,
Speaker 1: he said, he has been busy in London's top studios,
Speaker 1: recording film scores and working with artists such as Sam Smith,
Speaker 1: Ellie Goulding and Kanye West. He is currently working not
Speaker 1: with Kanye West, because Kanye West and not currently working
Speaker 1: with the operatic baritone Simon keenly Side performing jazz standards
Speaker 1: to opera fans across Europe. So there you go. The
Speaker 1: whole basque that bothers me, but whatever sounds same, like
Speaker 1: oh Banks the keys. Basically I wanted to investigate further
Speaker 1: as to what baskuiat strings is and then I thought,
Speaker 1: you know what, don't hold anger in your heart. I
Speaker 1: just don't need that right now. Um. So that's that
Speaker 1: there's these two hacker boys. I have no idea what
Speaker 1: they eventually learned, but I'm sure that it was like
Speaker 1: they have the key to endless energy transportation. Well we
Speaker 1: now kind of know what they must have learned because
Speaker 1: like the basically, the Navy has come out and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's all the footage you've seen like off of like
Speaker 1: the Nimits and some of these ships. It's real and
Speaker 1: there's UFOs and we don't know what they are. And
Speaker 1: it's been pretty much like I would say, admitted by
Speaker 1: the US military machine that there are things out there
Speaker 1: and they want to go. It could be Russian though, Chinese,
Speaker 1: you know, unmanned vehicles that we don't know about, but
Speaker 1: show I have that it's most likely something that is
Speaker 1: in her cause or cause. But they'll say, yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't know what that is. But Matthew Bevans seems to
Speaker 1: have stumbled into that they do know what some of
Speaker 1: the technology. That's that's what everybody's always wanted to get
Speaker 1: the warp engine, understand. I want to warp engine, basically
Speaker 1: want anti graph. I just want to be able to
Speaker 1: like I've always had the dream of being able to
Speaker 1: repel myself against the gravitational field of the Earth. I
Speaker 1: would like to do that. Okay, let's let's get on that.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to boot up the computer, get me
Speaker 1: an Amiga, and I'll look into it for you. I'm
Speaker 1: happy to help you. Why why didn't you ask earlier?
Speaker 1: I just didn't know if you would be willing to
Speaker 1: boot and scoot for me. And as long as it
Speaker 1: involves Excel and maybe a little power point on the side,
Speaker 1: you know, just a little dablins um. That's it. That's enough.
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Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zarin Burnett.
Speaker 1: That's being produced and edited by Dave Kusten. The Freak
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