Am I Famous Now…

Today I celebrate a birthday. The birthday of a crime.
Exactly 8 years ago, I committed one of the biggest cyber crimes ever. It was the start of a new life for me.
20 years in prison or what I had really aimed for.
I lived in the Netherlands and had a fiber optics wire in front of my door. A colleague and friend of mine studied at the university of Maastricht who ran a fiber optics communications project at the time.
He provided me with an almost prototype receiver and account to the university network.

I hacked into one of the biggest Dutch banks and surfed on their server. And more…
I have just finished writing the complete entry, but am not sure I want to publish it. It was one of the two lives I lived over the last years. At one side bartender and promoter, at the other side hacker security adviser.

Today is a birthday in my life.

In a little more than 24 hours another birthday takes place for me.

And last sunday was almost the birth of a new stage in my life.
Rechtstraat, Maastricht (NL).

A great house, dated beginning 20th century. Huge windows and high ceilings. Light in one of the bigger rooms, the office. White walls and large wooden desk. A desk with computer.
Geeks were building Napster and Morpheus. In only some months the world would start to share music, using dial-up connections.

The street was blessed. It was one of the only streets at that time in Europe having a special wire : single-mode fiber optics. At one point the wire was splitted and some meter lead into the house.

To my desk.
I had the wire since several weeks already, waiting to get plugged in. Only some hours before I finally got the receiver I was waiting for all the time.
During day I was just a waiter, mainly working together with university students, in the evening I was waiting to plug in my computer.

I had been waiting for weeks now and was now running out of time.

I already had left too many traces. It had to happen one of those days otherwise I would be in problems.
Big problems.

20 years long maybe.
I didn’t have time. The receiver had to be returned early in the morning and be back at university during the regular hours. If I were lucky we could repeat this the next days, but did I know what all could be discovered.

20 years. A long time.

Especially if you’re only 23.
Luckily I could log in just as easily as with my phone line. Everything just was faster. And I didn’t have to use my own address.
Within seconds I had reached the control panel I had found some days ago.

I was hesitating but had no time.
Almost had I forgotten to submit, as planned, my own ID number.

Tempting was it not to write the message as agreed. I was supposed to write how I got in. And document the account with my own ID number.
10%

10% or 45mio NLG.

Or 20 years.
Stress caught me.
It all was meant to show the danger. Te danger of online banking in the early days.
45mio NLG.

20 years.
No romantic details in this story. No criminal who enjoyed his maybe last drink for the next years. No confessing phone calls home to the parents. No phone calls to the girl friend to say goodbye and no driver waiting outside.

The next day I had to work and open the bistro at 09.00AM. Or would I leave the country in a hurry.

I was in since almost half an hour now and had created a new bank account.

At one of the major Dutch banks.
1998.
I committed the biggest cyber crime ever at that time.

I had just transferred 4.5mio NLG to a new bank account.
Nothing raised the suspense even more. I didn’t drop the receiver. I didn’t fall or hurt myself at sand got hurt.

I only transferred the money and logged of.
Hours of waiting started. Waiting till I got discovered or not.
20 years.
Would I get a phone call or would the police kick in my door in the next hours.
A sleepless night followed and when I showed up at work I was immediately send home again.
I was in no state.

Not able to work, not able to enjoy. I was shivering non-stop.
I had just enriched myself with 4.5mio NLG. But worse even I had left my official ID number in the details of the new account.

I didn’t want to steal. I wanted to point out the weaknesses.
And continue with my own life.

Until I had discovered the next safety hole.
Thinking back now I still feel bad. I feel stressed again. But maybe only 10% or even not.

I could have killed myself not knowing how long this was going to go on. I considered going to the cops and declare myself.
I would go to jail, but maybe only some years. Not 20 years.
I had to wait.
And hope.

Hope that the bank would get in touch with me.

I needed drugs to calm down. I wanted to go online but it was too dangerous.

I needed pot to smoke. And a drink.
But it was only 10.00AM. Hours went by. They seemed ages, although it were only minutes. I thought I was going nuts.
I knew it were easy for the bank to retrieve my address and phone number. I had opened my own account with the same ID number.

They knew where I lived.
Was it 16.00 already? Would they make me wait even longer? Make me go totally insane?

Could I just go to the bank and speak with the director? Or would he immediately call the cops?
I had made an error. And I was really starting to freak out. Time passed by. I thought every hour I got older a year. At least. My energy flew away.

Where were those cops?
Day turned into night and I was still up. Since almost 2 days now. And in the weeks before I had hardly slept either. Would I be able to leave the country and Europe tomorrow? Could I still cross the border and take a flight to Southern America or would they catch me when boarding in?
Why didn’t they ring me and invite me for a chat as I had hoped? Was the police already collecting the evidence?
I rang my colleague. It was almost 03.00AM now. He had just finished working at the bistro. I needed to know if he were able to return the receiver as planned.
We didn’t speak in any code language. I hadn’t planned to commit a big crime.
But I was trapped in the grey area. A grey area I had created myself. I knew the account I was going to transfer the money from had $45mio NLG on. And belonged to the bank.

This was part of the plan. I wanted it to be discovered, the sooner the better.

I wanted them to find me.
Why hadn’t I heard from them yet. It is impossible to describe all the thoughts that went through my mind that night. I knew the next day everything would be over.

My life as well.
20 years.
I do not remember anymore if I had slept or not, but I do remember agreeing for a meeting in Amsterdam late afternoon.
I only had some hours to go to Amsterdam. Some hours to run away. And hope I would stay safe for the rest of my life and could enjoy the millions. I didn’t know what expected me but the address the address of the online banking central.
I was out of myself and hardly aware anymore of everything I did when I got in the train. I hadn’t bought a ticket. I was too stressed and too scared I would be welcomed by a committee of cops, ready to put me away for many years.
4.5mio NLG.
I don’t remember the details of the meeting anymore. I remember the people who were there. People I would meet with regularly in the next years. They wanted to know what exactly I had done. No one spoke about the money. Not the first hours. It was late at night early in the morning when we came to the end. No computers were used.
I still didn’t know what would happen. Would they hand me over to justice? Or?
By now they knew everything I had done and how I had discovered the entry.

What had happened to the account? How much had they discovered themselves? Were they actually aware of the safety issue I had exploited?
I hadn’t slept for almost 72 hours now and was miles kilometers away from my bed. Would I ever see it back? Yes, but it took some more minutes for me to figure it out.
After we had discussed many many hours, they invited me for a drink in a neighbouring hotel. In a very high class hotel! I was hankering for a drink. A double whiskey, forget the rocks and triple that double drink!
I needed it! Now! Then!

It tasted disgusting but still I ordered another.

They knew what was going to happen, but I didn’t.
I was 23 and not 72 hours before I drunk those whiskeys I had transferred 4.5 NLG on a new bank account. Was I just dumb and should I have left the country, Europe even?
Or was it a good thing to start my life as a security advisor for ebanking?
It obviously was my biggest coup, but not my online one. Only the next ones were not secret. I was known.
What no security specialist knew was the turn my day night life was going to take in the next years. No one knew what I did, have done in bars. What events I organized. Almost as underground as that one night.
My life would go two ways, I was going to live two lives : during day I would try to hack secure your bank account and at night I was the person who became part of the chronologically missing part in the mini-bio series : Da Sexth : da dirt.