Mendax couldn't believe it. The US military was hacking its own computers. This discovery led to another, more disturbing, thought. If the US military was hacking its own computers for practice, what was it doing to other countries' computers?
As he quietly backed out of the system, wiping away his footprints as he tip-toed away, Mendax thought about what he had seen. He was deeply disturbed that any hacker would work for the US military.
Hackers, he thought, should be anarchists, not hawks.
In early October 1991, Mendax rang Trax and gave him the dial-up and account details for NMELH1.
Trax wasn't much of a hacker, but Mendax admired his phreaking talents. Trax was the father of phreaking in Australia and Trax's Toolbox, his guide to the art of phreaking, was legendary. Mendax thought Trax might find some interesting detailed information inside the NorTel network on how to control telephone switches.
Trax invented multi-frequency code phreaking. By sending special tones—generated by his computer program—down the phone line, he could control certain functions in the telephone exchange. Many hackers had learned how to make free phone calls by charging the cost to someone else or to calling cards, but Trax discovered how to make phone calls which weren't charged to anyone. The calls weren't just free; they were untraceable.
Trax wrote 48 pages on his discovery and called it The Australian Phreakers Manual Volumes 1-7. But as he added more and more to the manual, he became worried what would happen if he released it in the underground, so he decided he would only show it to the other two International Subversive hackers.
He went on to publish The Advanced Phreaker's Manual,2 a second edition of the manual, in The International Subversive, the underground magazine edited by Mendax:
An electronic magazine, The International Subversive had a simple editorial policy. You could only have a copy of the magazine if you wrote an `article'. The policy was a good way of protecting against nappies—sloppy or inexperienced hackers who might accidentally draw police attention. Nappies also tended to abuse good phreaking and hacking techniques, which might cause Telecom to close up security holes. The result was that IS had a circulation of just three people.
To a non-hacker, IS looked like gobbledygook—the phone book made more interesting reading. But to a member of the computer underground, IS was a treasure map. A good hacker could follow the trail of modem phone numbers and passwords, then use the directions in IS to disappear through secret entrances into the labyrinth of forbidden computer networks. Armed with the magazine, he could slither out of tight spots, outwit system admins and find the treasure secreted in each computer system.