Cris Thomas, also known as Space Rogue, was a founding member of the legendary L0pht Heavy Industries — the hacker collective that famously told the U.S. Senate they could take down the internet in 30 minutes. He would go on to found the Hacker News Network, giving the underground a voice and warning the world how vulnerable it was. He told the full story in his award-winning book, Space Rogue.
Space Rogue (00:00:15):
One of the reasons why we were very adamant about using the handles all the time and trying to protect that anonymity, not because we were trying to hide, but because we were trying to hide from the companies that may potentially sue us. After we put a couple of vulnerabilities up, that started getting a lot of press and attention from the few vulnerabilities that we posted to our website. And we kind of just sort of kept doing it. It was very organic.
Voice Over (00:00:40):
Chris Thomas, also known as Space Rogue, was a founding member of the legendary Loft Heavy Industries, the Hacker Collective that famously told the US Senate they could take down the internet in 30 minutes. He would go on to found the Hacker News Network, giving the underground a voice and warning the world how vulnerable it was. He told the full story in his award-winning book, Space Rogue.
Space Rogue (00:01:02):
And it wasn’t until 98, 99 that you see this explosion in venture capital, so there’s a lot of money getting pumped into there. And so you got to look at these companies like where are these experts in security coming from? Well, they’re all the hackers. They’re all our friends. They’re all getting rich. And we’re sitting there selling CDs for 20 bucks a pop. Somebody at the NSA and somebody at the CIA, and I think somebody at the FBI, all three of them, when they were doing their daily briefings, they would just copy off Hacker News Network.
Nathan Sportsman (00:01:30):
And I think it inspired an entire generation of people to try to make a difference in this field. I know it did for me.
Space Rogue (00:01:36):
Okay. So that’s the kind of thing that makes me uncomfortable hearing that, but I’m glad it did and good.
Nathan Sportsman (00:02:58):
Chris Thomas, Space Rogue, SR. Thanks for coming.
Space Rogue (00:03:01):
Thanks for having me.
Nathan Sportsman (00:03:03):
I had a chance to read your book and there’s just so many parallels I felt between your life story and my life story. So I have a natural affinity towards you, even though you’ve never met me before. It was a book of authenticity. It was a book of humility. You felt like you were reading about a real person. And so I’m really excited to talk to you. Every origin has a beginning, and so I want to start with your beginning. Where are you from? Where’d you grow up?
Space Rogue (00:03:32):
I grew up started in a town called Winthrop, Maine, between Augusta and Lewiston, kind of the middle of the state or the middle of the populated area of the state. You go too much further north and there’s just trees and you go to further south and you get the ocean.
Nathan Sportsman (00:03:48):
And you grew up on a sea farm?
Space Rogue (00:03:50):
Yeah. So my father sold seeds. We had a couple of greenhouses, had some chickens and some pigs and probably, I don’t know, maybe 10 acres under cultivation. Both parents basically worked on the farm, at least in the beginning. And then my parents split when I was about 12. And we moved to Lewiston, Auburn. It was basically one city. It’s called LA. Lewiston’s on one side of the river. Auburn’s on the other.
Nathan Sportsman (00:04:20):
And I think the split happened at 13, and we’ll definitely talk about it. But what was your relationship like with your parents?
Space Rogue (00:04:27):
I mean, it was fine. I was just a kid. I didn’t really have any issues. My father worked in the fields and I was expected to go help him. And so we helped out. Me and my brother helped out on the farm quite a bit. My mother worked at home and pretty traditional stuff.
Nathan Sportsman (00:04:45):
And I remember in your book, I think you mentioned the very few electronics, TV being one. And I think your dad, when he would ride around on the John Deere tractor, he also had a transistor radio.
Space Rogue (00:04:56):
Yeah. So he had a realistic Radio Shack brand, transistor radio. And when we weren’t driving around on the tractor with it, it was mounted on the telephone pole. The radio had alkaline batteries, and of course they didn’t last very long, and so they were constantly being swapped out. And I would collect these batteries because they had a little bit of life left in them. And then the other thing that I would do is, for some reason, my father bought these sealed flashlights. And I don’t even know if they still exist or not, but they were the cheapest flashlight you could buy. And they have an alkaline battery in them, but the whole thing’s encased in plastic. So when the batteries die, you just throw the battery, flows of flashlight away. Well, I would take these and take them apart. And there’s this very simple switch on this flashlight to turn it on and turn it off.
(00:05:44):
And I remember looking at the switch and watching the little pieces of metal make contact with each other and say, “Oh, that’s how a circuit gets completed.” I mean, I don’t think I knew what the word circuit was then, but I understood the concepts like, “Well, when I pushed this forward, these two pieces of metal touch and the flashlight turns on. ” And so from that, I would take the old D-cell or C-cell batteries from the radio and basically build a flashlight. And I would take the flashbulb, the light bulb out of the flashlight and wrap some wire around the bottom of it. And I would use garbage bag twist ties because that’s the only wire I had. And I don’t think they even give those away anymore because everybody has cinch sacks. So when you bought trash bags before, you would get a sheet of little metal wires encased in either paper or plastic and you would tear one off and tie your trash bag up with.
(00:06:38):
Well, I would take those and use them as insulated wires. And I would get some electrical tape and tape one wire to the bottom of the battery and then put the wire up to the top of the battery, wrap it around the light bulb, and then touch it to the top of the battery so that the light would come on. And I would use those flashlights that I had made to read at nighttime. And I would have a flashlight with eight batteries on it because they all had just a very little bit of charge. And I would just put them in series and tape them all together. And I have this big battery flashlight with a thumb switch and I would read under the covers at night. And then if I heard my mother coming down the hallway, I could just let my thumb off the light and try to pretend to be asleep.
(00:07:21):
And also if I happened to fall asleep while I was reading, my thumb would go off the light and I would save the rest of the battery. So yeah, that was about the extent of my technological experience growing up in Maine.
Nathan Sportsman (00:07:33):
And you mentioned again, your parents split probably one of the most powerful passages in your book for me, and it was short, it was just a paragraph, and then you moved on was at 13, my parents split. And so like so many children from broken homes, that pain still lives with me today. My parents split it at 16. My mom got pregnant. They didn’t really love each other, and it was more just a matter of circumstance. We have the kids and it was clear from us, my sister and I, that they were sort of in a loveless marriage and it was never going to work. When you say that it still haunts you to this day, what do you mean by that?
Space Rogue (00:08:17):
I’m in a lot of therapy, and I think my wife understands that there’s a lot of unresolved issues there. And so I’m still processing a lot of those emotions and experiences. And I didn’t think it was really relevant to the book. So I mentioned it because that part is relevant, but I didn’t think beyond that it was an important part to share or maybe I didn’t feel like sharing. I’m not sure yet. So I’m still kind of working through it. I think it shapes who I am now and how I interact and deal with people, but it’s still a very formative thing that I’m not sure what parts of it have impacted me or not.
Nathan Sportsman (00:09:03):
And so for a kid though that might be in similar circumstances growing up, maybe their parents split and has a similar backstory that you do, why I have such affinity towards the book, and yet you go on to speak in front of Congress, Hacker News. We’re going to talk about a lot of stuff. If there is a kid going through that right now, do you have any advice for them?
Space Rogue (00:09:27):
I think for me, I turned inward and isolated, as my therapist tells me I do, and built a lot of walls to sort of protect myself emotionally and kept people at a distance. And maybe that’s why I turned to computers later on a few years later, because I didn’t have that social interaction or those social interaction skills. And so the computer wasn’t a social requirement, it was just kind of there and it did what you told it to do. And so I just kind of kept plugging away at that. But I think even later in life, my relationships were defined by those experiences. And I think only now, five decades later, that I’m really starting to sort of process some of that stuff.
Nathan Sportsman (00:10:23):
Yeah. Same for me, when they were yelling and just go into my room and focus on the computer and stuff like
Space Rogue (00:10:29):
That. Yeah. There wasn’t a lot of yelling in my household and I didn’t really think or know there was much wrong. I think my mother was frustrated with our living situation, which was poor and felt that she could do better. So it was kind of a shock to me when it happened and it didn’t really … And I think I shut down and I shut the world out and isolated myself.
Nathan Sportsman (00:10:59):
And so they split. You wind up moving to, I think, Auburn, Maine. And so did you go with your mom or with your dad? My mom. You went with your mom?
Space Rogue (00:11:07):
Didn’t really see my dad after that. I don’t know the full circumstances as to why, but I didn’t ask either. It was just that’s the way it was.
Nathan Sportsman (00:11:20):
And similar to what you had mentioned before, high school, you mentioned not super interesting. I think you said you barely got through it and you started to think about college, if I remember correctly, family doesn’t have a lot of money to send. And so you started looking at the GI Bill and potentially joining the Army as a path?
Space Rogue (00:11:38):
Yep. So every high school recruiter comes by and you get to get out of a class, you go listen to the recruiter and they talk a great game and they say all these fantastic things, ROTC, West Point, this, that, and the other thing. They’re like, “Yeah, okay, whatever.” And then they sign you up for the test, the ASVAB, the armed services vocational aptitude battery, which I don’t know if they still do or not. And then so you get out of another class to go take the ASVAB test, which I did and I scored very well on most of it. I think there was one section that I didn’t do well on. I don’t remember. And so I think in my junior year of high school, I’m like, “Well, what the hell am I going to do? ” I think at that point I was working at Burger King and graduation’s coming up, there’s no jobs anywhere.
(00:12:29):
I’ll end up at the factory if that, and didn’t really have a lot of other options. College by itself was pretty much out of the question. Grades were not, there’s no scholarship there. So military was pretty much one of the few options.
Nathan Sportsman (00:12:47):
And a couple of people that have, we’ve interviewed had a military background. Some of them, worse experience, some of them said that it really shaped them, taught them discipline, and it was a wonderful experience that they took with them for the rest of their career. What imprint did the Army have on you?
Space Rogue (00:13:05):
Definitely not the worst experience. I don’t know if I would classify it as wonderful. Definitely had a big impact in the rest of my life, even now. I mean, I still have the same haircut. I think for me, the big part was the camaraderie of the other people that were there that I was in with. I have not kept in touch with any of them, but it was still … And I think the impact was mostly felt by me when I got out. You hear a lot about soldiers transitioning to civilian life, and I never saw combat or anything. I mean, I participated in the invasion of Panama, but I don’t know if that really counts. And it was difficult for me to go from having that community, and I’m hesitant to use the word family, but having that very strong, close-knit community of the military, and then suddenly getting out and having nothing, because you don’t know anybody, everybody’s doing … They’re all civilians.
(00:14:11):
They don’t know what’s going on. And then so that transition was difficult for me, so I can imagine what the transition is for a combat vet who served in Afghanistan or somebody else. So that said, the structure and rigidity of the military definitely had a big impact on me later on, or even now.
Nathan Sportsman (00:14:36):
And then a part of what, if I remember the book correctly, part of what the military did provide you, I think you talked about in the barracks, you spent time at the computer, either they had a computer or you were able to afford your first computer?
Space Rogue (00:14:47):
Right. So I knew I was trying to plan to go to college after I got out and I was applying to schools and studying for my SATs and doing all that stuff. And I also kind of knew I sort of probably need a computer to go to school with. So I’m like, “I should go buy a computer.” And I got on the bus because I didn’t have a car and I’m in Monterey, California where the border is. And I take the bus downtown and I go to a bunch of different computer shops and I’m like, “I want to buy a computer.” And I’m like, “Okay, great. I have no money.” “Oh, can I get it on credit? Oh, you’re in the military. Sure. You’re at E6, E7? “I’m like, ” E4. Oh no, see you. Thanks. Thanks for stopping in. “So this happens two or three times.
(00:15:40):
And I think every store I went into, like the 286 had just come out and I think in my budget was the XT and AT, which was pre 286, which I’m really glad I didn’t end up with one of those at that point. And so I’m walking around Monterey and I come across Computerland, which is like right downtown Monterey. And I walk in and at this point I’m like, ” I’m ready to leave and go home and go back to the barracks because this is ridiculous. “And I just like, ” Can I buy a computer on credit? “I’m like, ” Sure, let me sign you up for Apple Credit. “I’m like, ” Oh, great. “So I walked out with a Mac SE with one mega RAM, two floppy disks and it has a nine inch built-in screen and a keyboard and something called Mac Wright.
(00:16:22):
Microsoft Write, excuse me. This predates Word.That’s how old that was. And the SE didn’t come with Mac Paint and all those other things that the Plus had come with. It came with HyperCard and that was it. You got HyperCard, I had HyperCard and Mac Wright. And so I had this big, huge box that I took back on the bus and went back to the barracks with and had my computer on the desk in my barracks room. So yeah, that was my first computer. As soon as I got out of the Army, I bought a modem. I had read about them in magazines beforehand. I was like, ” Oh, I got to get me one of those. “I think it was like $200. It was a 300 bod smart modem. I don’t know what was smart about it, but had a lot of little blinky lights.
(00:17:07):
And so I would come home and I would just call BBSs. And there was probably seven or eight actually in Lewiston, Auburn area of the calling area that I could call without incurring a toll charge. One was a big Amica board, one was the local teachers association, which didn’t have anything on it, but I called it every day anyway. And I would call every board every day, check all the new messages, look for new files, that sort of thing. And then I think that was when I started branching out and trying to … I wanted to run my own bulletin board, but I had a Mac. There weren’t a lot of Mac software for bullet boards, but I finally heard of one or read about one called Hermes. And I was like, ” Oh, I got to get me one of these. Get me a copy of that.
(00:17:54):
“And so somehow I read about either in a magazine or another bulletin board of this one board that had it and would allow you to download it. And so it was long distance. I’m like, ” Well, I’m going to do it anyway. “So I called the board and I looked for it and it wasn’t there and you’re supposed to request the file from the SISOP. So I messaged the SISOP and I said,” Hey, I really like to get a copy of Hermes. Can you put it back online so I can download it? “And I would call back and call back and no answer. And then finally, three or four days later, I was like, ” Yeah, I’ll put it up for you. No problem. “And I called back, still not up. And then I messaged him again, like, ” Dude, you said you got to put … Where is the file?
(00:18:37):
I want the file. Put it up. “I was really obnoxious in an email and classic asshole user. And so finally, I think he put it up just to shut me up and I downloaded the software and then I partitioned my 20 megabyte hard drive into two 10 megabyte chunks, which if you know what those sizes are, it’s incredibly small. And on one 10 megabyte chunk, I ran the bulletin board and I probably ran it for a month, maybe a month and a half, two, I don’t know, it wasn’t very long, but Hermes was not the most stablest software. It crashed all the time. And come to find out years later, there was a back door in it for the original author so we could call into all the BBSs for free, but that wasn’t found until much, much later. So yeah, I don’t even remember the name of the bulletin board now, but I ran a bulletin board for a couple of months.
(00:19:32):
I don’t think anybody ever called it, a couple of people, but it never really attracted a huge user base. And when I left for school that September, that was the end of the bulletin board.
Nathan Sportsman (00:19:43):
And there was another bulletin board, if I’m remembering right, I think it was just called M or something
Space Rogue (00:19:49):
Like that. Oh yeah. Yeah. IMF.
Nathan Sportsman (00:19:51):
IMF.
Space Rogue (00:19:52):
It was called the IMF message base. And I had no idea what the hell that was. And nobody ever called. And I would check the previous call logs and nobody. And there was no messages, but yet the board was there. And I’m like, what? Why is this here? Nobody calls it. Nobody leaves messages. I would call it every day and check it, and there was nothing. And I’m like, why is the owner leaving this up? And I had no idea even now. But I didn’t know then until many years later that IMF is probably a relation to Mission Impossible, right? IMF Force, Impossible Mission Force. I thought it was International Monetary Fund because it was the only thing I could find that set up for those initials. So that was very confusing.
Nathan Sportsman (00:20:50):
And you actually wrote papers or text files about IMF
Space Rogue (00:20:54):
As part of- Yeah. So I would be reading the newspaper back. We had actually physical newspapers back then, and I didn’t know what the International Monetary Fund was then. I had no idea. But there was a small little newspaper article about the IMF. I’m going to put this on the board and see if anybody responds. So I typed the whole thing in and I got nothing.
Nathan Sportsman (00:21:10):
Was that the board where anonymity was a big deal and they wanted everyone to pick a specific handle that
Space Rogue (00:21:20):
Was later? No, that was much later. Okay. So this was much later after I’d moved to Boston, I was going to school and I was starting to explore the bulletin boards in the Boston area. And there was this brand new board called M. It was only around for a little while, but when you logged in, there was a screen that said, “Please choose a handle that you don’t use anywhere else. We don’t want to know who you are from other boards that you have called. Everybody gets a new start here,” or whatever it said. I don’t remember exactly what it said. And so this was early on in my exploration in the Boston area. And so I was like, “All right, I need a new handle. What am I going to use? I don’t know what to use.” And I’m looking around my room and I think I latched onto the book CyberPunk by Katie Hafner, which don’t read that book, it’s a bad book.
(00:22:15):
And I started free associating with cyber and I went cyber, cyberspace, space rogue. Oh yeah, that’s work. And that’s where the handle came from, Space Rogue. Now, if I had known I was going to be using that handle 30, 40 years later, I might have chose something different, but that’s the origin story of the handle. And so I logged into M as Space Rogue and then started using it everywhere else. And just a little bit on M, that experiment of trying to be anonymous or newly anonymous on a new board failed miserably. Although everybody used a new handle, everybody knew who everybody else was because we all typed the same things, typed the same way, made the same spelling mistakes. And within two or three or four messages, you’re like, “Oh, that’s so- and-so from the other board. That’s so- and-so from this other board.” Yeah.
Nathan Sportsman (00:23:02):
And so for the record, Space Rogue, what the inception was, Katie Haftner thinking about cyberspace and then manipulating those words a little bit. Next year book, so I put cyber punk … Oh,
Space Rogue (00:23:17):
You put it right next to that.
Nathan Sportsman (00:23:19):
And even the show where Warlock Stay Up Late, she had written another book where Wizards Stay Up Late, which was about the origins of the internet, more builders, I think more breakers on this side. And so that was kind of the origin story for this show’s name too. While you were in college, you were also working as a security guard at Lotus. Am I remembering it?
Space Rogue (00:23:38):
Yeah. I think after I got out of school, I had to get a job. And so the easiest job for an ex- military person to get a security guard. It’s like almost an instant hire. I think I first worked at a mall as a security guard, Bay State Security, and then I worked at … I don’t remember. I think there was another security company. And then I got a job as a security guard at Lotus. I said it might’ve all been the same company and I just changed locations. I don’t remember. So I used to tell people that, “Oh, I work at Lotus,” was totally true. I didn’t work for Lotus. At that point, previous, Lotus had had their own security people that were employees of the company, and then they were cutting costs. And so they got rid of their own security force and outsourced it to this other company of which I was working for.
(00:24:34):
So I would sit at the front desk at One Rogers or LDB, which are the big buildings, or One Canal Park, and the LMC, Lotus Manufacturing Center, which were all different buildings in that general area around what is now the Cambridge Galleria, which is a big mall. And a lot of those buildings are now owned by IBM. Some of them are condos. Anyway, a lot has changed. So I would sit at the front desk of these buildings and check people’s badges when they come in or check their laptops out when they left. And I would often volunteer for the overnight shift. So I would sit there, this is nothing to do. You’re just sitting there all night and it was an easy way to make some money, get to overtime, make a few extra dollars, not have to worry about being at home, continue to isolate and protect yourself, all that stuff that we’ve already talked about.
(00:25:27):
And then I remember there was a couple that only worked at one building because that’s all they would work and they would only work the overnight shift. And so they would always get assigned to the Rogers Street building. And one morning I was coming in to relieve them and on every desk at Lotus, there’s a vax terminal as well as a Windows 31 box. Now the Windows 31 box ran Lotus Notes because it’s Lotus, which that was … Anyway, that’s a whole nother story. But the Vax machine was where you would use and you would look up employee records and you could check at somebody’s badge, make sure they were employee there, look up phone extensions, all that. It was basically the phone book on the Vax. And so that was cool, but I didn’t know anything about Vaxes. I didn’t really … And I was a little bit scared to explore it, so I didn’t really mess with it that much.
(00:26:18):
I was more interested in the Windows box and trying to play with that. But when I relieved these two one morning from Rogers building, one Rogers Street, on their VAX terminal was … I didn’t know what was on it. It wasn’t the phone book. And I’m like, “What the hell is that? ” And I mentioned, “Hey, what is that? ” It’s like, “Oh, it’s just our homework.” I’m like, “Homework. What?” “Oh yeah, we go to school with MIT, so it’s just our homework. “I’m like, ” You can connect to MIT from here? “”Oh yeah, yeah. We just used the modem pool.” I’m like, “Oh, how do you do that? ” “Oh yeah, you just connect to 9600 and use the modem pool. “I’m like, ” Okay. “And I didn’t want to say, it’s not like I was too stupid and asked too many questions. And they were in a hurry to get out because their shift was over.
(00:27:03):
And so I sat down and I’m kind of staring at the prompt and thinking about what I had just seen on that screen. And I’m like, ” What the hell? They can connect to MIT from here. “And I said,” Modem pool, connect 96, the wheels are turning. “And so I think I typed connect 9,600 at the prompt, nothing happened. I’m like, ” Well, that didn’t work. “But I’m like, ” Wait a minute, my prompt disappeared. It’s just a blinking cursor. I don’t have a prompt anymore. “So I hit return, still nothing. And so I type AT, hit return. Okay. I’m like, oh. So if you know anything about modems, AT command set, that’s how you talk to the modem, right? You give it commands. AT standing for attention. Okay, meaning, yep, I’m in attention, I’m ready to go. And I’m like, okay, so AT, DT, dial tone, type a number in.
(00:27:53):
And I don’t remember if I remembered a number at that point off the top of my head or if I had to wait till the next day, go home and get a number and come back. But I typed the number in, hit return, and I got nothing. I’m like, ” Ah, what the hell, it’s supposed to work. “So I tried it again. I think I put a one in front of it for long distance and the area code and I’m trying all kinds of things. I’m like, ” Wait a minute, what if it’s on the PBX? “With all the other phones in the office building, you have to dial nine to get an outside line. So I like nine, comma, number, and it just sits there and then boom, text scrolls up the screen and I connect it to the bulletin board. I’m like, ” Oh my goodness, that was a whole new world.
(00:28:35):
“And I’m volunteering for every overnight shift I can at that point and specifically the one at Canal Park. Canal Park was a closed office. There was no employees there. And so you would sit there all night and there’s nothing to do. No employees are coming, no employees are leaving, like you walk around the office, you’re done. And so I would sit there for eight hours, all night long, calling bulletin boards all over the place. At first, I would just do local ones because I was afraid that the long distance charges would come up and somebody would put two and two together and then slowly I would make one call or two calls out to other boards long distance, nothing happened. Nobody came and talked to me. I’m like, ” Okay, so I’m just going to call. “But I couldn’t download any files because I didn’t have any file space on the VAX.
(00:29:25):
I couldn’t upload anything. So the only thing I could do is sit there and read messages all night long. So I did that for months and I would just read messages, message after message. And yeah, that was an eyeopener. I was calling all over the place. I had one sys up once who wanted to do a voice verification. So I called his board and he broke into chat with me and I gave him a phone number to call and it was the office desk. And so I picked it up like, ” Hey, how are you doing? “”You can afford two phone lines?” “Well, yeah, I guess. I’m just So that was interesting. He was very shocked at that, but he gave me access to his board. So yeah.
Nathan Sportsman (00:30:06):
I remember that from the book, that he was surprised you were both on the BBS and talking to him at the same time. And I think you mentioned to your book to your point about you want the overnight shift, you want the buildings with few people. So all you really have to do is occasionally make your rounds outside of that. You can just call these bulletin boards. I think you also mentioned in your book, you did eventually start dialing out long distance, but even the local numbers, it started at first with Boston Computer Society and you weren’t into black crawling systems yet or anything like that. It was just sort of the well-known-
Space Rogue (00:30:38):
So one of the first things you would do when you would call a bulletin board, any bulletin board system was check their list of other bulletin board systems, right? Because that’s how you would get other numbers. And so you would look for them and you’d always look for local ones and stuff. And yeah, somehow I ended up finding other boards. I think I probably found the works first because that was probably the most above ground legit board that everybody called, even though it was quasi underground. So I would call the works and all the local Boston hacker scenes hanging out there. And then I somehow found ATDT East, which was the big hack freak board in Boston that all the local Boston people called. And then I think Brian invited me to his board, which is Black Crawling Systems. I think he had to get an invite from Brian to call his board.
(00:31:32):
And then Gaggle 13 had a board Calvary.
(00:31:37):
And then, I’m trying to remember. I called a lot of Mac boards, Buckman’s Taverns. Synbad’s Galion was a good one. That was a big pirate board. I’m trying to remember some other ones. Buckman’s Taverns was out in 508. 508 was another area code from 617, so it was a long distance call. It’s just amazing how now everybody gets free long distance nationwide and it doesn’t cost anything extra. But then it was like pay by the minute. I can remember my mother trying to call somebody in Virginia and having to time it when the lates were low and time the length of the call so she didn’t go over because she could only afford so much. So it was like a seven minute call and she made sure she hung up at six minutes and 30 seconds just to make sure it wouldn’t go over. And now everybody’s free long distance, whatever.
(00:32:24):
It’s just mind blowing sometimes when you think about it.
Nathan Sportsman (00:32:27):
And some of the names you just mentioned, these are names that are going to ultimately form the loft with you and with others. For Oblivion, is my understanding correct, there was one bulletin, and it wasn’t Black Crawling Systems, but where it was a bulletin board, but they would also meet in person and that’s how you met him in person?
Space Rogue (00:32:46):
Yeah, that’s the works. So the works had works gatherings. And these predated 2,600 meetings, long before my time, they would have gatherings. I think they met at Dave Farret’s house, who’s one of the original Sysops of the Works. The Works was later Sysoft by Jason Scott, the famous Jason Scott that everybody knows. And so they would have works gatherings. I think there was at Jason Ferris’ house one time, and then they ended up started happening at Harvard Square at Alban Pan, which was a coffee shop in Boston. I don’t know if it still exists or not. And then 2,600 meetings started happening. And so the works gathering sort of morphed into 2,600 meetings. Same people, same location, different name. And so that’s sort of where I first met Brian Oblivion, first met Count Zero, first met Magic Thighs and Magic Man and Galgo 13 and Jason Scott and Kingpin and everybody else.
Nathan Sportsman (00:33:47):
And as that happens, is it an organic thing where you don’t realize you’re starting to get pulled into something that was incredibly novel and you guys were at the forefront? Was it more deliberate like, oh cool, these bulletin boards and freaking and hacking, I want to do this. Was it just like this very gradual and natural evolution where you started to-
Space Rogue (00:34:06):
Yeah, it was very gradual and natural for me. I think for me, again, because I basically just got out of the service and had that camaraderie for a number of years, which I think I was looking for after my parents split and the service gave that to me. And then I got out of the service and I didn’t have it again. And so I think I was looking for that community and I found it in bulletin boards. And then when it went from online to physical, that it was still that community that I did. So it wasn’t like, “Ooh, I’m going to go, this is going to be my career. I’m going to call it bulletin boards.” It wasn’t even a hobby. It was just something you did. And I think, who was it? It was either Gabriella Coleman or David Lipman or somebody. And I think I mentioned it in my book, this moral imperative, this hands-on need to do stuff and play with stuff and manipulate things.
(00:35:02):
And that’s what the driving force was like, “I have to do this. ” And meeting people was just sort of a way to further expand or share information and learn new things and get ideas of what else to explore and what else to do and experiment with. And so the physical meetups were a continuation of the online presence.
Nathan Sportsman (00:35:28):
And giving you that sense of community you had founded again.
Space Rogue (00:35:30):
Yeah.
Nathan Sportsman (00:35:31):
So you’ve moved to Boston and you’ve found that camaraderie again from the Army and it’s around common cause and there is a mission starting to form. So you’ve met Oblivion, you’ve met Zero, I think, at this point. Can you kind of just talk to me about what that was like being in those communities, these hacker meetups, what did they talk about? What was the rave of the things that people were excited about? Just what did that … I’ve never experienced anything like that. And we’ll talk about the Lofton in a second and going to y’all’s page and admiring you and that sort of stuff. But what was it like to actually be there at ground zero with all those folks around you?
Space Rogue (00:36:13):
So yeah, 2,600 meetings, which is what they became after work gatherings was kind of a … I looked forward to them every month, along with MIT flea markets during the summertime. And that’s when we would see people. And in between that, you would talk to them online. So we’d leave messages on bulletin boards and then we’d get together in person. And a lot of times it was continuing conversations about what was discussed on the bulletin board. Sometimes it was stuff that people thought was too sensitive to talk about on bulletin boards and it would be shared there. It was just sort of a more open form of communication because it’s face-to-face and in person and more flee flowing and you don’t have to type it out. And people started together in groups, I guess. A big 2,600 meeting was 30 people sometimes for Boston. We’d be at the Prudential Center.
(00:37:13):
After we moved from Harvard Square, they went to the Prudential Center and were at the food court. In the summertime, we could be out on the patio and there’d be like 30, 35 people hanging out at tables in the corner of the food court. And we’re just kind of hanging out by ourselves, so people left us alone. And people would move from table to table and talk. And some people would bring hardware and we’d mess around with stuff or eat food. And it was just a kind of a hangout place. And in Boston, we had a thing, and I don’t know if it started in Boston, but we had something we called 2621. So after 2600, we would go to a bar and have some beers. And when we were in Prudential Center, there was a bar across the street. Actually, there’s a Chinese restaurant.
(00:38:03):
If you got there early, they wouldn’t card you. And then if you were in after a certain amount of time, you could just drink if you were underage. And so some of the kids sort of figured that out and would try to follow us over there, but we tried to keep it low. I mean, the whole point was to sort of separate us as the older people from all the kids that were showing up. But that’s also where we started to share exploits was at this Chinese restaurant, which I don’t think exists anymore. That whole area has been redeveloped. And one of the first exploits, or one of the first things that was shared there was Netcat from Hobbit
(00:38:44):
Was shared at this 2621 meeting. I know another exploit that was released there was a filtered fresh coffee exploit that Mudg wrote where if you put … The coffee costs 35 cents, but if you trick the machine in a certain way, you could get a coffee for a dime or something. And it was more tongue-in-cheek, funny thing to do. And he had printed it out and passed it around. And it became a thing whereas if you brought an exploit, you would get a free beer. And that was sort of how we started sharing some of our better known or lesser known, I guess, findings that we would find from our exploration.
Nathan Sportsman (00:39:24):
And there’s a meetup in Austin. Even to this day, it’s called AHA, which is Austin Hackers Anonymous. And so Drewitt and JDuck, Joshua Drake, Todd Bearsley, H.C. Moore, they kind of run this thing. And in that meetup, it’s sort of structured where you’re allowed to come once and not talk. But if you come again, you have to give a presentation. And so there’s sort of lightning talks that everyone has to give. Was it structured like that where everyone kind of … Or was it people just having their own sidebar?
Space Rogue (00:39:54):
Yeah. So 2621 was way less structured than that. People would show up and get a beer. If you had an exploit, you had an exploit. If you didn’t, you didn’t. You just sit there and drink beer. And it was a much smaller group. It was like maybe at most 10 people. And it would vary from month to month depending on who was available and who showed up. But it was more of a way to continue the 2,600 meetup. But because we were older, we wanted to have a drink and you can’t do that at the potential center mall. So yeah.
Nathan Sportsman (00:40:28):
And so this is going on in sort of the backdrop. I think at the time you were at Lotus, we talked about you doing security patrols and then in between those shifts studying, I think you went on to another security company, had your first experience with a really bad boss, had similar experiences like that too. But then ultimately, I believe you wind up at CompUSA with several well-known folks. Was it happenstance that you got a job there and they called you back and then you met some of these folks? Did they help you get the job? Some of the folks that worked
Space Rogue (00:41:06):
There? I think it was happenstance. I remember I had applied, I don’t know how I heard about the job or why I applied, but it was months before they called me. And then I got the call and that was why I left the bad boss at the security company. So that worked out well for me. And again, I don’t remember if I knew people … I think Tweedy Fish was already working there and I know Galgo 13 was working there at some point and there was probably three or four other people who were in the scene that also worked there. I don’t remember their names right now, but I was one of the only Mac people. They didn’t have anybody else who could sell the Macs. And the PCPs were like, they would stay on their side of the floor and I would stay on my side of the floor.
(00:41:59):
So it was very much a line between the Mac and the PC at that point, which was kind of interesting, which worked out for me at the job because I got good sales numbers, which as a salesperson, that’s what you want. Thankfully, I wasn’t … Probably within a few months, I got very disillusioned with the whole sales process, trying to upsell people. Oh, make sure they get a search protector and sell them a printer along with their computer and all that stuff and trying to make the number and whatnot. And so I was lucky that the Mac Tech left and being the only other Mac person basically in the store, I took over his position as the Mac Tech. I had no idea what I was doing. I could barely take apart a SE, let alone do much else, but I learned pretty quickly and I repaired all the Macs that came in to CompUSA in Brighton, which I think is now, it’s not there anymore.
(00:42:54):
I’m trying to remember what’s in that space, but it might be a CVS or something.
Nathan Sportsman (00:42:59):
And I remember from the book, Google 13 was there, Tweedyfish, I think it was either Zero or Oblivion that was also there.
Space Rogue (00:43:06):
Brian might’ve been there for a little while. I don’t remember, but I think he was probably a PC tech because he was not be … I can’t imagine him doing retail on the floor, but he might’ve been there. I don’t remember.
Nathan Sportsman (00:43:19):
And so you have some of the, what will become the loft working there together. And then Tweedy Fish, I think he was CDC.
Space Rogue (00:43:30):
Tweedy Fish was CDC. I think he ended up being part of the Ninja Strike Force or something, whatever that is. But I mean, we were also hanging out altogether at 2,600 meetings. We were doing MIT flea markets. Some of us were working at Comp USA, so it was a lot of cross-pollination between the entire scene. And there was a bunch of other people on the fringes too that didn’t go to 2600s, but maybe went to MIT or something like that.
Nathan Sportsman (00:43:56):
And kind of to your point about cross-pollination and Joe Mann’s book on Cult of the Dead Cow, so my understanding, having read some of the CD files, some of it was political, some of it was satire and just tongue in cheek. It’s sort of coming from the performing arts. Joe Minn’s book makes it appear more like it was a hacker subgroup and that there was connections between CDC to Loft that maybe were there, but loosely held it wasn’t as though that these two organizations were tighter. Actually, this is why we get to talk to you, not someone writing about something that they didn’t firsthand experience. You were there. What was that relationship like?
Space Rogue (00:44:40):
So there was two CDC members in Loft. Mudge, I think, became CDC after Loft and Count Zero, who has been CDC since whenever. But CDC was a totally separate organization from Loft and their membership in CDC had no bearing or relevance to LoftHeavy Industries at all, really. I think that, and I’ve written about this before, I think Joe Mann’s book kind of blurs that line and because both groups were in the same city, sort of thinks that there was one big group and it wasn’t. Loft was a total separate entity. And I mean, we had weekly meetings, we had bills to pay. We were all in the same city. We all had physical connections with each other. CDC was a much more amorphous group as far as I know. I mean, I’m not a member, but they had people spread out all over the country, much more online.
(00:45:43):
Their output or their product was text files. A lot of it was tongue-in-cheek, comedy, pranksters, and men alludes to that in the beginning of his book. He devoted several paragraphs to how they were part of the Merry Pranksters, but in a digital format and how they were attempting to manipulate the media. And that was pretty much CDC’s goal, at least from my viewpoint. And I’m not saying that men got it wrong. He talked to a lot of different people and different people have different opinions or memories of what happened. My memory is that the two groups were very separate and did not really cross-pollinate other than some of the members and one were members of the
Nathan Sportsman (00:46:26):
Other. And for folks that ultimately formed the loft, you’re interacting with various folks, whether it’s through CompUSA or these meetups, how and when did it actually start to formalize into an actual group? How did that come about?
Space Rogue (00:46:43):
So Brian Oblivion ran a bulletin board system, Black Prawn Systems, and before he would allow you to have an account on his board, he had to meet you in person. So at some point I met him at a 2,600 or whatever, and he gave me the number and invited me to his board. A few months, a year after that, Count Zero and Brian Oblivion lived very close to each other in South Boston, and both of their apartments were full of computer stuff. And I think I remember Count Zero had computers in his bathtub or something. And obviously their wives or whatever was not happy with that situation. And so the wives were starting a hat business or something, I don’t remember exactly, and they needed a place to do it. And so right around the corner from where they lived was an old artist loft building that would rent out large spaces for artists to paint or whatever they did.
(00:47:47):
So the wives got one of these loft spaces to make their hats, but the rent was rather expensive. And so as far as I know, they split the cost with their husbands to store all their computer stuff there. And then that was Count Zero and Brian Oblivion and then Galgo 13, I think Magic Man, White Knight were all part of the original group that basically stored stuff there. And of course, with all that computer equipment there, you’re going to plug it in and play with it and mess around. And then at some point, the hat business didn’t go so well and they could no longer pay that part of the rent. And so Brian Oblivion and Count Zero asked me to come to the loft one night after a 2600 meeting. And I had been there before because it was kind of becoming a sort of a hangout spot.
(00:48:41):
But that night they actually asked me to join and then I was like totally shocked. I’m like, wow, that’s awesome. I would totally love to join. I think one of the reasons I was asked was because they knew I actually was one of the few people that had a job and had some money and could actually pay the rent. And so I think Kingpin came on that same night or was asked at that same night. And then later, like a couple months later, Weld came in and a few months after that, I think Mudge came in and then we had Tan come in. And during that time, like White Knight came and got all this stuff and moved out. Magic Man did too. And I think Galgo 13 was there for a while. I think he was there to the end of that generation of the loft until we moved physical locations.
(00:49:29):
So that’s sort of how it sort of came about and we all sort of started being together. But in the beginning, it was just a hangout place, right? We’re hanging out, we’re plugging stuff in, we’re messing around with stuff because for me, I lived in an apartment and shared with two other people, one bedroom for me. And I have all this junk that I picked up out of the trash basically and didn’t really have any place to use it or plug it in. So I moved all that stuff into the loft and set up, got a cheap table at Staples and plugged stuff in and started messing with stuff. And that was the loft at the beginning. It was basically a dumping pile for all this detrius that we had picked up from dumpster diving runs and we would play around with it. And after 2,600 meetings or after MIT flee, we would go there and play with it and plug it in.
(00:50:16):
And eventually we started networking it basically so we could play doom on a network. It was coax at first. And I remember one night we couldn’t figure out why the network kept crashing until we found this one piece of cable and on it said cheaper net. And we’re like, “Oh, we’re cutting that cable.” We got it so nobody else would ever use that, pick it out of our trash and try to use it. I think I still have a piece of that cable somewhere in one of my desks. It says cheaper net on it. So that’s a great brand name.
Nathan Sportsman (00:50:49):
And so everyone that was part of the loft, you would pitch in something towards the rent based on your square footage?
Space Rogue (00:50:57):
Yeah, I think we had, I’m trying to remember exactly how it worked. It was like you got an eight foot table and that rent was X amount of dollars. And then I think Joey had half a table that he shared with Brian. And so he paid half the X. And then I think, I don’t remember if Weld had a full table. I think he ended up splitting a table because we were running out of space at that point. We had like seven, eight people there and we didn’t really have room for seven or eight eight foot tables because we also had a big VAX in the place. I don’t remember the story about the VAX. I think it was an 11780 and it was like half height and it was like four filing cabinets wide. We had a big five megabyte disk drive. The platters were like this big.
(00:51:47):
It was huge. I don’t think that thing ever ran. I think we turned it on once.
(00:51:54):
If I remember correctly, our lease was, electricity was included in the lease as long as we didn’t have air conditioners, but there was nothing about mainframe computers. But that thing, I don’t remember where we got it. I want to say they picked it up in Virginia and they rented a U-Haul and went down. I think this was before I was a full member and we had the vacs right inside the door. So you’d open the door and you’d have like this hallway, you’d have to walk by and on one side was piles of junk and on the other side was the vax. And then you’d open up into the main space. And we had stuff hanging from the ceilings because we didn’t have enough floor space. And there’s a picture of my desk with towers of bookshelves up on the desk with the computers down at the bottom.
(00:52:41):
And I had a TV hanging from the ceiling and I would have the TV on when I was there, old 13-inch black and white while I was fussing around with all the computer systems. And I would go there. I think I spent the most of … I was the one … No, at that loft, I wasn’t because Brian and Count Zero lived right around the corner. But I would go, I would wake … I lived in Newton at the time, which is just outside of Boston. I would drive to CompUSA, which was in Brighton, worked my Comp USA shift, and then drive to Charlestown where I had a part-time job as assist admin at a clinic at the Mass General Hospital. And then I would get done there seven, eight, nine o’clock at night, and I would go to South Boston and hang out there for the rest of the night until I felt like I couldn’t stay awake anymore.
(00:53:27):
And then I would drive home.
Nathan Sportsman (00:53:28):
That’s what you meant by the same time when we were on break. I didn’t pick that up in the book. You were actually working a double job, two different jobs at the same time.
Speaker 4 (00:53:36):
Yes.
Nathan Sportsman (00:53:37):
And you mentioned the VAX and the VAX was at the, I think you said Lotus, all the VAX terminals. So this is effectively a mini computer, VAX VMS mainframe, but very expensive computer, and you had that. And there’s a picture in your book that shows sort of your workspace with all of these computers. Is part of that, one of the things that Joe had mentioned that was one of his fondest memories was going out too, I think he called it the flea, the MIT flea market. Is that where you would pick up a lot of
Space Rogue (00:54:08):
This? We would get a lot of stuff. Well, we would sell a lot of stuff at the MIT flea market or try to. So we were collecting all this stuff from various places. A lot of times our jobs were throwing stuff out and we’d be like, “Oh, we’ll take it. Give it to us. We’ll pull up our car. You can load it up and you won’t ever see it again.” And because it’s considered hazardous waste, companies were more than happy to give it to us and we’d take it and we’d pile it at the loft. And well, eventually it got to be too much. And it’s like, we need to get rid of some of this stuff. So we would rent a U-Haul on flea days and load up stuff onto the back of the U-Haul and drive to the MIT fleet. And then more than one … You have to get there very early in order to get a good spot.
(00:54:49):
And so we’d get there five, six, seven in the morning on a Sunday and park in line and wait until they open at 8:00 or whatever to let us in so we could park and unload the stuff. And there’s like three or four or five of us in this van or big box truck full of stuff. It’s five in the morning in Cambridge on Vassar Street and you’re like, “Well, what are we going to do? ” Well, let’s go trash it. We’re at MIT. And so we’d go get more stuff out of the trash that morning and bring it back and be like, “Oh, I shouldn’t have grabbed this. Let’s just sell it at the fleet.” So we’d get stuff out of MIT trash and then sell it at the MIT fleet within hours or we’d head over to the student center and get a coffee or whatever.
(00:55:30):
But I remember more than once that they would bring stuff back to the van and I’d be like, “What are you doing? We’re trying to get rid of stuff and you’re getting more.” “Oh, we’ll just sell it now. “And so we would use that money to pay our rent, to pay our internet access. And some months we broke even, not very often. It wasn’t that much money. We weren’t getting rich out of selling junk, but the MIT flea market is just a very unique thing. I haven’t really ever experienced it anywhere else. They’re very, very strict about what you can sell there, not strict that … I remember one year or one flea market, some woman had come and brought a bunch of costume jewelry and laid it out on a table, and the organizers of the flea market basically politely went up to her and was like, ” Don’t come back next month because this is not the type of stuff we want.
(00:56:30):
“And while it’s considered the MIT Ham Radio Flea Market, and it’s run by the Ham Radio Club of MIT, HAMS use tons of computers. And so there’s tons of just boxes of junk and you have to paw through the junk to find the good stuff. And a lot of times it’s clean outs from various companies, technological stuff, medical stuff. Basically, we used to used to say, if it runs on electricity, you can find it at the flea. And I recently actually took my kids there like a year ago just so they could experience the flea market. And I don’t think they got the same sense of wonder that I got out of it, but it was a good experience.
Nathan Sportsman (00:57:10):
And so setting up that space where you have some structure, you’re starting to put all your equipment from a few years earlier, some laws get passed, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Operation Sun Devil, that sort of stuff. And from what I understand, not having been there, some people were arrested because they were doing things. Other people were getting arrested because they released a 911 manual, which turns out to be public and you can buy it for $13. Or the gaming company, which I think was actually in Austin, if I remember correctly-
Space Rogue (00:57:40):
See Jackson Gangs,
Nathan Sportsman (00:57:41):
Yeah. … got raided. Did it ever concern you that you’re doing these meetups and now you’re starting to put all this stuff here that that might cause law enforcement to start looking at y’all?
Space Rogue (00:57:53):
It definitely caused some paranoia on my fart and probably prevented me from exploring too much because I was always kind of afraid of what happens if, but those are good things to bring up, the E911 document, Steve Jackson Games, the Secret Service Rate at the Crystal Palace Mall, all those things were all happening at the same time. And I had, remember I had just gotten out of the service, military, very much pro USA government ra, ra, and still am to some extent, but I think to use a loaded term, the BBSs and those events and reading about them radicalized me to realize that things are maybe not always as they’re seem or as you’re told. And I remember even that early, what was it called? We were reading whispers or theories or conspiracies that the government was listening to all international phone calls or all phone calls in the country.
(00:59:02):
And I was just like, that’s just ridiculous. That’s just not happening.That would take so much power and so much storage. And then 10 years later, oh yeah, they are. They were. There’s an office in San Francisco where they monitor all the calls that go out. And I’m like, ” Holy moly, that was actually true.
(00:59:20):
“So yeah, I think those events really shaped my understanding of how the world works and what was really happening and what wasn’t. And I think that it impacted a lot of people the same way in that community, because it was just the E911 document was just stupid. It was obviously a vindictive act that they went after him specifically because he published one document about the phone system that was public already, and that they tried to bill him for the cost of the computer to write the document, because supposedly it was several hundred thousand dollars of damage and they’d ask, “Well, how is it valued that much?” “Well, the computer that they used to write it costs this much. “That’s over the line.
(01:00:12):
I mean, there was other cases too, right? There’s a whole Mitnick case who’s put in solitary confinement, the Bernie S. Case, which he’s still active in the community. I don’t know if he wants to be known or not, but that was another case that was very polarizing. And so there was this never ending flow of us versus them of persecution, if you will. And so it definitely caused a bit of paranoia in me. You don’t want people to be confused. We’re not breaking the law. We’re not even coming close. We have our own stuff and our own network and our own computers. Yeah, we got them out of the trash. Yeah, we’re doing all this cool stuff. We’re finding all these vulnerabilities, but we’re not breaking into anybody else’s stuff. And that was part of one of the reasons for the lost formation or organic growth, if you will, is we knew that trying to do this exploration and this discovery and finding this stuff could get us in trouble if we did it on other people’s things.
(01:01:12):
But if we did it on our own stuff, well, what’s the problem? But there was still that fear because of the word hacker and usually preceded by evil or bad, that there’s that lack of understanding of what you’re doing is actually potentially good for society as a whole. And because of that, I think it was fear of the unknown, like, oh, these people can do stuff that we don’t understand, so we are afraid of them. And so we’re going to persecute that, which is something you see throughout history, fear of the unknown, so we have to get rid of it. We’re not going to even try to understand it.
Nathan Sportsman (01:01:54):
And so it goes from a place to store equipment to actually looking at these things, increasing awareness, sunlight’s the best disinfectant. And so technology is fairly new and you’re starting to showcase the underpinnings and how this is insecure and society should think about those things. Was that also sort of an organic natural evolution? It just sort of formed over time. And how did that play? Did everyone just come around this common …
Space Rogue (01:02:26):
So we all had day jobs in the tech industry. I think Mudge at that point was working at BBN. Maybe that came a little bit later, but it was closed. And for those who don’t know, BBN was instrumental. They were major government contractor, did a lot of networking work. I was doing tech support at various companies. Brian was also doing tech work. Kingpin was doing electrical engineering and building medical devices. So we all had jobs in the tech industry, right? And we were all using this technology in our day jobs, and we were finding stuff. You couldn’t walk without tripping over a vulnerability. They were everywhere. They were really easy to find. And so as part of our day jobs, we would reach out to these companies and say,” Hey, I found a problem with your product. All my users are using it and they’re all at risk.
(01:03:21):
Can you try to fix this, please? “And this happened more than once. And we would reach out to the company and they’d be like, ” Oh, okay, thanks for letting us know.
(01:03:30):
“And then we’d never hear it from them, or the product would never get fixed, or it was just very frustrated at the whole situation. Our users are at risk and we can’t get anything done. And so by this point, we had the website was up. Brian had put his Black crawling systems online. I had the WackMac archives on there. We had a couple of other pages that were just random pages, but I think the key was that we were very early in the internet. Loft.com was one of the first 10,000 domains. So it’s a very small internet there. And so you had a very large audience with a very small amount of content. So a lot of people found the loft.com website. And so we’d find these vulnerabilities and be like, ” We’re not getting any traction. Other people are using this same product. They’re at risk, but they don’t know they’re at risk.
(01:04:25):
We need to share this information.
(01:04:30):
“A lot of times we would share it on a mailing list and share it out that way, but we felt we needed to reach a wider audience. We had this website. Why don’t we put the vulnerability up on the website? We put it on the mailing list, we’ll put it on the website. So we started doing that, but we were very cognizant of the fact that the companies that own the product didn’t really want that information out there. And we were very afraid of getting sued by them, because that was a common thing. And they would try to shut you down or say it didn’t exist or get your website taken offline or whatever, which is one of the reasons why we’re very adamant about using the handles all the time and trying to protect that anonymity, not because we were trying to hide, but because we were trying to hide from the companies that may potentially sue us.
(01:05:22):
So after we put a couple of vulnerabilities up, that started getting a lot of press and attention from the few vulnerabilities that we posted to our website, and we just sort of kept doing it. It was very organic. And it was right about this time when Loft was … The website was sort of getting well-known, Mudge had come on board, and we were kind of looking around like we’re selling stuff at the flea market, and we’re like, ” What are we doing? We’re not making any money. We need to try to take the next step and make this sort of pay for itself. “And I don’t think we were looking at it as this is going to be our career. We still just wanted a clubhouse that was free instead of having to get up at 6:00 AM on a Sunday to sell stuff at the flea market.
(01:06:16):
So we wanted it to be self-sufficient. We wanted to pay for itself, but we also knew we couldn’t do it at the physical location where we were. One, it was full of junk. Two, it was downtown and it had become a crash house for a lot of local hackers and people would stop by unannounced and crash on our couch and like, ” I’m trying to work here. You can’t sleep here all the time. You don’t even pay rent here. Why are you here? “So we decided that we needed to move from South Boston and find another location to have the loft and have it be a little bit more formalized, not necessarily a job, still a clubhouse, still fun, but with a more focused direction. And so I think I’m not really sure how the decision came about, but we decided that not all of us would make the move from South Boston to wherever the new location was.
(01:07:18):
And so we came to the very hard decision that we were going to ask Count Zero to not be a part of
Nathan Sportsman (01:07:24):
That. And because you had mentioned Law version one Bruce’s version two, so it seems the anchor point was around literally the physical change in location, but that’s something I wanted to ask. The membership changed, it seemed, between the two, whether it was Count Zero and I think Gogo 13 at some point he exits. Is that all around the change or is it just some people deciding they need to move on and do something else?
Space Rogue (01:07:52):
I think Gogo 13 decided that he was done and he only had a couple of machines there anyway, basically old Apple leases and some other stuff. And I don’t remember why he decided to leave, but that was totally separate decision. I think it was on him and he was like, ” Hey, I had fun. I don’t want us to pay rent anymore. I’m going to take my stuff back home. “I was like, ” Okay. “The Count Zero situation was a bit different and not an easy one, especially since none of us really had the best social cues or capabilities to deal with that sort of situation. And I remember we set up a meeting at Pizzeria Uno, and for some reason I could not attend because I had to work, which may have just been an excuse on my part not to be there because that’s something I would do to avoid that.
(01:08:52):
But I understand that the meeting did not go well and Count Zero stormed out before they even got the pizza. And it was very awkward in the law for the next month or two before we moved to the new location.
Nathan Sportsman (01:09:08):
And what was the core issue? Was it that, like you said, you wanted Bluff to become self-sustaining and somehow be able to pay the rent where you guys were? Why was he asked to …
Space Rogue (01:09:23):
I think he was going through a lot of personal stuff at the time that we may have not been very much aware of. And his participation in the group activities was not at the level that I think that we wanted. He was becoming a little bit more isolated himself and separated from the rest of us, and it was just not pleasant to be around him anymore in the space. And so we’re like, ” If we’re going to move and go to a new location and we’re going to have this more focused direction, Councilor doesn’t really seem to want to go in that direction. He’s being a little bit more distant from the rest of us. Maybe we should go without him. “And so that decision was reached amongst the rest of us that that was a good thing to do. That’s what we need to do to move forward.
(01:10:16):
And I think the way that that was presented to him was not well done. And so there’s a lot of hurt feelings on both sides and a lot of animosity. Years later, I think things got patched up. I mean, you’d have to ask him how he feels about it, but I mean, I’ll talk to him now. I’ve talked to him since then. Things seem to be okay. I hope they are, but yeah, it was not a good time.
Nathan Sportsman (01:10:42):
And so for law version two, you, KP, Brian Oblivion continued on, Weld Pond, sounds like Mudge was there at that point. Dildog hadn’t come on yet.
Space Rogue (01:10:55):
No. So the group that moved to Watertown was Brian Oblivion, Kingpin, myself, Weld Pond, Tan and Mudge, and Stephan. So that was the seven. And then, I mean, there was some personnel changes later after that, but that was the group that moved to Watertown.
Nathan Sportsman (01:11:15):
And with that move, is the, lack of a better word, but the mandate, but it is more towards how do we do this, the stuff that we love where it can fund the rent where it can pay us to do this all the time, not us holding a full-time job somewhere else and then doing us part-time, we want to do this.
Space Rogue (01:11:31):
I think that decision came later. At first, it was just, we want it to pay for itself. And then it sort of organically became, well, maybe we can have it pay for itself and pay us and be an actual job. And that sort of murphed over a couple of years before. It wasn’t a hard stop like, oh, now it’s going to be a job. It was just like, oh, now we’re paying the rent, we’re making a little bit more money, we’re doing a little bit more. Maybe we can get it to pay our salary.
Nathan Sportsman (01:12:01):
And then with the new roof and everyone sort of using it as kind of a hacker crash house, did it become more of a place where you focused on work and it wasn’t necessarily everyone just coming over and …
Space Rogue (01:12:11):
Yes. Yeah. It was because it was outside of the city and I think Brian and Kingpin both had to take two buses to get there and then ride a bike. It wasn’t an easy walk across town to get to the place. And so the post 2600 hangout space, it wasn’t people just coming by and crashing on the couch or whatever. It was in an industrial, I’ll call it an office building. I think that the previous tenants were a chemist. And so there was a shower in the place that actually worked. We never used it, but I think we tested it once and rusty water came out of it. And so there was already work benches there in one of the rooms and there was a front office and it was car … I remember we had to paint it when we moved in. And I think we did something with the floor before we moved in, but it was two medium sized rooms, two little small rooms and one big room.
(01:13:11):
And then the big room, we actually split in half of the bookshelf to make a conference room and a TV room, basically. But at that loft, I spent more time … I spent all my time there. I was there every day almost after work and everybody else showed up at least once a week and sometimes on weekends. I think we had our weekly meetings at that loft on Thursdays. And so I never saw a first run of must see TV. I only saw Seinfeld in reruns. Never got to see it because I was always at the loft meeting.
Nathan Sportsman (01:13:47):
And from that, if you’re seeing what that space looked like, what immediately do you think about? Do you have any fondest memories from that time?
Space Rogue (01:13:58):
Fondest memories. It was a very comfortable place. We had a wall of vax circuit boards that we had hung from the ceiling and the back of the bookshelf, so it was separating the two rooms. And so if you look through some of the old pictures of us in press and whatnot, it’s always in front of that circuit board wall. And if you’ve never seen it, a vax circuit board is like eight and a half by 11, and we had just hung them all up with patch cord wire. So there was like eight circuit boards all across the wall. It was really, really cool looking. Oh, I mean, we had a television network that we had hooked together internally. So you’d have one VCR and it would display on like 12 TVs throughout the space. Very cyber futuristic. Have you ever watched Johnny Namonic, the movie,
(01:14:50):
Some of the visuals in that movie are very similar to what Loft looked like. It’s just tech everywhere. We had one room where we would pile all the junk and then clean it out every month to go to the flea with, which got really full in the wintertime because there’s no flea in the winter. And then we had, because Brian ended up working at BB&N also along with Mudge, and they were throwing out a butterfly computer. I don’t know the actual computer, massively parallel processing system, like DOD level supercomputer, and they were throwing it out. And somehow Mudge got them to … He was able to get it out of the trash. I mean, this is a big filing cabinet size thin. I think we turned it on once, but it was a cool to show people what came over and visited. “Oh, and that’s our massively parallel processing system.
(01:15:42):
And over here we have our … “It was just kind of an awe item to have in this space.
Nathan Sportsman (01:15:50):
And so going from the wives having a hat making business, we need to get the stuff out of the house to we need stuff to store all the equipment that we’re grabbing from MIT to can we somehow turn this into a way that we can do this all the time? At what point did it start to hit you that Loft is starting to become, I don’t know if famous is the right word. I think so, but that there’s something here that in terms of culture and where things were at, that this was becoming a well-known name.
Space Rogue (01:16:25):
I think for me, the realization was probably Beyond Hope, the conference in New York City. I mean, prior to that, we were getting some press hits. We had done a couple of news interviews. We were getting some media attention. We had the website up. We were getting a lot of traffic to the website. We were selling t-shirts, we were selling CDs, but I don’t think until I got to that physical space in New York where we gave a talk on … I think Mudge gave half a talk on Loftcrack. This was right after Loftcrack came out and we were all on stage and we all gave a little spiel and it was like everybody already knew who we were. I had no idea who any of these people were and people were coming up to me and saying,” Oh, you’re Loft. Oh, you’re Spacework. Oh my God, that’s awesome.
(01:17:17):
“I’m like, ” What the hell is going on? “And I think that’s when it hit me like this is really much bigger than I think it is or thought it was. I think Captain Crunch asked me for my autograph then and I was whisked away from him immediately afterwards and didn’t find out until much later as to why, but that’s a whole nother story. So yeah, it was all a very surreal experience for me, the whole conference. And I think that’s when I realized that this is a bigger thing than the sum of its parts.
Nathan Sportsman (01:17:51):
And did that change the way that the group thought that they should either interact with the press or how they publish things? So the weight of that, did that ever start to shape like, ” Hey, we need to talk about the way in which we …
Space Rogue (01:18:08):
“I don’t know if it was ever a conversation at that point and I don’t know if it ever actually … I think it was just an organic like, ” This is what we’re doing. We’re getting bigger, we’re making more money and we’re going to keep doing that until everybody realized that, all right, we’re going in that direction. “I don’t think there was a conscious decision or a vote taken, “Okay, we’re going to be a business.” All in favor say, “Aye.” I don’t think that happened. No, I know that didn’t happen, but it wasn’t like that. It was more organic, at least in my memory. And I think after Beyond Hope and after Loftcrack came out, the first version, and we’re realizing that everybody’s using it from government to consultants and they’re making money off of it, and we’re not getting any of that money because we’d released it for free, that how come we’re not getting a cut of what the hell everybody else was making?
(01:19:02):
I think that’s when we started, well developed a GUI for Loftcrack, a welded mudge, and we started selling the GUI version as opposed to the command line version. And it was 50 bucks. I mean, it wasn’t that much. And we sold a couple hundred copies and I think that was … We started to actually … Loft had become a point where it was paying for itself. We weren’t paying rent anymore. Between the t-shirt sales and the CD sales and selling the loftcrack licenses and all these other things, we actually had money in the bank and we could pay our internet bill and we could pay money to get t-shirts without having to take orders first, that sort of thing.
(01:19:47):
And then I think we just sort of organically decided, “Well, if we can get it to pay for itself, why don’t we get it to pay a salary? What’s the next step? How do we get to being able to do this all the time instead of just on nights and weekends?” And I think that’s when we started to actually go out and look for bigger projects to do. I remember Brian and I, and I can’t remember who else, went and met with this other company to try to get a consulting job from them, a tech consulting job. And I remember they asked us, “Have you guys ever done this before?” And they’re like, “Well, you’re really our first client.” And she just kind of laughed. And obviously we did not get that job, but we were trying to find more and different ways to make money, bigger money, and Mudge had knew Marcus Rainam.
(01:20:38):
And Marcus had just started a company, NFR, Network Flight Recorder, which was really, I think, a groundbreaking piece of software that he ended up having to pivot the software to do something else than what it was originally for, but he needed signatures to filter out vulnerabilities on a network and he needed somebody to write those signatures. So basically a vulnerability was found, you needed to find a way to detect that vulnerability, and in order to do that, you would need a piece of code to do the detection. And I think we wrote a few and showed them to him. He’s like, “Oh, this is great. Can you write a bunch more?” And he’s like, “Yeah, if you pay us.” And so that’s when we brought in Silicosis and Dilldog as employees to write modules for NFR. So those were our first actual full-time employees was Silicosis and Dilldog.
Nathan Sportsman (01:21:34):
And so this one, it had converted to an LLC? It was
Space Rogue (01:21:37):
Actually- Well, we had the LLC early on before we moved to Watertown. And I think Brian brought Tan on because he worked in finance and supposedly knew how to do all this stuff, which I don’t think he really did, but found out really quickly how to do it. And if I remember correctly, we were the first LLC in Massachusetts because the law for LLCs had just been passed and I think if we weren’t the first, we were one of the first to apply for and get an LLC in the state of Massachusetts. Because before that, that’s right, we were in Delaware. We incorporated in Delaware as LHI Technologies, LoftHeavy Industries Technology. So it was a different entity, but it was still us. And it’s interesting because all that paperwork that’s filed with the state has our real name on it because we’re officers of a company, but no media or press ever bothered to go pull the paperwork on the company to get our real names.
(01:22:38):
And so that just boggles my mind that that never actually came out that way.
Nathan Sportsman (01:22:45):
And we’ll definitely get to it. But later, I think once the at stakes thing came into play, people did start to get outed.
Space Rogue (01:22:52):
Yeah. Well, that was because of the management at at stake. And I’m sure we’ll get into that.
Nathan Sportsman (01:22:59):
On the loft side, so you said you were one of the first 10,000 domains that was getting stuff. When did Hacker News start in this-
Space Rogue (01:23:06):
So one of the moneymaking things that we thought of or contemplated was putting ads on Loft.com. Advertising was starting to blow up, lots of ads, lots of click-through rates. And I looked at the traffic for loft.com and I looked at the ad rates and I was like, we can make this much money if we put ads on loft.com. But we all knew, myself included, that’s never going to happen. We’re not going to do that because it would then taint our vulnerabilities. Maybe we’re withholding stuff because they bought ads on our site or maybe they’re going to try to shut us up if they pull the ads or something like that. So we knew we couldn’t put ads on loft.com. And so I’m thinking and I’m thinking and I’m thinking, how do we get a piece of this pie? And at that point, I think Weld and I sort of had developed into this sort of competition, maybe unspoken, at least I thought it was a competition, of who could share news articles the fastest that were relevant to us, security news articles.
(01:24:11):
And so I would get to work in early in the morning and I would surf a bunch of news sites and find some interesting articles and I’d send them out to everybody else in The Loft or Weld would and it’s kind of friendly competition. And I was like, I’m already doing this. What if I put it on a website and then I could put ads on it? So that was the ineptus for the Hacker News Network. And I brought this up at a meeting, a Thursday night meeting, and I said, “Hey, I want to make this website, Hacker News Network, and I’ll just put the email that I send you every day on this website and we’ll put ads on it. ” And they all thought it was a stupid idea, at least I think that’s my memory anyway. And I’m like, “I need 35 bucks or whatever it was for the domain and some space on the website, on the machine to host it.
(01:24:54):
” And they’re like, “All right, well humor Space Road and let them spend $35 on a domain name.” And then Weld stayed up late one night and made me some graphics and that was it. And that was Hacker News was born. And I would get up very early every morning, go through all my news sites, find all the interesting articles that I wanted to post, write a little blurb for each one, write up the HTML by hand and post it on the website. And I remember I would be on IRC at the same time early in the morning. Usually at the loft, I would drive to the loft first, do the news, and then go to work. Sometimes I would go to work anyway, but I had an IRC channel open while I was doing this and it was like me, Brian, Jericho from Attrition, Carol Fendley, for those that know her, some other folks.
(01:25:52):
And we would all kind of be in a channel together and we’d talk about the news. And then I would post the news to them for proofread. And there was some funny misspellings that would, because I couldn’t spell, I couldn’t type, I couldn’t write at all then. And so there was a bunch of edits that have to be made. And then I would post it to the website, to the Hacker News. And I would do that every day. And I was trying to get advertising on the site. And I remember it was very difficult because every advertising company had this clause in their terms of service, no hacking sites. And while Hacker News Network isn’t necessarily a hacking site, it’s a news site, it has hacker in the name. So nobody would give us ads. So I ended up, the first ads we ever had were for Russian brides and I thought that was really funny.
(01:26:42):
And then I found a company called, I think Blurb Media, which might still be around. And so they hosted the ads for us on the site. And we didn’t make a ton of money, but a couple hundred dollars a month off the ads for the site. And then we sold t-shirts for it. And so it helped to the bottom line, but that’s how Hacker News came about and started and became actually pretty big. If you watch, there’s a video out that the, I’m going to say the NSA put out, a VHS video, which might be on YouTube, called Solar Sunrise, basically an operation that they investigated. And in the background of more than one of these talking heads that they’re interviewing at the NSA is the Hacker News website. And I was like, wow. And I found out years later that somebody at the NSA and somebody at the CIA, and I think somebody at the FBI, all three of them, when they were doing their daily briefings, they would just copy off Hacker News Network.
(01:27:41):
So all the work that I was doing was getting briefed to all three three letter agencies. And I was just like, that’s amazing.
Nathan Sportsman (01:27:49):
I went to it every day. And if I remember correctly, your logo, it was like, I think it was a satellite and then it had an HNN on it.
Space Rogue (01:27:58):
It’s the letter K. It’s Dingbat’s letter, I think it’s K or L. So if you pull up the dingbats font and you type a letter L, that’s the satellite. And I think we reversed it and then we put the H&N on it. Do you
Nathan Sportsman (01:28:12):
Have stickers of that?
Space Rogue (01:28:14):
I do. I have a bunch of H&N stickers. I’ll send you some. I didn’t bring
Nathan Sportsman (01:28:16):
Anything. So I went to that site every day and then how, wow, is this? I’m sitting here talking to the creator. And like you said, you first started with content aggregation, but you actually started breaking your own stories too. Any ones that were memorable for you?
Space Rogue (01:28:36):
Yeah. So I did content aggregation. I mean, the goal was to be Slashdot. At that point, Slashdot was the be all to end all of every site. And I wanted to have comments and all that other stuff and I never really got there. But yeah, I started breaking some of my own stories. I think I broke one on FAO Schwartz website. I don’t remember what the problem was, and they were not happy. I remember they were like, “Well, you could have told us first.” And I think this was before a whole disclosure thing was really a thing. And then there was another story that came out of England, a newspaper called Sudden A Business or something. I don’t remember. I’d have to look it up. But they posted a story about how hackers had taken over a satellite. And it was a very big story.
(01:29:25):
It was like two paragraphs long. And I read the article and I’m like, “This is total bullshit.This is made up.” And so I posted it to H&N. I’m like, “I totally doubt the veracity of the story.” And somebody picked up my version of the story and said, “Space Rogue or Hacker News Network doubts the veracity of the story and is the lone voice of reason, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And that’s where we got the … Oh, that was Brock Meeks of MSNBC. And that’s where we got the moniker Voice of Reason that’s on the website. It says Voice of Reason So that was a story we broke. Another one, so as H&M became better known and more popular, people started sending me stuff. And at one point I got … Oh, I remember I was covering, there was a website in China that got defaced.
(01:30:24):
Basically the contents got changed with something else. And it was a human rights website in China that was talking about how great human rights were in China. And of course, the defacement was like, “Oh no, China’s bad. Human rights are terrible here.” And so I covered that story. And so then I got an email, said, “Hey, this is so- and-so.” Excuse me. Then I got an email that said, “Hey, this is so- and-so. We were the ones that defaced that website and we’re going to have a press conference in IRC. Why don’t you join us?” I’m like, “Okay.” Is
Nathan Sportsman (01:30:59):
This Cyclone and Brunkbuster?
Space Rogue (01:31:01):
Yeah, this is Broncuster, I remember. I think it was Cyclone was the other one. I don’t know if they were the ones that actually invited me or not, but this was a group called Legion of Underground. And so I joined the channel, start recording the chat, and basically they decide to declare war on China. And I don’t remember if it was Iran too or what, Iraq, was it? Anyway, they’re declaring war. And I’m just sitting there. I’m like, “I’m just an observer. I didn’t say anything.” And so I basically posted that the next day on Hacker News, that the Legion of Underground has declared war on China, cyber war, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I think I posted the chat log and that got some attention. Unfortunately, I think it was over Christmas break. And so it took a while for the news cycle to catch up.
(01:32:01):
And it was interesting because I mean, nowadays we talk about cyber war and it’s just kind of a fact of life.That’s just nation states are battling it out in cyberspace. Then that was not the case. There was a lot of only use the internet for good type stuff. We can’t use it for military actions. And declaring war or cyber war was a big deal, especially in the hacker community. And so I got contacted by Chaos Computer Club out of Germany and they’re like, “We want to post a response to this Declaration of War and we would like Loft to sign on as well.” And I’m like, “Oh, okay.” And I think they had a bunch of other hacking groups on there as well, and I don’t remember who else was on there now, but it was a wide spectrum across the world of groups that were signing onto this letter, denouncing Legion of Underground for declaring war and bringing military action into the internet, which is our home.
(01:33:07):
And so I brought this to the Thursday meeting. So I think I sent an email before that because it was fast moving. I don’t think I could wait till the Thursday meeting. And the feeling was that we shouldn’t get involved.That’s too political for us. We don’t really want to be there. We’re trying to do our own thing over here. That’s not our thing. And I remember I wrote this big, huge one sentence, three pages long argument with no punctuation and just rambling about, how can we not say something? Everybody else is going to be on this. If we’re not on it, it’s going to look bad, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I think at the bottom, I used the Rush quote, or maybe it was Blue Oyster Colt. I don’t remember who did the song. “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
(01:33:59):
“And I think that convinced Mudge anyway, because it’s music background. And everybody got on board and said,” Yeah, okay, we should sign onto this too. “So it was very close that Loft did not sign that letter. And so then I posted that and I mean, it was a big deal at the time, but it’s kind of a footnote now. I don’t even know if it’s a footnote anymore. I mean, it’s in my book, but nobody else talks about it. It was kind of a thing that happened in the community. It didn’t happen outside of it. It did get some press, but it wasn’t a big deal even then. I think it’s a big deal. I think it’s a watershed moment. Legion of Underground ended up basically disbanding. People were disavowing membership. They said that the whole press conference was taken out of context. I’m like, ” Well, I got the chat log right here, buddy.
(01:34:49):
“And it’s interesting because many years later when I started working at IBM, I got an internal message from somebody and he said,” Hey, you remember that whole … “I was like, ” Hey, Space Road, glad you’re here. Awesome. You’re at IBM. I remember Hacker News Network. Remember that whole LOU story? “I’m like, ” Yeah, I used to be a member of that group and he’s working at IBM. “I’m like, ” Whoa, that’s a full circle. “So that was interesting.
Nathan Sportsman (01:35:16):
And if I remember correctly, CCC Loft, I think CDC, there was several groups that signed off on the
(01:35:24):
Pushback. And if I also remember correctly, from the Legions of Underground announcing their intent declaring war on these countries to the time that they backed off, it was something like between Christmas and New Year’s. Once you had sent out that letter, they decided not to move forward. We had someone from LLU also on this show, and we asked them about it. And same sort of thing that I think their point was, even though Legions of Underground was a group, people would go off and do their own sort of thing and they didn’t have anything to do with what had happened there. There is part of it though that I’m really curious about because I tried to study it and I don’t know what’s right. Supposedly there’s a group called Hong Kong Blondes that was Chinese dissidents that were pulled out of China. And then so the story goes for this declaration of war, they were either trained by Loft or trained by CDC, that strike force crew, which is like an operational arm.
(01:36:31):
And then that group was going to be used with the LOU to, whether it’s DDoS or compromised systems. And some people say Hong Kong blondes was a total hoax.What is reality?
Space Rogue (01:36:42):
So I wasn’t aware of a Hong Kong blonde LOU connection That I hadn’t heard before. My understanding of Hong Kong blondes is that it was a complete hoax. And if you read Joseph Men’s book, it is mentioned in there briefly because the fact that CDC perpetrated that entire hoax goes against the entire theorist thesis of the book. So it’s mentioned in there, but it’s very, very brief. I remember when the story broke and first came out, and the story just did not make sense to me. And I was very suspicious of the story. And I tried to talk to folks at CDC. I mean, I know these guys, I was like, ” What the hell’s going on with this? “And nobody would talk to me. Nobody would say anything. And like, ” Oh, it’s all hush-hush. Can’t say anything. “I’m like, ” All right, that’s kind of weird.
(01:37:38):
“And the original article, the first one is very light on details. The whole source is from one person giving an interview to the reporter, and I don’t remember who the reporter is and I should. And it irks me that I can’t bring it up right now because I’ve talked to him since then. And years later, he came to me and said,” I’m still concerned about this Hong Kong blonde story. What do you think of it? Is it real or did I get hoodwinked? “Even the reporter who took the original story wasn’t sure and I wasn’t 100% sure until the men book came out and there’s like one sentence in there and I’m like, ” That’s it. “So it was a whole big, which totally fits with the rest of the CDC narrative of media manipulation and merry pranksters and that whole backstory. But I think there’s part of it that morphs into this larger … I don’t remember.
(01:38:37):
There’s a section of the CDC book that covers some privacy initiatives and other groups that were working towards stuff that came out of CDC, but not CDC directly. And there’s the Hong Kong Bland sort of fit into that. And I’d have to go back and read the book to be sure. But from what I know and what I’ve read in the CDC book and other bits, the Hong Kong Vlons, the whole story was a whole big made up story. And
Nathan Sportsman (01:39:09):
The LOU discussion of them declaring war where you mentioned the satellite being hacked, is there a particular story from H&N that was the most meaningful or the one that you’re the most proud of?
Space Rogue (01:39:24):
I don’t know. I mean, the LLU story was probably the biggest story that H&M broke in that incarnation. I mean, H&N had another lifespan later on where it came back as video, but as the web version at The Loft, that was probably the biggest one. There was a lot of other articles that H&M published. So I would take submissions from people in the community who wanted to publish something because this is way before blogs. And so people had their own rinky-dinky websites, but didn’t get a lot of traffic. And some of those articles were good. Some of those articles were not that great. And I think I published them anyway because I wanted the content, and even though they weren’t awesome. But sometimes also it was a learning experience for me because I didn’t know what was good and what was bad. And I didn’t learn that until after I published it and I would get feedback and I was like, ” Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have put that up there.
(01:40:25):
“I think I’m a little bit better at that now, but lesson learned.
Nathan Sportsman (01:40:28):
Well, between H&N Loft, we’ll talk about the congressional testimony in a bit, but it had an impact on me. That’s why I’m doing cyber. I mean, it hooked me. I loved that site. And if I ever have a chance to see you again and you have one of those H&N stickers, I would love that.
Space Rogue (01:40:50):
I might have one with me, but I’ll
Nathan Sportsman (01:40:51):
Check. Okay. So we talked about vulnerability disclosure and how Loft was fundamental in moving society in that direction. We talked about Hacker News. I told you how big of a deal it was to me and so many others. Another big thing from Lost. Loft was the congressional testimony. There was a quote from your book, and I want to come back around to this quote later on too, but you talked about Joshua Chamberlain and he was a lieutenant colonel, I believe, for the US Army during the Civil War. He and his team were the ones that arguably helped the North win Gettysburg. And I think he recounted many years later so many stories, many of them inconsistent, but still true in their own time and space, and certainly true by the person telling it. And so I’m sure as we talk to members of law, the congressional testimony will come up, but I’d love to hear your perspective about how that came about, what it meant to you, what you saw as the impact of that testimony.
Space Rogue (01:41:59):
How it came about. The Loft testimony, the whole thing is … I don’t think it kind of took on a life of its own after. Beforehand, Mudge was doing a bunch of work through BB&N and he had a bunch of contacts in the government and whatnot. And so his version of events is different from my version, is different from Kingpin’s version, from everybody else’s version. My understanding of how things happened was we were approached by a reporter from a small magazine in Boston called The Improper Bostonian. I think her name was Pamela Ferdinand. I remember I reached out to her researching my book, and so she sort of filled in a little bit of the blanks. So she wrote this big article, several pages long for the improper Bostonian. But before that came and hit the press, a subsection of that article was published in the Washington Post.
(01:42:57):
Then the article came out in improper Bostonian. And my understanding is that members of Senator Thompson’s staff read the article in the Washington Post. And at the time, they were coming out with a couple of reports on information security, one at the FAA, and I think the other one was the IRS. I still have the report somewhere. And they wanted to have a hearing around these reports to bring attention to them and highlight the failures at those agencies. And they read the article in the Washington Post and said,” Oh, we should get these guys in and do the testimony. “And so they approached us and said,” Hey, can you be willing to come down and testify for us? “That’s my understanding as to how things happened. Everybody else has a different version, but that one makes sense to me, so that’s what I go with.
(01:43:51):
We were a little bit apprehensive at first because we knew we’d be under oath and once you get in the room, they can do whatever they want and ask whatever they want. And while it was supposed to be a friendly conversation at the hearing, we didn’t know that for sure. There was a bit of distrust there. We decided we’re going to go ahead and do it and we’ll go ahead and testify, but we also decided that we weren’t going to tell anybody beforehand. If it goes bad, then we’ll say it never happened. So that’s why we didn’t publicize it or promote it ahead of time. And it was kind of a big surprise for everybody when it actually happened. I remember in their prelude up to it, one of the things that we would do is we always go to the same conferences together, like PomCon and Ho Ho Con and DEFCON and whatnot.
(01:44:42):
And we would sometimes, I know this sounds kind of weird, but we would coordinate wardrobe so that we weren’t all wearing the same t-shirt to the same conference. And so it kind of came up like, “Well, what are you going to wear to the Senate testimony?” And I was very adamant that we were all going to wear suits. I don’t think we even all owned suits. I know I didn’t. And so I had to go buy a suit. Tan got some fancy five button thing from New York and went all out. And then we rented a van to drive from Boston to DC and we had to rent a van because Mudge couldn’t fly or something or didn’t want to fly. I don’t remember exactly why. So we got this big 12 seater Ford Econoline van and it had tinted out windows and it was dark green.
(01:45:29):
And we drove all the way down and we were partying in the van on the way down. And we had a bunch of a computer equipment and we’re trying to do some sign stuff, signals intelligence, and we had antennas on the roof and recompiling kernels on laptops. And I mean, this is 1998. It’s not stuff you really did very often. Nobody had mobile. Laptop batteries lasted a half an hour. So that was a fun trip down. And we get down, I think we stayed at the Phoenix Hotel, which is right near the Capitol.
(01:46:01):
And we were very adamant even at that point that we still use our hacker names and they assured us that, “That’s fine. We can do that. ” And so I remember I went to go check into the hotel and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m space rogue. You supposed to have a room for me? ” And the guy looked at me like I had three horns or something, and somebody next to him overhears him, overheard him, pushed him out of the way, said, “Yes, sir, I got you taken care of right here. Here’s your key. Thank you. Have a nice day.” I’m like, “Okay, great.” So that was interesting. And then I think the day before they took us to the room where we were going to do the testimony and showed us where it was going to happen. And it’s all this nice wood paneling and there’s the raised DS where the senators are going to sit.
(01:46:53):
And I was like, “Oh wow, this is really going to happen.” And I don’t think I really understood the importance of it then. I don’t even know if I understand the importance of it now. And then so the next day we get there and I think Professor Neumann was testifying before us and we had to submit written testimony ahead of time and we all get up, we sit down, Senator Thompson makes his opening little joke about how he has to question Space Road. And we did the testimony. And then afterwards, I was kind of like, not much changed. There was a bunch of press. We made Conan O’Brien, I think we made Rush Limbaugh and there was a bunch of news articles, but we were still loft. We were still doing our thing. We were still trying to make money and pay for the self.
(01:47:42):
It wasn’t a big watershed moment at the moment. And I don’t think it really … Eventually, as the years go by, it’s kind of taken on a life of its own, but that’s kind of the gist of how it came about and what happened.
Nathan Sportsman (01:47:58):
And so in that context, sort of how you were thinking about it at the time, was there any sort of, not game plan, that’s not the right word, but did the group have a sense of, this is what we want to communicate? Did you know what you wanted them to hear from you when they …
Space Rogue (01:48:13):
I think we looked at it as an opportunity of education and trying to impart some of the issues that were happening to the lawmakers and the people who we thought were in charge and could make a difference. And so we looked at it more of an educational thing. That was our message. We want to get that across that things are not that great out there. Everything’s held together with bubble gum and bailing twine and can fall down at any second. Case in point, and I don’t think any of us knew this ahead of time, Mudge had this vulnerability in a router that he had already disclosed and gotten patched. And so when Senator Thompson says, “I understand any of you can take down the internet in 30 minutes.” I think the rest of us were like, “What the hell is he talking about? ” “What?
(01:48:59):
“And Mudge was like, ” Yeah, any one of us can do that in a few packets. “And I’m like, ” What?
(01:49:05):
“I don’t think he had shared that with us ahead of time, so that was kind of a surprise. But as far as a game plan going in, we had our written testimony, we all had a couple of paragraphs, and it’s in the congressional record of what we wrote to the senators. But then beyond that, it was really just a free form, answer whatever questions they come up with. But we didn’t have a set agenda like, ” Oh, we have to mention this, or we have to talk about that. “It was more organic and let’s try to educate the senators as to the state of stuff.
Nathan Sportsman (01:49:46):
And mentioning that at the time, you didn’t see it as a watershed moment. And even now you just mentioned not sure how to think about it, but if you even look at our opening for this show, there you are right in front of it.
Space Rogue (01:50:02):
How do you think about it now? Yeah, we call that photo the loft supper because you got mudge in the middle with the long hair and we’re spread out next to them. That photo alone has taken on a surreal quality. I tried to use that photo for my book, but the licensing fees are ridiculous. So I still don’t really know what impact it has really had. A lot of people have looked to it. I think a lot of people saw it, have still seen it, has a lot of views on YouTube now that it’s up there. But to me, it was a thing I did and it was a good experience. It was a fun experience, unique. We got a tour of the White House and whatnot afterwards, but I don’t know how much it actually moved the needle. It’s hard to say. It’s really hard to quantify.
(01:51:02):
And for me, I don’t really dwell on it as a thing that I think about all the time. It’s like, ” Oh, it’s so great we did that. It made all these changes. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I
Nathan Sportsman (01:51:12):
Don’t know. I can tell you from my perspective, I mean, I think it inspired an entire generation of people to try to make a difference in this field. I know it did for me.
Space Rogue (01:51:20):
Okay. So that’s the kind of thing that makes me uncomfortable hearing that, but I’m glad it did and good. It didn’t have a lot of change on our day-to-day immediately. And I think it was probably instrumental in Loft becoming at stake, which happens later. I think without the Senate testimony, that might not have happened. But at the time, because we didn’t have a big lead up to it, and there was kind of a flash in the pan for a day or two after, and then it kind of twittled off a little bit, and things went back to normal. And it wasn’t until much later, years later, when it was like, ” Oh, you testified at the Senate, hackers were at the Senate, blah, blah, blah. “A lot of people don’t know this, and I think I mentioned this in the book, that we weren’t the first hackers to testify.
(01:52:12):
Emmanuel Goldstein had went many years before and was totally roasted by the Senator who called him a criminal and a thief, and it was just not a good hearing, which is probably why a lot of people don’t hear about it anymore. And a much less known hacker, Susan Thunder, testified in front of Senator Cohen, who was also from Maine, years before that.
(01:52:39):
But those never got the press that we got. And I don’t know, maybe it was because we were seven people and not one, maybe because it wasn’t adversarial, it was more friendly, maybe because we took an educational aspect to it that we’re trying to educate. I don’t know.
Nathan Sportsman (01:52:54):
And so a lot of folks reference that testimony as sort of a siren call. It was kind of a early warning of what could happen looking at it all these years later, 2025. What from that testimony do you think is still valid and true today?
Space Rogue (01:53:10):
I think it’s really interesting that a lot of the topics that we talk about are still relevant. We touched on weak passwords, we touched on weak GPS signals, we touched on a wide range of different topics, and almost all of those are still relevant and problems that we still have today. Here we are 25, 30 years later, with a lot of changes that have happened, but still a lot of the same problems.
Nathan Sportsman (01:53:35):
And you mentioned in your … It was either in a book or an interview, and we talked about this a little bit last night, and you mentioned it was kind of a play on, I think, a William Gibson quote, but basically his quote was, ” The future is here. It’s just uneven. “And your point was security, proper security is here, it’s just uneven.
Space Rogue (01:53:55):
Yeah, it’s the same thing. I mean, it’s unevenly distributed, right? A lot of the problems that we have have been solved. We’ve solved weak passwords, but I haven’t implemented them everywhere. We’ve solved cryptography, well, for normal use, right? It’s not used everywhere. That’s much better today than it used to be with Let’s Encrypt and SSL and et cetera. But we’ve solved a lot of these problems, but because we’re not implementing them evenly through everyone, we’re still susceptible to compromises.
Nathan Sportsman (01:54:27):
And so you mentioned you have this big moment, there’s a spike in media, but then it is back to, we got to get the CDs out, we got to get the stuff out so we can make rent, but then this opportunity with at stake comes along and that’s something that you ultimately pursue. I read in your book and I think it was Boston Source 2008, eight years after. And you talked about the pain from that experience and that you were still dealing with that and recovering from that. From your perspective, what happened with the at-stake merger and how did that go wrong?
Space Rogue (01:55:05):
I think after the testimony, we’re in the ramp up to 2000 and there’s a lot of money getting dumped into Y2K because of the computer problem with two digits and we’re going to a four digit year, et cetera. And so there’s a lot of money dumped into Y2K and a lot of companies are like, ” Well, while you’re in there, do some security stuff. “So in late 98 into 99, we start seeing security companies or companies that are actually focused on doing security work. Prior to this, the entire security industry consisted of basically antivirus, maybe one or two consulting companies like Secure Computing and a couple other small shops. And it wasn’t until 98, 99 that you see this explosion in venture capital funding companies like Foundstone and Counterpain and Garden and ISS, et cetera, et cetera. There’s probably … I have a slide that I use.
(01:55:55):
It’s got two dozen company logos on there that all were founded in that two-year timeframe. So there’s a lot of money getting pumped into there. And so you got to look at these companies like where are they getting their security experts from? This is a thing that did not exist three years ago. Where are these experts in security coming from? Well, they’re all the hackers. They’re all our friends. They’re all getting rich. And we’re sitting there selling CDs for 20 bucks a pop. And I’m like, ” What the hell is going on? “And we’re like, ” If we’re going to take the next step with Loft, if we’re going to go to the next level, we can stay and do what we’re doing and plot along and slowly increment what we’re at and do the long thing, but we’re not going to be able to do what we really want to do that way.
(01:56:41):
We need to take a jump. We need to go to the next big step. “And so as a group, we decided let’s try to get some funding. Let’s shop us around. And Mudge went out and he talked to a bunch of venture capital companies. And one of the ones he talked to, and we came close to a couple of deals, and one of the companies he talked to was Cambridge Technology Partners. They were a tech consulting company in Cambridge. They were really interested in doing some security stuff. And we’re like, ” You know what? You don’t really know what we do. We don’t really know how it is to work with you. Why don’t we do a penetration test with you guys and we’ll show you what we can do and we’ll understand how to work together better. “And so we drew up a statement of work and a get out of jail free card and all that stuff that you put in a contract.
(01:57:31):
And so we did a penetration test. Mudge and weld attacked the network. I went on a couple of trashing runs with Kingpin. Kingpin explored their PBX system, a whole nine yards, everything. I remember we got out of the trash, we got this information from one employee who had just, I don’t remember if he had just been quit or whatever reason, he cleaned out his desk. And so we had one trash bag with all his desk stuff in it. And we found out that his wife was pregnant. He had just gotten a speeding ticket for driving in the breakdown lane, all this other stuff about this guy, like totally blackmail material. So that was a good find. Joey got into the PBX system and he got a couple of voicemails where they were talking about Loft in the voicemail and they were not flattering things. Mudge and Weld got into one of their servers and had planted a back door into the server.
(01:58:28):
But at that time, the only way to get the back door to activate was to get the server to reboot. So how do you get the server to reboot? And we’re sitting there scratching our heads trying to figure out how do we do that without alerting the Sisenman that something had gone wrong. And by pure happenstance, there was a power outage in Cambridge that was long enough that the UPS died and the server shut down, and so it had to start back up. And when it started back up, it loaded our back door. So we put all this stuff in the report and presented it to CTP and their mouths dropped to the floor and they classified the report and don’t show this to anybody. But the key thing was that the voicemail that Kingpin had recovered from the voicemail box that was not flattering to us, basically convinced us that this was a bad deal and we did not want to be involved.
(01:59:19):
So we presented the report, we told them about everything that we had found, told them about the back door, you might want to have your assistant manager remove that, and that was it. The deal was over. But six months, many, many months later, I don’t remember how many, that back door was still pinging us, trying to phone home. And we told them to pull it out and it’s still there. It’s in the report, do something. So this goes back to your security not evenly distributed.That problem was a solved problem. It was a known issue and they didn’t resolve it. So that was CTP. Like I said, there was a couple other venture capitals that we talked to. A couple of deals came close Close, nothing really solidified. And then Mudge found this other VC that had just started a new security company called At Stake with some people that we knew from the Boston scene.
(02:00:12):
I think there were three or four people in an office in Cambridge. And they were very interested in Loft and we knew the people that were already working there. And so it felt like a good fit. And we’re like, “Why don’t we just basically buy the Loft and you can be part of at stake?” And we’re like, “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.” So they paid for our lawyer. We had contracts drawn up, the whole nine yards. And I think for me, at that point in time, it was like, we have to do this deal.This is a go, no, go situation. We can’t keep plotting along the way business as usual, the way we’ve been doing it for the last seven years because we’re not getting anywhere. It’s just we can’t do what we really want to do. So this is a big opportunity.
(02:00:58):
We have to take this one. We have to do it. And I remember we had a dinner, we sat in a big round table in a back room at a restaurant and sat there for two or three hours discussing the pros and cons. And at the end, we all decided, yep, yep, this is what we’re going to do. And I think that on my first day at At Stake when I walked in the door, I was already not happy. Now, I don’t know if that’s because I was not happy about the situation and the deal or what, or I was just angry in general, but I was not happy right from the beginning.
Nathan Sportsman (02:01:33):
And that dinner that you mentioned where you kind of deliberated for a few hours, is this the dinner where Mudge kind of put it to the effect of a rock band, a garage rock band, and we could be the greatest garage rock band, play the best music that no one will ever hear if we continue on?
Space Rogue (02:01:51):
I don’t know if he said that at that meeting, but yeah, that was one of his allegories that he presented. We could be the best garage band in the world or we can go on tour and be a mega star mega band. And Mudge is a big musician, so that metaphor works for him. And it made sense. I think it resonated with all of us as well. And there’s something about being a cool garage band, but I think we had aspirations of, again, education, making a dent in the universe, another one of Mudge’s sayings, and sort of being a change for good and showing people that security is something that you really need to be concerned about. Because at that point, nobody was worried about security at all, really. There was a few VC and a few companies around 2000, but it wasn’t a big thing.
(02:02:40):
And I think that we felt that it should be, and that this was a way that we could show people that. And so
Nathan Sportsman (02:02:46):
At the end of that meeting when the group voted, was the boat unanimous to try
Space Rogue (02:02:50):
It? Yeah. And I don’t remember if we just had decided beforehand that it had to be unanimous. I don’t remember. But yeah, we all were like, “Yep, let’s do it. ”
Nathan Sportsman (02:03:01):
And some of these folks you knew, so I think Dave Garbageheep was-
Space Rogue (02:03:06):
Yeah, garbage cheap.
Nathan Sportsman (02:03:08):
But then you get there and at stake gets funded by Battery Ventures, but you get there and something doesn’t feel quite right.
Space Rogue (02:03:15):
Yeah. And I don’t know if I was turned off before I even got there. I just remember walking in on the first day and maybe it’s just because it was in an office and it wasn’t The Loft, or maybe I was jealous that all these other people now can call themselves Loft. I don’t know. I was in a bad mood. I didn’t like the setup and it just seemed excessive also. Everybody had Arion chairs. Why are we spending $1,000 on a chair?That was the thing you did in 2000 because you didn’t have Arion chairs, you weren’t a real company. But it didn’t make a lot of sense to me because we were pulling furniture out of the dumpster, these big old metal desks, and now we’ve got nice offices. And the office was small. It was a four-person office and we just shoved seven more people into it.
(02:04:05):
And so there weren’t enough chairs. And I remember that was a big issue with me too, as the first couple of days, first couple of weeks. I would stay at home in the morning and get the news done. And then I would drive all the way into Cambridge. And so I wouldn’t get there until 10:00, 10:30, but I’d already been up since 6:00 doing work and people thought I was coming in late, but by the time I got there, there were no chairs left. So I’m like, why am I even here? I can’t even sit down. I’m going to go home and work. Of course, remote work then was not a thing, right? That’s not a thing really people did. And I think that maybe caused some issues. And then we got a new office and they moved me over to the marketing department and put everybody else in the labs.
(02:04:48):
Is that
Nathan Sportsman (02:04:48):
Because running hacker news?
Space Rogue (02:04:50):
Yeah. So I was running hacker news and that was considered a media outlet. So I should be part of the marketing group. I’m like, yeah, okay, whatever. I’m doing … It’s fine. We’re all in this together. We’re doing great. So they were in a whole different room all day, and I was separated. So there was kind of that separation right there.
Nathan Sportsman (02:05:08):
You mentioned, I think it was Source Boston, like 2008, that that was one of the more painful experiences and you were still kind of dealing with that. What happened during that brief time period at At Stake where it was just soul crushing?
Space Rogue (02:05:24):
So the soul crushing part of At Stake was I got fired fairly early on, I think within six months. So we launched at RSA … RSA. This was back when it was in San Jose at the Art Museum or something. It was like 20 companies there. You look at RSA now and it’s just massive. So we launched at RSA, I think it was in January, right after Y2K and things were great. I mean, I remember I was upset at the first day, but I was trying to make it work. I was trying to be proactive. I was doing media outreach, which was something I was doing with H&N anyway.
(02:06:07):
And I was trying to produce and work and things were good, but it was a real job. It was nine to five or supposed to be nine to five. And I don’t think the company understood the value of H&N or the other stuff that I was doing. And so by May, I think it was the end of May, I got pulled into a little room with Ted Julian, who was the head of marketing at the time, and he basically said, “You’re not producing, your work product is bad. You need to shape up or ship out. ” And I was shocked. I’m like, “What? What?” And this was right after we had gotten a new CEO. The VC had brought in a new CEO to run the company.
(02:07:01):
Darby. Darby. And he had come from Interpath, which was a tech consulting company in Virginia. And so then I got pulled into the little room, told that my work product was substandard, and I was given a new project to work on, like, “Here, we want you to develop a subscription service for us to sell.” And I was like, “Okay, I don’t know anything about subscription services, one. Two, basically we wanted to sell vulnerabilities. This is antithical to everything Loft has ever done. We’re going to sell advanced notice of vulnerabilities to clients that pay money.” And I’m like, “Everybody approved?” I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Also, under threat of getting fired. And so I’m trying to put together something for this subscription service and two weeks go by and I get called on a little room again and basically told, “Sorry, this isn’t enough.
(02:08:02):
See you. ” So looking back on it, you can see that this was a project that was given to me to fail on purpose as an excuse to get rid of me. And I suspect that the CEO was trying to exercise his authority because I found out later that we had just opened an office in our RTP in Virginia, wherever Research Triangle Park is. We just opened an office in Virginia and we had another office somewhere else and people got fired. One person from each office had gotten fired. And the person that got fired from RTP was actually Darby’s former assistant from Interpath.
(02:08:41):
How do you bring somebody over and fire them within six months? That doesn’t make any sense. So my feeling is that he was exercising his authority over the group by firing people he thought or other people thought were untouchable. Fire a member of Loft, fire his personal assistant, fire this other person at this other office. Maybe that’s what happened, maybe that didn’t. But for me, the fellowship was broken. My email was cut off. My Loft email was cut off. I had no access to anything. All my Loft files were gone, everything, because that’s what you do when somebody leaves a company. You got off their access and delete everything. And then I didn’t have any connection to any of the old Loft people. And I don’t know what they knew or when they knew it, but if you’ve never been fired from a job, it is a massively mentally traumatizing event for any job.
(02:09:49):
And I think the added pain for me was that it was my company in part, and all my friends were there, and I was basically cut off from all of them. So that had a major impact on me for the next 10 years. And
Nathan Sportsman (02:10:11):
In this case, is it fair to say it’s not just that you lost your job or you were fired from a job because Loft was such a big part of your life and being cut out almost not just losing a job, but losing a little bit of your identity and what’s
Space Rogue (02:10:24):
Next? Yeah. Yeah. I haven’t thought of it that way, losing my identity because I mean, Space Rogue was tied up in Loft. Loft was Space Rogue, Space Rogue was Loft. I think that was when I went and tried to register.com spacerogue.com, and I couldn’t because somebody else had already got it, and that nice person still has it today. So I ended up getting spacerogue.net instead, and I had to build a website and create email, and I didn’t really know where to go from that. I mean, prior to that, I was working doing tech support stuff and network support stuff at various companies, but when I got fired, I was like, “I don’t know what to do. ” The other thing that was a big kick was a lot of the purchase price, if you will, of the Loft was actually a retention bonus in the employment contract.
(02:11:27):
So my small chunk of Loft monetarily was no longer going to get paid to me because I didn’t work there anymore. So I had to call a lawyer and threaten to sue them and eventually we settled and I got a small chunk of change, but that whole process was another basically just twisting the knife, having to go through all that. So yeah.
Nathan Sportsman (02:11:52):
And so looking back now, is the path just the path or if you could do a redo, would you have pushed them to not go down that and just let’s keep figuring out and try to do it the slower way?
Space Rogue (02:12:03):
No, I think, and I thought about that, should we have sold or not? And I think Loft was at a point where we had to make a big jump. Now, was the big jump to at stake the right jump? Maybe not, but we had to do something because otherwise we’d still be working full-time jobs selling T-shirts and publishing stuff on a website and it eventually would’ve splintered and we all would’ve went our own ways and it would’ve broken apart, I think. So yeah, it was definitely the right decision to do something. Whether or not AtStake was the right something, maybe. I mean, a lot of stuff came out of AtStake. At Stake, I think was a transformative company in the industry. As you’ve mentioned, everybody worked there, especially anybody in the Boston area, and they all went on to found different companies as a long list.
(02:12:52):
There’s a list in my book of all the companies that, or most of the companies and people that worked there. And all those people sort of had, I think Loft had an influence on them through at stake. And so we were able to sort of spread the loft ethos out a little bit, I hope, I think maybe.
Nathan Sportsman (02:13:13):
So after that experience, did you take some time off to just kind of recharge and reset, or did you immediately jump to another gig?
Space Rogue (02:13:21):
Well, I mean, I had bills to pay, right? So I ended up working at Garden for a little while. I think I went to school for web design, which was a waste of money. And then it was kind of slow because the firing really takes a number on you mentally. Oh, I remember now, I was working at Genuity for a little while as a contractor, and that ended abruptly because Genuity, if you don’t know, they lost all their funding and fired everybody, laid them off or whatever. And then I was unemployed for a while and had to use the money that I got from the settlement with at stake to basically live. And so that got really, really tenuous after a few months. And I was finally able to find another job because by this point, the dotcom boom had bust, right? Everybody was out of work.
(02:14:23):
There were no jobs. And this is also when I found out that because I didn’t have a degree at the point at that time, it was very detrimental to finally find a new job. And I would get interviews because I had a lot of tech experience and my resume looked really great. And so I would get the interview and I would go to the interview and I’d do the second and third interview. And on the last interview, you talk to the CEO and the CEO asked you, “Gee, I see you on your resume you don’t have a college degree.” And I’d be like, “No, I don’t, but I have 15 years of experience doing tech work and I’ve done this and I’ve done that and I can totally do this job and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Thanks a lot. See you later. Thanks for coming in.
(02:14:59):
And after the third time of that happening, you’re like, “I got to get a degree. This is ridiculous.” So when I finally got a job doing work at a school, I started taking night classes, one class a semester. It took me like seven years, but I finally graduated and got a degree, so I can check that box.
Nathan Sportsman (02:15:21):
And through that time, you also worked at, you mentioned Guardant, you worked at Trustwave?
Space Rogue (02:15:24):
Yeah, so Trustwave happened many years later. I basically spent a decade doing low level tech jobs and not really getting anywhere career-wise and sort of wallowing in my own mess of depression and whatever from at stake. And then one day Tan calls me up and if you know Tan, well, I’ll just leave it at that. And he’s like, “Dude.” I’m like, “What?” He’s like, “H&N.” I’m like, “What about it? Got to do it again, man.” I’m like, “No.” And he’s like, “Yeah, no, no, no. Listen, hear me out. We’ll do video.” I’m like, “I don’t know nothing about no video.” Now keep in mind, this is before YouTube. YouTube was just starting. They had a 10-minute limit on video and the only thing people were uploading was grainy 640 by 400 cell phone videos. It wasn’t YouTube today. And so I’m like, “Video’s stupid. No, I don’t know anything about video.
(02:16:28):
I don’t even have a camera. Are we going to do video?” He’s like, “No, dude, trust me, this is a great idea. We’ll do video. It’d be awesome. Just film something and send it to me. ” And I’m like, “All right, fine.” So I borrow a camera from work and I find some news and I write a quick script. And I think the activity of doing that, the same thing that I used to do for the website on H&N really energized me. And I filmed the first thing and I thought we weren’t ever going to use it. I was just a practice, like a pilot and Tan edited it up and put some funky graphics in it and added some audio. And I was like, “Oh, this isn’t that bad.” And I had fun doing it. “Yeah, let’s do another one. “And so it took us a while to get the lighting right.
(02:17:21):
If you look at the first ones, the lighting’s terrible. I was using Home Depot halogen lights and my face is all washed out, which is another reason for the sunglasses because I couldn’t see from the lights. So I would write the news every day. I would go to work at my day job and I would basically surf the web and find news articles all week, write little blurbs, write up a whole half hour script or close to a half hour script, and then film it on Friday nights in front of a green screen in my tiny little condo and zip up the file and send it to Tan in New York. And Tan would edit it and cut out all the bad parts, which is why we ended up with these head shake movements because I don’t think he really knew how to edit, which we were like, ” All right, we’re going to use Max Hedrum as our motif.
(02:18:11):
“And so he put some wavy lines behind me. And so that’s why H&N sort of looks a little max headroomy because we didn’t edit it right. We put graphics in there, got some intro music and paid some money to actually to have somebody do an animated intro. And eventually it was like a good, I think it was a fairly decent program. And we tried to put some humor into it, make it a little funny, but still have some good hackery stories, right? Not necessarily privacy related, not necessarily security related, but like hacker stories that we wanted to showcase. And this was when Lull Suck was going on and anonymous and all that stuff. And so we had our own little memes that we did in the show and we had some different segments about security tools called the tool time. We had the top vulnerabilities at the end of the show, all kinds of neat things.
(02:19:09):
And it was fun. It was enjoyable, but it was a lot of time. So I was doing a 40-hour job week, half of which I was doing H&N writing scripts and stuff. And then I was doing another 40 hours doing other H&N stuff, filming and editing and posting and promoting. And eventually that just got, after two and a half years, I was like, ” And we’re not really making a lot of money. We’re trying to sell ads and make some money and we’re just not … We’re barely breaking even again. “And I’m like, ” This isn’t going anywhere. “And so we’re done. We’re not doing it anymore. And if I had just held on for another six months, another year, and then YouTube got bought by Google and totally changed the format and you could have long format videos and what could have been, right?
Nathan Sportsman (02:20:00):
This was 2008, 2009? This
Space Rogue (02:20:02):
Is 2009 to 11 and a half, around there somewhere.
Nathan Sportsman (02:20:08):
I remember behind the firewall, that segment.
Space Rogue (02:20:11):
Oh yeah, behind the firewall. I think we had … So we had our friend Courtney do some reporter work for us on a couple of segments. That was fun. We had behind the firewall, tool time, into the fresh for new tools, quickies for short stories. Yeah.
Nathan Sportsman (02:20:30):
And to your point about YouTube, 10 years seeing into the future, everything is … It’s how I take in all everything. News, everything is YouTube. I don’t have cable anymore or anything like that. A couple years ago, I had gotten into this about a two-year period of severe depression where trying to figure out how to kill myself. And the only reason I didn’t do it was I couldn’t figure out how to do it where Kitty would still get the insurance money. There was an event that ultimately got me out of that was Tan’s call to you to get Hacker News the thing that kind of helped get you motivated again.
Space Rogue (02:21:06):
Yeah. That was a big changing point, just doing the news again. And I think within the first few weeks of doing that and going through those motions is really what pulled me out of that slump that I was in. And when Hacker News stopped, I think at that point I had already moved to Philadelphia and C7-5 in Chicago worked at Spider Labs. I was headed Spider Labs in Chicago. He was one of our sponsors for the show and he was a big fan of H&N. And in the early episodes of the show, you can see sponsored by Spider Labs. And I don’t know if I reached out to him or he reached out to me, but somehow I ended up working there. And so that was great. And that was really the first security job I had in the second half of my life. Because after Garden, it was a big time of no security, and then started H&N and then Tenable.
(02:22:09):
Sorry, trustwave.
Nathan Sportsman (02:22:11):
And in the book, when you talk about H&N version two going to video, I think the chapter of that section was resurrection. And how you’re describing it, you can feel it in the book. Your last chapter before the epilogue is Legacy. And so we kind of talked a little bit about Joshua Chamberlain. Some of these books, hyperbolic, maybe an exaggeration, some of them might have been sort of a best account, but not exactly true. What was your reasoning or purpose behind deciding to write your own book?
Space Rogue (02:22:50):
So I had been working on a book off and on for better part of a decade. I think I got a total of five pages written. I think the first suggestion came from Jen Ellis and Troy Ford. And we were doing something in DC and we were setting up some training and I was telling stories and Jen was like, ” You should write a book. “And I’m like, ” Yeah, I’ve sort of tried. It doesn’t come out. “I said,” No, no, no, you try again. “So that was one big motivating point to write the book. The second was the Joseph Men’s Cult of the Dead Cow book came out and I read that book and my recollection of events was not the same as what was portrayed in the book. And so I wrote a couple of reviews and listed all the discrepancies from my memory from what he had wrote.
(02:23:48):
And I think that upset some people. And so Java Man calls me, or I think he texted me, and he said some stuff, and I was like, ” You know what? Thanks. That’s the motivation I needed. I’m going to finish this book that I started. “And then within six months, it just flowed out of me. It was all on paper, mostly. And so I started trying to shop it around to agents. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with book agents or not, but it’s a weird business. It’s really crazy. So I probably sent out maybe a hundred queries. It’s called a query when you propose a book to an agent. And I had a bunch of nibbles and people that were interested, but nothing really went anywhere. And so I’m like, ” You know what? I’m going to self-publish this myself. “And so I hired an editor and I hired somebody to design the cover and a layout person and all this other stuff.
(02:24:47):
And right before I was ready to push the button, maybe a couple of months before, I had one of the agents that I had queried reach out to me and was like, ” Oh, I really love this book. I want to do it. “I’m like, ” Well, I’m about ready to self-publish this thing. What are you going to do for me that I can’t do myself? “And she’s like, ” Well, nothing. “I’m like, ” Well, okay, thanks. “But it was good to have that validation that the book was valid enough that an agent would have tried to push it out legitimately, not legitimately, but push it out traditionally is the word. And so I flipped the switch and sent it on Amazon and sent it off to Apple Books and everywhere else and did a little bit better than I expected for a self-published book and thankfully got some great reviews.
(02:25:33):
And I haven’t made all my money back yet, but it’s still, I think it was very cathartic to write the book and try to remember all these little stories and do the research and get the footnotes and make sure I had the dates right and all those little things that you forget. And it was difficult because I didn’t have my loft mailspool because that all got deleted when I got fired from at stake. So I had to rebuild stuff via the wayback machine and what news clippings I still had and try to piece stuff together. The Loftcrack chain of events for publishing Loftcrack and pushing that software out was almost entirely reconstruction from news articles out of the wayback machine. I lost all that communication I had at the loft and going through the whole at stake chapter and all of that was very, very cathartic.
(02:26:29):
When I was going through my college classes one semester at a time, one class a semester, one of the classes I took was a writing class. And one of the topic that I wrote for the final of the class was writing therapy and how therapists actually use writing to help people get through past events. And I didn’t know us at the time, because this was 10 years before I wrote the book, but I think that my process of writing the book really helped me work through a lot of those issues that I had. There was a point at some point in the 10 years after At Stake and before H&N, most of that time I was very bitter and angry at the world. And there came a point where I’m like, ” I can’t be bitter and angry anymore. “And I just dropped it all.
(02:27:21):
I think it was probably right after Source, 2008 in Boston, and I tried to just let it all go. And I think I was successful in most of it, but writing the book helped me get rid of the rest of it, I think. And I really think it’s all … I hope it’s all gone now. I don’t know. Maybe it’s something still lingering.
Nathan Sportsman (02:27:40):
Well, if anyone hasn’t read it, Space Rogue is the book. And like I told you, I think off camera last night, I certainly loved the history of the book and your account, but just the pure authenticity of it. And I could feel like I was not reading a persona, but a person that was … Like I told you last night, I can tell you’re a good man. Joe Grant thinks the world of you too and some of his fondest memories were just getting a write home from you from the loft. So I hope you know how much of an impact that you’ve had. Even me this morning, a little bit nervous to ask you for an autograph. It’s meant a lot. And so I’m glad it was cathartic for you, but it’s also had a pretty big impact on those that have read it
Space Rogue (02:28:27):
Too. Well, thanks. Those are really kind words. And again, it makes me really uncomfortable to hear all of that, but thank you.
Nathan Sportsman (02:28:34):
And so to the point about legacy, you wanted to add your point of view to the collection of history and through that tapestry of all of these various books and all these different accounts, we sort of get to the truth of things. It’s part of the reason why we’re doing Warlock’s. We’re trying to take all of these firsthand accounts to your point about Joshua Chamberlain and that quote that really resonated with me. What was your reasoning for wanting to do this and sit down?
Space Rogue (02:29:06):
I think the fact that you were doing a long form video, I mean, I’ve told a lot of these stories a hundred times. The Senate testimony story is the one story everybody wants to hear, and there’s so much other stuff that goes with it, right? And that’s another reason why I wrote the book, because there’s all these other little stories, and there’s even more that’s not in the book, because I can’t put everything in 300 pages. And I knew you were doing more than a 30 minute snippet, and I think that’s what really interested me in coming here, and that you wanted to cover more than just that one topic.
Nathan Sportsman (02:29:42):
Well, SR, thank you for coming. Thanks for having me.