OLD HACKER PALS

3 March 2001
I've had these two newspaper articles of old computer pals laying around for a long time. I was in the process of throwing them out but figured I would scan them for preservation purposes. These two hackers were a part of my growing up even if I only spent a moderate amount of time with Mitch and Ern. What drew us together, or maybe, me to them, was the fact that they were "elite." They had Warez--pirated software--I and others wanted. They imported the latest games from Europe and telephoned friends all over the world. The computer was a big part of their life as it was mine. It was all too easy to look up to these hackers but like everything there was price to pay for their elitness. And to be as big as they were either you had to have a lot of money or do everything illegally using connections. It took brains and a smooth talker--I think people tend to call it social engineering. Eventually their world caved in, partially due to carelessness and greed.

The Whizard

I don't remember when I ran into Mitch but think it was in 1986 on one of the local BBS's. If I remember correctly he tended to post a lot of messages. He eventually started up a BBS of his own, turned it into an elite board, and set up to amass a collection of warez. During the time I knew him he seemed to change. Took on an elitest attitude I suppose you could say. Perhaps it is understandable considering most of us lamers wanted the latest warez and The Whizard had them on his BBS. We were leeches, pure and simple. And the worst of us were using 300 baud modems tying up his phone lines so other elite people couldn't upload or download.

I recall meeting Mitch twice. Once was when a pal and I went with him to see a movie--Creepshow 2. I don't remember much about the movie but I do remember Mitch driving about 80 Mph on a road posted with a 45 Mph speed limit. Crazy. The other time I saw him was a year or so after he was busted when I bought a couple hundred of his C-64 floppies off him the police returned (all pirated).

I suspect somewhere along the line he probably pissed someone off and they turned him in. Then he got set up on a credit card number selling scheme. If you want to read his story of these years I recommend visiting his web page: The Story of Midnight Sorrow.


Badd Boy

Ern and I hung out quite a bit more than Mitch--in fact, we even worked at the same place for some months. Ern was indeed elite but he never had the attitude many other pirates adopted. He was a friendly pirate/phreaker. He didn't mind sharing his warez. Hell, he was an importer so I suppose it was part of the job. Ern was busted a day or two before we were set to have a massive C-64 copy party. Word was all over the BBS's in South Florida about this party. I suspect the cops knew about the party and decided to take him down to stop the spreding of warez. Course they could have broken up the copy party and busted a lot of people for software pirating but software pirating wasn't (apparently) a big deal back then. With Ern out of comission the big copy party was cancelled.

Ern got busted for making illegal long distance calls. Sometimes I chatted with him and his pals from around the world via a conference call. It was cool especially when one realized how expensive long distance calls could be back then. I only saw Ern a couple more times after he got busted.This was due to me going to college and the fact that we no longer had the computer connection we use to.