"The Three Bad Ass Dudes": Our first run-in with Kris
Steve and I ended up meeting Kris of "The Three Bad Ass Dudes" sometime after he "attacked"
a BBS that Steve and I were "co-SysOps" (co-System Operators or co-administrators) of.
One of the more popular underground BBS'es in our home area code was run by a very dear
mutual friend of ours and required New User Voting (NUV) in order to apply and to
ultimately get an account on the BBS.
As co-SysOps, Steve and I were both part of the group that reviewed and voted on each
New User Voting application. I won't be providing Kris's "handle" in any of the articles
that I write, but he applied to this BBS and answered most of the questions in a very
arrogant way, so as to say, "I'm so elite that this New User Voting thing is totally
beneath me." Keep in mind that none of us knew at this point anything about Kris,
including the fact that he was probably deeper into, and in more control of, the local
telephone system then we could have ever imagined.
[Example questions and answers on Kris's New User Voting application:
* Please provide three references: <I believe that he may have provided valid references>
* What do the initials of such and such "warez", "art", or hacking group name stand for:
<Seems like the sort of question that was on most NUV applications, don't remember if
it was and if so, what Kris's answer might have been>
* Any other comments? Something to the effect of: "I'm elite as fuck and you should
consider yourself lucky to have me on your BBS."]
Anyway we thought that his answers were ridiculous and denied him an account on the BBS.
This is when all hell broke out.
The first thing that we noticed was that "Call Waiting" had been added to the BBS's phone line.
Since this was a very popular underground BBS, people were often trying to dial in. Dialing
into a busy phone line with Call Waiting means that a short notification tone will be played
onto the line by the telephone switch, which upsets the modem connection and typically results
in the on-going modem session being disconnected. This was rather disruptive, to say the least.
But we also speculated that he added Call Waiting as some sort of attempt to "hijack" an
existing modem session and get onto the BBS this way. As a precaution, we disabled the ability
for SysOps and co-SysOps to dial into the BBS, or at least to dial into the BBS and make use of
their administrative privileges.
At some point, the dad of the SysOp, who worked as an engineer at the local electric company,
said to us: "He must be in the switch." This was before my foray into telephone hacking and I
remember asking what he meant by that. I remember this being a very intriguing thing to have
heard. I also remember envisioning a mysterious windowless building somewhere, housing
computers, and this guy had secret access to it somehow. (This would turn out to be fairly
prescient regarding telephone company Central Office ("C.O.") buildings.)
At some point, Kris must have cross-referenced the phone number for the BBS to all of the
other phone numbers at the house where this BBS was located (a key skill I would later learn)
because he called one of the other phone numbers at the house and ended up speaking to my friend,
the SysOp. Kris was really angry and yelling at my friend and at some point said something to the
effect of, "I'll come over to your house at such and such address <the correct address for the house>
and throw your computer in your jacuzzi."
This was probably in like 1995 or 1996, long before most county Property Appraisers had put their
data ("tax rolls") on the Internet. (A permanent jacuzzi would be a feature that a
Property Appraiser would likely track so that they can tax you for it each year and so that it is
included in the valuation ("assessment") of your property's value.)
How did Kris know about the jacuzzi at the house? We were perplexed but we also thought that it
was ridiculous that he would try and use this piece of information to somehow try and scare us.
Later, I would figure out how he knew about the jacuzzi: via "Realtron", a local dial-up system
that gave access to all the county Property Appraiser data, likely for use by paying Real Estate
agents. In fact, one of the first "gifts" that Kris would later give Steve and I would be the
dial-up phone number and a set of credentials for ths very system (more on this in a future
Gopher article).
Anyway, I can't remember how all of this played out in the end. We either capitulated and gave
him an account or we didn't and he eventually got bored of trying to harass us.
I think this makes for a decent enough introduction article to the first time we ever crossed paths
with Kris. I'll be writing another Gopher article very soon that continues to chronicle our on-going
relationship with Kris and eventually meeting the two other "Three Bad Ass Dudes."
