Meet The "Poway Cracker"

                             by Robert Blair Kaiser

                              The San Diego Union

                                 November, 1985


     Until the movie "WarGames," William Landreth - the "Poway Cracker" - was
playing his own game of stealth. But it harmed no one. "A criminal or a vandal,"
he said, "could have gotten away with a lot. I was neither."
     Landreth had discovered how to log in to a giant corporate computer and 
use a tiny piece of it as a kind of electronic bulletin board. For some months,
he and a handful of his computer friends (called "hackers") would phone the
computer in Alexandria, Va., for the price of a local phone call, trade
messages, software programs, news of equipment bargains, even bits of poetry 
and their own short stories.
     The computer belonged to the General Telephone and Electronics Corp., and
they leased access on it to about 2,500 users, including outfits like Raytheon,
NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. None of the other users
noticed Landreth and his hackers. They were like the wrasses and pilot fish that
live on the fringes of a whale's mouth, feeding on the tidbits that fall from
its teeth, no bother to the whale.
     Then came "WarGames," one of 1983's biggest hits, a thriller about a
teenage hacker who, by chance, found access to the NORAD computer inside a
Colorado mountain and almost started an accidental war. The young hero in the
movie bears a marked resemblance to Landreth, a slight, dark-haired, soft-spoken
youngster of 19 who has spent much of the free time in his life looking after
his eight younger brovers and sisters. Then things began to change. The movie
triggered thousands of others to go and do likewise. According to Landreth,
"Ten thousand computer freaks started breaking into computers all over the land.
They didn't know what they were doing. They started destroying information,
making threats and ridiculous demands. Like, 'I'll destroy the system if you
don't give me a free account.'"
     Landreth told the story yesterday in his darkened bedroom, cluttered with
several computers, monitor screens and otherg peripherals, a stereo system, 
and a marvelous collection of science fiction books and posters.
     On Tuesday in San Diego, U.S. District Court Judge Rudi Brewster accepted
his plea of guilty to one count of wire fraud. Sentence was minimal: three
years' probation and restitution of $87 to GTE "for computer time."
     But it was a warning to other hackers to mind their menus: Landreth had 
to spend three days in confinement at the Metropolitan correction Center in San
Diego for a series of psychological tests. He will also pay "a substantial legal
fee" to his attorney, Peter J. Hughes.
     In a telephone interview yesterday, Hughes said he had been disappointed
that federal authorities in Virginia took the matter to a grand jury without 
any local consultation. "The FBI made their raid. All of a sudden, there was a
felony indictment." He believes East Coast officials were heavy-handed.
     Not that the feds from the East had any corner on the official frown
market. Landreth recalled that two FBI men came to the door Oct. 13, all gruff
and grum and bearing a search warrant. With Landreth in charge of the 
household and many of his young siblings standing by, San Diego Special Agents
Darwin Wisdom and Norman I. Wright inspected the four-bedroom split-level ranch
house, then called in eight other FBI agents and radioed that they wouldn't 
bee needing other reinforcements standing by.
     "I guess they didn't have much information about me," said Landreth. 
"They didn't know the scope of the crime." But they did seize all of his
computer equipment (only recently returned, somewhat battered), stuff he'd
bought with his baby-sitting money, and he said they almost took his stereo
system as well.
     And the Department of Justice did seek (and get) a felony conviction,
something that shocked Bill Landreth's mother. "He's a wonderful young man," 
she said in a telephone interview yesterday. "We just couldn't understand why he
had to plead guilty to a felony. He may have been a little inconsiderate. But he
never damaged a thing inside the system."
     Landreth said, "I think they thought I was a kind of leader. They wanted 
to make an example out of me."
     Landreth's parents are stand-up types who prize individual autonomy so 
much that they changed their names to Susan and Gulliver Fourmoyle (from
Landreth) three years ago when they were making a new start in an import
business. Said Susan, "We wanted to feel that we had soem control over our own
lives, even over our own names." But they are not well off. Right now, they are
"between businesses" and planning a move to Alaska.
     So how will young Landreth (who decided to keep his own name) pay his 
legal fees? Fact is, he already has some cash in his faded corduroy jeans, a
publisher's advance for his own account of the adventure, "Out of the Inner
Circle," which will appear in March. The book will also include tips to 
computer people on how to prevent invasions by such as he.
     He conceived the book idea himself and had enough street smarts to find a
literary agent after the feds came knocking at his door October 1983. And not
only an agent, but Bill Gladstone of Del Mar, also an expert in computer 
books.
     Landreth said that when Gladstone gave himt he (customary) agent's 
command to produce an outline and a few chapters, he sat down to his IBM-PC
(with Microsoft Word) and tapped out prose that was so readable it needed no
rewriting. Gladstone had bids from both Simon & Schuster and Microsoft Press 
in Bellevue, Wash., a major publisher of computer books and programs, and
advised going along with Microsoft.
     Said Gladstone yesterday as he was getting ready to board a flight for 
Las Vegas and a national computer convention, "This is going to be a big book.
Microsoft has already committed more than $75,000 for advance publicity."
     Landreth spends a good deal of time in his darkened bedroom, which is 
also well stocked with science fiction books and posters all over the walls, but
he is no mole. Yes, many of his friends meet only via computer on various
(legal) electronic bulletin boards, and they share a kind of unspoken communion
every night at 12:30 when, said Landreth, many of them watch on TV "The David
Letterman Show."
     But he has a steady girlfriend, Jenny Perkes, a sophomore literature 
major at the University of California at San Diego, who lives right up the lane
in Poway. They go to the beach together and listen to music.
     Because he changed high schools four times (the most recent being Poway
High), he ended his high school career a few credits short in history. When he
makes those up, he will enroll at UCSD in - what else? - computer science.
     Is he tempted to explore the arcane and challenging data banks that he 
has found so accessible and so close as his own phone line?
     "I assume now," he said, "that everyone has stepped up their security. 
But I wouldn't put it past myself to try somethign someday. I could phone them
up and ask their permission. I don't know why they'd say no, if I asked them."