{"id":34,"date":"2006-04-19T04:18:30","date_gmt":"2006-04-19T08:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/2006\/04\/19\/brazillian-hacker-scene\/"},"modified":"2008-01-02T15:14:45","modified_gmt":"2008-01-02T19:14:45","slug":"brazillian-hacker-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/2006\/04\/19\/brazillian-hacker-scene\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazillian Hacker Scene"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

————————————————–<\/p>\n

HACKING IN BRAZIL
\n =================
\n<\/a>
\nBefore talking about hacking here, it’s good to describe the conditions
\nof living. Right now, the country is a mix of Belgium and India. It’s
\npossible to find both standards of living without travelling long
\ndistances. The Southern part of the country concentrate most of the
\nindustry, while in the west one can find Amazonia jungle. There are many
\nBrazils, one could say.<\/p>\n

Beginning with the hacking and phreaking.<\/p>\n

Hackers and computers enthusiasts have several different places for
\nmeeting. When this thing started, by the time of that film “Wargames”,
\nthe real place to meet hackers and make contacts were the computer
\nshops, game-arcades and “Video-texto” terminals. The computer shops were
\na meeting place because many of those “hackers” had no computers of
\ntheir own and the shop-owners would let them play with them as part of
\na advertising tool to encourage people buying it for their kids.<\/p>\n

Today that is no longer needed, since prices dropped down and people
\nmake a team already at schools or sometimes just join a BBS (most people
\nwho buy a modem, end up thinking about setting up a BBS). By the way,
\nmost schools are advertising computer training as part of their
\ncurricula, to charge more, and like everywhere, I guess, people no
\nlonger learn typewriting, but computer-writing, and many brazilian
\nnewspapers dedicate a section on computer knowledge once a week, with
\nadvertising, hints, general info and even lists of BBS’s.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, the “Video-texto” terminals were also big meeting
\nplaces. That was part of a effort to make popular the use of a
\ncomputer linked by modem to get services like msx-games, info on
\nweather, check bank account and so on. Just like the Net, one could do
\ne-mail, by some fancy tricks and other things that could be called
\nhacking. The difference was that it was made by the state-owned
\ntelephone company and each time the trick was too well know, it was
\nchanged. The only way to keep in touch was keeping in touch with the
\npeople who used the system like hell. It’s no different than what it
\nhappens with the computer gurus. The protocol used for that, X-25 is the
\nsame used for the banking money transfers, but don’t think it was
\npossible to do anything more than checking how much money one had and a
\nfew other classified data. People who used that at home (not too many,
\nsince the company didn’t think it would be such a hit, and didn’t
\nprovide for it) could spend their fathers money discovering funny things
\nabout the system, like messing with other people’s phones and so. One
\ncould also use the terminals at the Shopping Centers to make phone
\ncalls to their friends without paying. The guy at the other end would be
\nheard by the small speaker.<\/p>\n

Phreaking here in Brazil is something secret. Apart from the trick
\ndescribed in the section “Letters to read by” at the summer 1994 of the
\n2600 Magazine, where one would call through locked rotatory telephone,
\nlittle is known about phreaking. One thing is that people who enrolled
\nin Telecommunications Engineering could call Europe and USA with ease,
\nbut they would not tell you how. It must be said that all public phones
\nhave metal cables around the cables and that the phone machines are
\nquite tough to break down. I guess it wasn’t for beauty.<\/p>\n

The phones use some sort of metal coins called fichas, which must be
\nbought somewhere. The trick is to use a coin with a string, so it would
\nnot be collected. But if the police caught… The police doesn’t follow
\nrules about that. Either they put a fine on the guy for that, or arrest
\nhim for vandalism or anything else they think of at the moment. It is
\nhassle, anyway. My friend who was doing electrical Engineering told me
\nthat boxing in Brazil was impossible. The system is just not good enough
\nto be boxed. Another friend of mine told me that in the Northeast part,
\nwhere people are a little bit different and more easy-going, the phone
\nsystem can be boxed, because some top-brass asked the company to let
\nthat feature implemented. The Phone company doesn’t admit any knowledge
\nabout that.<\/p>\n

Internet access is something quite hard to get today. Until a few weeks
\nago, the system would not let the creation of a Internet site that was
\nnot part of some research project. So, only Universities and like were
\ncapable of putting people in the Net Universe. In the University of Sco
\nPaulo, people in the post-graduation courses could get it with ease, but
\ngraduating students would have to show some connection to a research
\nproject. That in theory, because the students found out that one could
\nuse the IBM CDC 4360 to telnet without a Internet account. Also, all the
\nfaculties that had computer rooms full of AT 386 which where linked by
\nfiber optics to this computer. Another one did the file transfers
\nbetween the accounts and the computer at the computer rooms and that
\nftp was also possible without an account, but only to a few sites, like
\noakland and so. That lasted for about a year, until that thing was
\nfixed in the router, but only at the Politechnik School. Says the legend
\nthat the guys were downloading too much GIF and JPG pictures of Top
\nModels from a ftp site nearby. That spent so much bandwidth that the
\nsite started to complain and both things happened: the site stopped to
\nstore GIF’s of wonderful women in swimsuit and the router was fixed to
\nprevent ftp without a Internet account. One can still today connect the
\noutside world via telnet and many people have accounts in Internet BBS
\nlike Isca BBS, Cleveland Freenet and like. The Bad Boy BBS was “in”,
\nuntil it went out of business. This kind of access is not good, though,
\nfor it is very slow, sometimes. Also, it is hard to download something
\nbigger than 60 kbyte. The way I devised, downloading the file inside
\nthe bbs and uuencoding it. This way you could list the file and capture
\nthe screen listing, uudecode it after some editing and have a working
\n.exe or .zip file.<\/p>\n

By these means one could, inside the Campus, do all downloading one
\nwanted, from anywhere in the world. Outside the campus, it is possible
\nto do it by phone lines, but: the Modem will not go faster than 2400
\nwithout character correction (no Zmodem at all). Which makes quite hard
\nto download compressed files. One could an account: that would be
\npossible by these means, but the amount of trash during the phone
\nconnection would make it real hard to type in passwords and like. To try
\ndoing any kind of thin g but reading letters by modem is some kind of
\ntorture. The real thing is to do it by “linha dedicada”, a special line
\nfor computer transmission. It’s much more expensive though, but if you
\nhave the money to spend with that…<\/p>\n

Perhaps the best way to get access to an Internet account though is to
\nbe part of the research project “Escola do Futuro” that among other
\nthings get schools linked by the Net. That’s what I did and they pay me
\nquite well to search for data in the Net, for the students of those
\nschools. The University of Campinas is said to give all students a
\nInternet account regardless of knowledge of what-it-is, as soon as the
\nguy(girl) gets in. Of course here there’s BITNET also. That’s doomed for
\nextinction, but this or that reason keeps people from closing it down.
\nMost teachers use it, guess there’s even some post-graduation work
\nwritten about that. It’s easier to access via modem, also. Old habits
\ndie hard.<\/p>\n

Outside the Campus, for common people, there are few opportunities. The
\nonly thing you can get, at least until the opening of commercial
\ninternet sites, something about to happen one of these days, is access
\nby mail. You join one BBS with Internet access, and your mail is sent by
\na Internet account later during the day. This is not a direct access,
\nas one can see, but it’s a easy way to access by modem. Problem is that
\nyou have to pay if you use it too much. The BBS’s that do it don’t do it
\nfor free, also. Connection to the Compuserve is also possible, but it
\nalso costs a lot of money, for my point of view.<\/p>\n

Because of the newspapers, the knowledge about Internet is spreading
\nfast and the number of sites is growing the same way everywhere else in
\nthe world. Even the military people are starting with it. There are plan
\ns to enhance it and make better connections, and some informative
\nmaterial is being translated in Portuguese, like “Zen and the Art of
\nInternet” and made available in the gopher.rnp.br. There are many
\nmirrors from many famous sites, like Simtel20 and at least one Internet
\nBBS, the “Jacare BBS” (Alligator bbs, available by telnetting
\nbbs.secom.ufpa.br – 192.147.210.1 – login bbs. World Wide Web sites are
\nbecoming sort of popular also, but still available only to a few people
\nwho are lucky enough to get the access. Brazilian hackers are not very
\nfond of sharing the knowledge of how to get access and other things,
\nsometimes because of fear of losing it, sometimes because the greed of
\nit would overcharge the system. There’s no hacker magazine here, yet,
\nand very few people confess their curiosity about hacking for knowledge
\nfor fear of not finding jobs. Anyway most would-be hackers either get a
\njob and stop hacking for fun or keep their activities secret in order to
\npursue their objectives.<\/p>\n

Today, Brazilian Hacker Underground did change a little. Lots of
\nmagazines, dealing only with Internet Issues, are being published. There
\nis a hacker zine, the now famous “Barata Eletrica”. This and the hacker
\nlist I created is starting to unite the computer rats, here. But I had
\nto stop hacking in order to write the e-zine. Too famous to do that.
\nAnother guy just started the thing. He did not learn with my mistake and
\nis signing it with his name, also. Received lots of letters, even as far
\nas Mozambique, praising the material, which is very soft, for fear of
\nlosing my net access. Twice my account was “freezed”. The people at my
\nsite are paranoid. Suffered too much from break-ins already. Most BBS’s
\nare trying to turn themselves in Internet providers or else, to get
\ne-mail access. There was a fear the State would control the thing, like
\nthey did with the Phone system. Can any of you guys imagine what it is,
\nto pay 4.000 US$ dollars for a phone line? In the City of Sao Paulo,
\n(look like L.A., one can say), that’s the average price. Cellular is
\ncheaper. Motorola rules. The public phone system was changed again. No
\nmore “fichas”. At least for long distance calls. It’s a small card that
\nlooks like plastic one side and magnetic material in the other. m still
\ntrying to do 2600 meetings. Oh, once in a while, there is a break-in
\nhere and there, and a hacker is interviewed in TV, but people are only
\nnow making the difference between the good guys (hackers) and the bad
\nguys (crackers). With Win95, people are losing fear of exchanging
\nvirus-sources files. The lack of philes in Portuguese makes it dificult
\nfor people to learn about hacking. People who know about it, don’t have
\nenough time to write. I started to unite some guys to do a translation
\nof “hacker crackdown”, but that’s another story. I shortened the name of
\nthe book to “crack.gz”. Guess what’s happened? My account is blocked up
\nto this day. They told me I’ll get my access back. One of these days.
\nOne of these days I’ll re-write this article, and tell the whole thing
\nin detail.<\/p>\n

Any Portuguese speaker that does not know about my e-zine,
\ntry a ftp.eff.org mirror. The URL:
\nftp:\/\/ftp.eff.org\/pub\/Publications\/CuD\/Barata_Eletrica<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

————————————————– HACKING IN BRAZIL ================= Before talking about hacking here, it’s good to describe the conditions of living. Right now, the country is a mix of Belgium and India. It’s possible to find both standards of living without travelling long distances. The Southern part of the country concentrate most of the industry, while in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[272],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-warfare"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}