[ RadSafe ] some historic and near current posts and links - Salsman

[Greg Landry]

from http://www.irational.org/APD/HE/html/S.htm

KARL MARX
Handle of James Salsman. Phreak and ex-member of LOD. Former sysop of Farmers of Doom BBS. [Handle came from a mention in the comic strip "Bloom County" about Communists.]

excerp from http://www.subgenius.com/subg-digest/v4/0123.html
------------------------------

From: James Salsman <bovik at delta.eecs.nwu.edu>
Subject: complain? me?
Message-Id: <199306040653.AA21671 at delta.eecs.nwu.edu>
Reply-To: bovik at eecs.nwu.edu
Organization: Bovik Research Inst.
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1993 06:52:59 GMT

Prof' Tygar writes:
> That's nothing. Opinion bboard readers won't be impressed until you
> get an entry in the next edition of the Hacker's Dictionary, an
> accomplishment already achieved by our erstwhile contributor Mr.
> Salsman.

Erstwhile? Not so fast! They always underestimated me at the University....

Well, since I've gained such perspective on the matter, I'd like
to mention a few of the reasons I ended up being the darling of
opbb readers' and much of the Internet's killfiles.

When I was an undergrad I was doing pretty well, but I had *major*
test anxiety. On the rare occasion I would show up for an exam, I
usually did a bit below the class average, but not much. I took
very few midterms, and fewer finals, usually spending the day shivering
under the covers. My homework, when I decided to do it, was always
pretty good, but I probably had the lowest QPA of anyone who attended
for as long as I did.

So, howcome I was enrolled for six full-time semesters? I'm not sure
about it myself, but I kept asking the Dean and they kept letting me
pay big bucks, about $30,000 altogether to drive my ego into the dirt
for another semester. They still say I owe $4,500 plus a few years of
interest leaving it at around $7,500, which is wrong, but the cashier
has long since stopped replying to my correspondence.

Finally I developed a significant enough Cannabis addiction to cause
other sorts of insurmountable problems that got me away from CMU to
West Virginia where the U.S. Dept. of the Navy, in an early-1940's
scramble to up rope production, planted about 30,000 acres of hemp
in the upper Potomac valley which has since spread, by nature and
horticulture, to nearly every county in the state. Sigh.

But the root of my problems, even before I was arrested by the United
States Secret Service in '86 (just after my 1st freshman semester),
was that my parents were feuding with each other, and I knew much of
what they were saying to me about each other was lies. The divorce
decree from the court had a lot to do with it, and they wouldn't let
me see it. Well, it so happens that the CMU Financial Aid Office
wanted a copy too, to keep my loans and matching subsidies coming I
guess, but my parents didn't even send it! This made me very mad,
but my father decided to pay the difference (the aid I had lost) by
himself instead of releasing the divorce decree. This made me
feel much worse because I knew I was wasting his money, not just mine.

There are a lot more gory details, but the fact of the matter is that
most people who are undergoing divorce are stupid, mainly because
of the stress, and they need common sense education (at their own
expense, Dr. T.) such has been mandated in Kansas, Georgia, Utah,
Indiana, and Ohio.

I spent 55 hours in Governor Caperton's office a few weeks ago on a
hunger strike trying to get the Hillbilly-Democrat establishment in
West Virginia to recognize the need, and they finally did, after
seeing the statistics from the Cobb County, Georgia pilot program.
There will be a Divorce Education Program in the West Virginia
Family Law Masters System in about three months! The West Virginia
Parents-Without-Partners organization is doing a three-part
biography of me in their newsletter (don't worry, all of you will
figure prominently in part two.)

So anyway, I'm sorry about all those things I said about the Warp
project, and all those misguided re-sends from LIS I. And please
pardon my (now diagnosed) bipolar disorder (i.e., manic-depressive
illness.) Brian Milnes, who bore the brunt of my wierdness back when
I was trying to shake up the establishment with a SOAR-style
production system implementation for the Connection Machine, returned
the Christmas card with my apology unopened, so if you see him in the
hall, tell him he was right and I was wrong.

And yes, I'm happy working temp jobs in Charleston
(*NOBODY*IN*THE*STATE* knows more about PC word processors than I do!)

KP+412+099+013+9+ST

:James Salsman

------------------------------


from  http://www.theparticle.com/files/txt/hacking/phrack/p07.txt



Marx and Tabas: The Full Story                                     July 1,1986
------------------------------
It all started with Cory Andrew Lindsly aka Mark Tabas, age 19.  He worked for
the Colorado Plastic Card Company and had access to the plastic cards that
credit cards were made with.  He had taken 1350 and stashed them away for later
usage.

His plan would have went perfectly if not for Steve Dahl.  He was busted in
Miami by the US Secret Service for whatever reasons.  They gave him a chance to
play ball.  Dahl had heard about Mark Tabas and Karl Marx's scheme and after
informing the Secret Service about this he was given an embossing machine.
Steve Dahl then flew to Denver and set up the meeting.  Mark Tabas lived in
Denver and wanted his friend James Price Salsman aka Karl Marx, age 18, to join
in on the fun.  So Marx flew down on a carded plane ticket that Tabas had
signed for.

The meeting took place in a room at the Denver Inn.  The room was bugged and 19
cards (Visa, MasterCard, and some blanks) were made from a possible 140 that
they had brought.  They decided to celebrate by ordering champagne on the card
of Cecil R. Downing.

A member of the Secret Service actually delivered the champagne to the room
disguised as a waiter.  Tabas signed for the drinks and the twosome were
nailed.  To make matters worse the SS also matched Tabas's signature with the
signature used to buy the carded plane ticket.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The sentencing goes like this:  Maximum: 10,000 dollars   (Local Law)
                                Maximum: 250,000          (Federal Law)
                                Maximum: 10 years in jail (both)

                       Or any combination of the three.

Both Tabas and Marx were let out on bail of five thousand dollars each.  The
actually charge is:  The manufacturing and possession of unauthorized access
devices.  The U.S. Magistrate Hilbert Schauer will be overhearing the case.

There is a rumor that charges on Salsman were dropped and that he is in no
trouble at all since he didn't actually buy the plane ticket, he was given it,
he didn't steal the cards, and he didn't emboss them.  So supposedly the Secret
Service let Marx go because he didn't know about the cards, he was just there
at the wrong time.

     Information Provided By The Denver Post and Sally Ride:::Space Cadet


from http://www.textfiles.com/digest/TELECOMDIGEST/vol10.iss0451-0500.txt


Date: Mon, 16 Jul 90 10:17:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: James Price Salsman <js7a+ at andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: CMU Story and Warning
Organization: Carnegie Mellon


 Since many people in educational establishments read this sort of
thing, I thought I'd relate a story from my freshman year here at
Carnegie Tech, along with a warning that might help others prevent
what happened to me.

 I enrolled late, and after freshman camp, my first exposure to
dormitory life came as temporary housing in the lounge of Scobell
Hall, a dorm dating back to the early 30's or so with plenty of
interesting wiring history.

 I was not a typical freshman hacker type; even for Carnegie Tech, I
had been a bit more acquainted with the telephone system than most of
my peers ... OKAY, I admit it, I used to blue-box off a CAMA trunk in
the 303 NPA and had been known to dial into the occasional Plovernet
or similar "phracker" BBS, including a particularly interesting one
known as "Farmers of Doom."  F.O.D. was operated by someone by the
name of Mark Tabas who said that he had re-wired a payphone into a
defunct extension in his home, and conned the CO into adding another
line to the pay phone.  While I'm not sure if this was true, the
F.O.D. extension number *was* similar to that of all the local
payphones (NNX-99XX).  Later, after F.O.D. had some sort of legal
difficulties, -99XX was changed to -2600.

 Anyway, I had put all the hacking nonsense behind me when I enrolled
in Carnegie Mellon: I was there to learn.  But to my dismay I
discovered that the "temporary" room in which I had been placed and
which the housing service indicated would probably be my abode for the
next four to eight weeks was missing a proper telephone connection.
This was quite distressing, so I decided to investigate to see if
anything could be done.

 It turned out that the temporary room had a wall socket, and an
extension had been assigned to the room in the R.A.'s phone plan, so
it seemed to just be a case of a wiring connection that needed help to
be completed.

 I explained all this in extreme detail to the Dean of Housing, who
seemed more impressed with my technical prowess than willing to act on
the problem: he explained that many of the people in temporary rooms
lacked telephone service, and the fact that my name was on the end of
the list for permanent housing was simply an unfortunate feature of my
college experience that I would benefit from having to live with.

 I didn't agree, and neither did my Resident Assistant.  After
securing his permission, and the permission of my neighbors so that I
could bridge our lines if there was no active line ready to be
connected to my room, I bid myK*$a"*E"[) Chem-E roommate goodbye and
set off to correct the oversight of the workers who last hacked on
Scobell Hall.

 The low-voltage wiring boxes were unlocked and clearly marked: I had
no trouble locating my room's extension.  I did have trouble, however,
trying to understand the purpose of the adjacent wiring.  After
determining that the rooms assigned centrex extension was probably
never turned on, I started to bridge by line into my neighbors.

 As soon as I had finished the nearly imperceptible job, a horde of
fire engines pulled in to Margaret Morrison Street with sirens blaring
and lights flashing.  I was stunned.  I knew where the fire circuits
were, and had carefully avoided them except for a single
high-resistance voltage meter check with.  Certainly no audible alarms
had gone off in the building, and the signal was such that even the
firemen seemed clueless as to their precise destination.

 How I avoided panic, I don't know.  I removed my encriminating bridge
and returned to my room, relating to my R.A. that I, as the obvious
culprit, would simply have to turn myself in.  That opportunity
presented its self shortly when the everhelpful CMU Campus Police
arrived to investigate.  Names were taken, stories were told and 
re-told.

 The next day I was placed on housing probation for a full semester:
another infraction and I would have been evicted!  The alarm had been
declared an error in the City equipment by the Fire Department; if it
hadn't I would have learned about the pleasures, nay, the relative
paradise of off-campus housing much sooner.

 The day after that, my roommate and I were moved to a permanent dorm
room.

 The next semester, I was arrested by the Secret Service, but that's
another story for another time.

 MORAL: Campus Telecom Administrators Everywhere, I urge you: please
make sure that all emergency wiring is clearly labeled as such, and
that terminal boxes are padlocked ... hackers will be hackers, and it
doesn't take a phone phreak from Carnegie Tech to cause far more
problems than you would ever want, and remember: An Ounce of
Prevention is worth a Gallon of Cure.


:James Salsman
::Carnegie Mellon


James Salsman
U.S. Citizen, and Proprietor of ReadSay Literacy Consulting

http://www.readsay.com/


www.oha.doe.gov/cases/foia/tfa0108.pdf 
http://www.bovik.org/du/du-petition.html
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=2005_register&docid=fr15jn05-24


 
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