Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion Dollar Cyber Crime Underground by Kevin Poulsen

cards amounted to over a billion dollars—$931,568,535 if you subtracted the legitimate owners’ outstanding balances. The only thing he’d been missing was a NASDAQ to trade on. Once the underground figured out that part of the equation, it would be an industry of its own.
    As soon as Salgado was arrested, he’d confessed everything to the FBI. That, Granick told the Def Con hackers in her presentation, was his big mistake. Despite his cooperation, Salgado had been sentenced to thirty months in prison earlier that year.
    “Now, the FBI wanted me to tell you that it was good for Mr. Salgado that he talked.” Granick paused. “That’s bullshit.
    “Just say no!” she said, and cheers and whistles swelled from the audience. “There’s never any good reason to talk to a cop.… If you’re going to cooperate, you’re going to cooperate after consulting with a lawyer and cutting a deal. There’s never any reason to give them information for free.”
    In the back of the room, Kimi prodded Max in the ribs with her elbow. Everything Granick was advising computer intruders not to do, Max had done. Everything.
    Max was having second thoughts about his arrangement with the feds.
    •  •  •
     
    “We need to make some changes in the way we do business.”
    Max could feel the frustration radiating from his screen as he read the latest note from Chris Beeson. Max had returned from Def Con empty-handed and then blown off a meeting at the federal building at which he was supposed to get a new assignment, pissing off Beeson’s supervisor, Pete Trahon. Continuing his e-mail, Beeson warned Max of dark consequences for continued flakiness. “In the future, missed appointments without exceptional reasons will be considered uncooperative on your part. If you are not willing to cooperate then we HAVE to take the appropriate actions. Pete is meeting with the prosecutor on YOUR case Monday. He wants to meet with you promptly in our office at 10:00am sharp, MONDAY 8/17/98. I am not available next week (that is why I wanted to meet with you this week) so you’re going to have to deal directly with Pete.”
    This time, Max showed up. Trahon explained that he’d become interested in Max’s boss at MCR, Matt Harrigan. The agent was alarmed at the idea of a hacker running a cybersecurity shop staffed with other hackers, like Max, and vying for a contract with the NSA. If Max wanted to make the FBI happy, he had to get Harrigan to admit he was still hacking and had played a role in Max’s BIND attack.
    The agent gave Max a new form to sign. It was Max’s written consent to wire him for sound. Trahon handed him a bureau-issued recording device disguised as a pager.
    On the way home, Max pondered the situation. Harrigan was a friend and fellow hacker. Now the FBI was asking Max to perform the ultimate betrayal—to become Digital Jesus’s real-life Judas.
    The next day, Max met Harrigan at a Denny’s diner in San Jose, without the FBI wire. His eyes scanned over the other diners and looked out the window into the parking lot. There could be feds anywhere.
    He pulled out a piece of paper and slipped it across the booth. “Here’s what’s going on.…”
    Max phoned Jennifer Granick after the meeting—he’d gotten her card at the conclusion of her Def Con talk—and she agreed to represent him.
    When they learned Max had lawyered up, Beeson and Trahon wasted no time in officially dropping him as an informant. Granick began phoning the FBI and the prosecutor’s office to find out what the government had planned for her new client. Three months later she finally got an answer from the government’s top cybercrime prosecutor in Silicon Valley. The United States was no longer interested in Max’s cooperation. He could look forward to going back to prison.
    * Harrigan’s involvement is in dispute. Max says he planned the BIND attack with Harrigan at the MCR office and that Harrigan wrote the program that built the target list