March 21, 2014 at 05:58tKC or "How the deaf from Africa cracked the scene captured"
- Transfer
** Many have heard of Kevin Mitnick - the icon of the hacker community, but few people know that the cracker world also has its own icon - tHE kEYBOARD cAPER. This article describes the period when his team dominated the entire cracking scene.
I was born in South Africa, still here. White, 45+ years old ( at the moment - hereinafter approx. Manny Calavera ). Sorry, I won’t tell you the date of birth or my real name, but the fact is that my name is tKC . :-) And yes, I was deaf and grew up in a school for deaf children until I got into the usual one at the age of 13, because my speech was well developed and my condition was a little “better” than was required for special schools. I don’t speak sign language with my parents, which is why I communicate better than the rest of the deaf, if you know what I mean. And I don’t speak English because I grew up in an Afrikaans-speaking environment where I read lips.
In childhood, my friends and I were bad guys. We stole cars and motorbikes, rode a night or two, but then always returned them back, but not directly to that place. There were good times. Once we hijacked a blue Ferrari and, oh bl *, the cops stopped us. The girl who was with me told me to pretend to be deaf - they did so: they used sign language, pretended not to understand, and we were eventually released. After this incident, we decided not to engage in hijacking anymore.
On Christmas 1984, I got my first computer - Spectravideosimilar to Commodore, Spectrum, etc. and of course I loved messing with him. Some of my friends also already had computers. We exchanged games, and it was on Spectavideo that I began to learn programming on BASIC, but after a couple of months my computer was covered with a basin and my parents could not afford to buy a new one. It’s a pity, but in 1987 I graduated without computers.
In 1988, I got a job as a regular clerk at the bank, and in the evening I went to college, where I studied programming at COBOL. But those courses sucked and I scored on them after 5 months - too slowly. After that, I thought that my computers were not mine, but already in January 1990, I decided to look at the new XT (8088, 8 Mhz). I could not resist and bought. So I got my own PC, which I bought myself (8 Mhz, 20 Mbg HDD, monochrome). Damn, I didn’t even know what DOS is, I didn’t get it, what is C:>etc. I have never seen a PC before. But since I bought it, I decided to figure out what it was. I hung around the computer for days, with breaks for sleep before work. He began to forget friends, did not hang out with girls, etc. Within a few months I understood DOS well, and once South Africa got a new AT (80286, 12 Mhz) and I upgraded my PC to 286. Then I made friends with computer sellers and through them I got my first “free” software - Norton Utilities , PC-Tools, etc. I also got Pascal, which I still love.
I could no longer without a PC, only computers were in my head, people did not bother me anymore. Once, one of my friends gave me some toys ( Space QuestI / II). I’ve gotten rid of them, but all these copy protections soared me. I turned to my friends with the question: “ Where do you get crackers? ” But no one could directly answer me. I asked around and someone said that for this you need to learn ASM and HEX ... what the hell is this? Someone promised to get me a Borland's Turbo Debugger and Assembly. Without any manuals or lessons, after some time, I myself figured out how to edit HEX (using Norton's DiskEdit) and program on ASM. It was not so easy, because I did not write much, but simply broke and left the original EXE for backups (I did not know how to write patches then). And then I started asking friends to bring me games without crack so that I could hack and learn them myself, but my friends were happy that I gave them hacked games.
In February 1991, I heard about a new Beltel chat, similar to IRC. One of my friends decided to try this thing. All that had to be done was to buy a modem and create an account in Telkom, which he did. One evening I went to see him what it was, and I liked it. Then I bought my first modem (2400b) and created an account, and then the fun began. There I made a lot of friends, got access to Beltel spiral accounts that could be used for free. With hacking skills, Blade Runner and Doc Hollywood helped me a lot . I used the nickname Dr. Wolfen in Beltel after Blade Runner advised me on a cool game - Wolfenstein 3D.
In April 1991, I moved to another bank and this time to the computer department. After a couple of months, hackers asked me if I had heard anything about the BBS scene about which I had no idea then. They explained everything to me and gave me a couple of numbers of some BBSoks. I remember my first call to LeClub , it was very cool - a collection of files! I drew attention to how many crackers have already been made by different people. I downloaded them all that I saw, and studied on them. Most of them were created by the Razor 1911 team (for games). I started to hack more by downloading shareware from BBS. And soon I made and filled so many of my crackers that people paid attention to me. It was then that The Keyboard Caper was born .
August 1991, Blade Runner told me that at that time there were 2 main teams in South Africa: MoT ( Masters of Terror ) and HAi ( Hacking Attack Inc ), with MoT specializing in warez, and HAi purely in hacking, and I like- I didn’t have a burning desire to enter somewhere. One night, Acid Phreak (one of the founders of the Forest Crew hacker team ) said that I should start my own BBS and shortly afterwards I created my own board - Wolfenstein BBS. As a sysop, I was known as Dr. Wolfen because he didn’t want anyone to know that this is a tKC board. My BBS grew into the largest in South Africa and contained a large collection of crack and shareware programs. I became interested in MoT, and, after several calls, I managed to find the WHQ BBS that belonged to them. In addition, this board was quite "secret." I logged in under a fake name to look around. A feature of this board was that it received calls from other countries, which interested me. Most of the foreign calls came from Razor 1911.
Later I met Midi Maniac , who was a South African distributor of Razor 1911, and I also met Aphex Twin. I was obsessed with MoT and I wanted to know more about them, it seemed to me that they know much more than they want to show. I examined them WHQ BBS from bottom to top, and after a couple of weeks I was figured out. MoT members phoned my BBS and hacked it, leaving a message so that I would no longer meddle with them.
After several HDD crashes, I asked myself: what the hell am I letting them do this? If they can bend me, then why don't I bend them? Their WHQ BBS was the only UNIX-based system in South Africa, so it was hard to crack it at first, but it motivated me to learn UNIX (thanks to my friends at Beltel) and I broke their board. Of course, MoT lost their temper and released a whole demo, where they revealed that tKC is Dr. Wolfen People began to ask who I really am. On behalf of Dr. Wolfen I explained that tKC was supposedly my good friend. After many clashes, the MoT died ... finally.
After all this chaos, my board became more and more, growing with my crack, because I received a lot of requests for hacking. The question arose - what to do: hack it yourself further or join a group? At that time, HAi was the only cracking group in South Africa. After a couple of weeks, Acid Phreak taught me how to make free calls to the USA and South Africa. I got through to HAi HQ BBS and met her sysop Sputnik (who was the leader of HAi), we became friends, I also met SandMan . Friends or not, but I decided to show them who is the coolest cracker in South Africa and put tons of their crack on their board, sometimes beating them according to the speed of the first release. And then Sputnik invited me to join the team ... but I refused.
For several months I continued to crack software myself and at the request of. By then, I was already using Windows 3.0 for multitasking, although I didn't like it. He began to learn to hack Windows programs - hacked Windows Commander 1.0. :-) Once I noticed that someone Powerlord was logging onto my board , I looked at his address - the same school for the deaf I went to. I thought that he was also deaf (it later turned out that he wasn’t) and over time we became good friends.
June 1993, another computer department was transferred to the bank under my subordination. And you know what? There were more than 40 girls! Oh yeah! This is a job! :-) Most of them were 17-24 years old. It was fantastic.
Somewhere in 1993, Aphex Twin invited me to Forest Crew - it was a hacker team, strictly underground, with more than 30 members. I joined Forest Crew as an ANSi artist and demo coder. By that time, I had already made friends with a bunch of warez groups from across the ocean: Razor 1911 , ACiD , Hybrid , The Dream Team , etc. A few months later Forest Crew changed its name to Frozen Crew. But in 1994, without any announcement, Frozen Crew died out. Rumors claimed that most of the participants were covered in the raid. Yes, the cops and I rummaged at home, but could not find a single confirmation that I was also a hacker. I was crushed - how so, what now to do? I lost many contacts with hackers and continued to hack software alone. Some time passed, suddenly, Aphex Twin called my BBS. How glad I was! It was good to see him again.
I continued to crack software and didn’t want any teams, I wanted to make a name for myself, but after a few months I thought that I could do even more - still create my own team. I asked Aphex Twin if I could use the name Phrozen Crew and revive the team as a cracker, not a hacker. He gave the go-ahead and in June 1994 Phrozen Crew came to life with me as the founder, Lucido as the ANSi artist, Psylocke as the demo coder and Mutha as the musician. All members were complete newcomers to the cracker scene in South Africa.
Phrozen Crew released so many crack, demo, ANSi / VGA, which eventually became the largest team, overtaking all other South African groups, but I wanted more ... In May 1995, through a friend, I got a copy of Windows 95 Beta . I was stunned, it was cool, but with a lot of bugs, so I had to roll back to Windows 3.1. Fortunately, they soon drove me a copy of Windows 95 Final.
March 1996, I heard a lot about the Internet, and then, in one of the crackers uploaded to my board, I found UCF.nfo. From the file, I learned that contacting the UCF ( United Cracking Force - the unconditional elite 0day - approx.) is possible through IRC. IRC? What the hell is this? I talked to a friend of the sysop and he said that I definitely should try. By that time, his BBS was supported by the Internet, so I called him and went online through his board. Damn, well, everything was slow - a 28.8k modem, but it went online at a speed of 2400b. :-) With grief in half, I figured out how to use IRC and went to channel # ucf96, blurting out something in the chat. LostSoul ( one of the most powerful crackers in the UCF - approx. ) Asked if he could help me, to which I replied that I was from South Africa and just wanted to meet UCF. He was friendly, but because of the brakes, I could not stay online for more than 15 minutes.
In April 1996, I decided that I needed personal access to the network, although it was expensive, but I connected. Dial-up! I installed mIRC 3.x and went to # ucf96. LostSoul was polite again and we later became good friends. He invited me to #cracking and made me Opp there. Soon after, I met Marquis ' (founder of UCF - approx.) . He made me a member of the UCF, and my board became the official SA HQ for the team. I also joined several cracker teams and released crackers through them, but I did not forget about PC. My BBS was getting bigger and bigger, tons of crackers made people in South Africa happier. :-) I had 25+ distro sites, 50+ online conferences, 200+ calls per day.
In May 1996, I decided to create a Phrozen Crew channel in IRC and launched # pc96. He himself began to learn hacking through Softice , and once discovered W32Dasm 2.0. More and more people joined Phrozen Crew, and from July 1, we officially began to release cracking through the IRC ... and then it broke. Suddenly, people noticed me, the channel began to grow by leaps and bounds and I decided to close my Wolfenstein BBS, because it was hard to maintain both the board and the IRC.
After many months of hard work, Phrozen Crew has become the largest cracker team on the Internet. Because of this, I left all other teams except the UCF. Of course, the team leaders asked me to stay, but I still left them. You have no idea how many dating I made in the IRC, how many messages I received every day.
Suddenly, Marquis kicked me out of the UCF without explanation. I think that he just became envious, because the PC released a lot more crack than the UCF. Nevertheless, I still treated him as a friend.
In December 1996, I announced my departure from Phrozen Crew, left the IRC to spend more time in the real world. I sold all my computers ... God, what have I done?!?! Yes, you understood correctly - I got a girlfriend. :)
In June 1997, I picked up some kind of virus, I could not walk, I could not even move, it was a hell of a pain. Doctors could not make an accurate diagnosis, and only in July 1997 it became clear that it was a fucking Schistosomiasis! I felt a little better, but I still could not walk, because legs did not work. During July, when I was bedridden, I was wildly bored and wrote my first tutorial on a laptop, which I lent. A friend at work sent this tutorial to Thatdude ( who later became the third, and in the later history of the PC, the second person in the group - approx. ), Who distributed it and soon I wrote the second, but then I did not know if it was in demand or not, because I was offline.
In August 1997, I was still in the hospital. Although I felt a little better, my legs still did not move. And so, one of the doctors discovered why - the veins in my legs hardened. I had an operation to replace the veins, cutting my leg from the ankle to the groin and after that ... I could move my toes! Later I wrote my third tutorial, and by mid-September I got home for my two.
In October 1997, I bought my first laptop and decided to return to Phrozen Crew. By November, I bought an external modem at 33.6k and returned to already # pc97. It was great to meet all these people again, everyone was happy and I started hacking like crazy, though Softice didn’t pull my laptop (486, 8 Mb RAM). I wrote the fourth tutorial, and then the fifth, and only after that I found out how much demand they enjoyed and how famous they made my name.
In January 1998, I bought a Pentium (P166, 64 RAM, 6 Gb HDD, CD-RW and, oh yes, a 56k modem), finally it was possible to play again with Softice! :-) I released even more serials, keygens, and crackers to make people happy. May 1998, BRipperinvited me to write Oscar 10.x and I was glad to do it. On June 14th, I released Oscar 10.0, oh my God, people were thrilled, and soon after that there were rumors of new anti-piracy laws in the USA.
In July 1998, I quit the bank, deciding that I could make more money by programming. The superiors at the bank did not allow me to do programming, because I am deaf. What the hell is this? I knew Pascal, Delphi, Basic, Visual Basic, Visual C ++, C ++ Builder, Cobol, Assembly, Clarion, Fortran and a bit of Java. But everything went wrong as I wanted.
Because of all these anti-piracy laws, too many members of the group, too much openness for people from outside ... In short, I wanted to do the best for the PC and, after consulting Archimede ( actually - the team manager, the second person in PC after tKC - approx. ) made the biggest mistake of his life. On September 13th, I kicked out most of the members of the team and proclaimed the PC dead. The idea was to create a new team with only some of the old PC members. It was a damn hard day, as if the world had stopped spinning.
A few days later the “fired” PC members decided to unite under the old name, but I told them that the PC was dead and dismissed everyone again. Bad thing. After that, I literally felt that I was no longer welcome and I understood their feelings. I finally resigned as the head of an already dead PC, and a couple of days later I found out that they voted to ask me to come back again, but it was too late for me. The head was thinking poorly, so much in just such a short time. I think I just finally had to pay for fame and fame in the underground environment. And the price was great. I cried…
October 1998, I continued to release crackers under my name through the #cracks channel and so far I had no desire to work in any team. In mid-November 1998, after many shocks from the outside, I decided to create a new group - CiA, Crackers in Action . At the same time, I met the store owner who once sold me my first Pentium. He asked if I knew anyone who could help him hack one program (no, I did not tell him that I was tKC). I replied that I could do this and the next day I gave him a patch. And before I could say anything, he put a new Pentium II in my hands (P2-266, ATX, 128 RAM, 6 Gb HDD). Wow, that was a gift! :-)
December 1998, CiA grew rapidly and by the 31st we released 121 crack for December only and 157 in total.
In January 1999, I still did not have an official job, so I took on any hack to repair / configure the PC that my friends threw up. In addition, I was banned on #cracks, because, allegedly, I was trying to capture the channel. That is insanity. It became quite tight, on January 16th I turned off the phone, because I could not pay the bills. Oh, it seemed like time to find a permanent job. In March, an ex-girlfriend once went to visit, I quickly cooked something. They listened to music, joked, talked, talked, talked. I showed her all the programs that I wrote, even hacker ones. When she left in the evening, she said that she would try to come up with something with work. The next day, she called and asked to come to her. I came. Silently she handed me 2000 rand ( ~ $ 200 - approx.) and said that for now this is all that she can do. I felt like a beggar, it was unpleasant for me and I rested until the end, but still agreed, saying that I would definitely return everything. I was infinitely grateful to her. I paid the bills and returned to IRC on March 6th.
Back in '98, both hearing aids broke down when a girl at a party drunk pushed me into the pool and until May 1999 I had to live without them, because the new ones cost around 14,000 rand ( ~ $ 1400 - approx.) And in May, I helped a friend of my friend, who asked why I did not use a hearing aid, because I did not hear it corny. I explained to him that I could not afford them. The next day, this man, whom I hardly knew, came to me and presented me with two new hearing aids. What? How so? He explained that I seemed to him a good guy and definitely the coolest deaf of all that he saw. I accepted his gift.
In July of the 99th, I got a penny job in the Internet Cafe, but at least now I could sit in the IRC as much as I wanted, and I used it. However, there was still not enough money to pay the bills. In September 2000, I finally found an official job and was able to pay all bills.
October 9, today. Now you see that fame and fame may not be as attractive in real life at all as in the underground. And my life was far from so good, you have to pay for everything. Speaking of CiA. As of October 9, 2000, we had already released 1859 crack, counting from November 1998, not bad. And we are still growing. To all my fans: I will always be there, cracking software for you, as long as I can. I'm not an old man yet. :-)
Cracking in my blood ...
October 10, 2000,
tKC - The Keyboard Caper,
PhRoZeN CReW / Crackers in Action
This text was written by tKC for one e-mage, released in 2000, and was intended for people aware of the current state of affairs on the pirate scene. Whenever possible, I tried to clarify with my notes the roles of various people, as well as some features that tKC did not describe because of their banality, as it seemed to him. I also diluted the text with illustrations.
CiA grew, as befits a good team, but in the end it also sunk into oblivion in 2001. However, tKC did not lose heart and in January 2002 joined the Phrozen Hell team , which lived until 2006 and released more than 2,000 crack. At the same time, PC continued to exist, and in 2004, a girl stood at the helm of her - Nitallica , which, perhaps, everyone knew on stage.
It was rumored that under the pseudonym tKC was hidingMichael Steyn and several people with this name even exist on LinkedIn, but which of them is still unknown to the end, and the experience they have indicated differs from what is written in this article.
In any case, tKC has always stood out from the crowd of founders / leaders of pirate groups with its constant positiveness, openness and ability to win over any interlocutor. Everyone who has ever talked to him at the IRC will confirm that he is a wonderful conversationalist and just an interesting person who also left a huge mark in the history of the pirate community.
PS
- Childhood
- First PC and first BBS
- Wolfenstein BBS and the first conflict
- Windows era and first raid
- Creation of Phrozen Crew and the Internet
- The largest team in the world
- Disease
- Return to the stage
- Sudden Death and CIA
- Unemployed
- Epilogue
- Translator's afterword
Childhood
I was born in South Africa, still here. White, 45+ years old ( at the moment - hereinafter approx. Manny Calavera ). Sorry, I won’t tell you the date of birth or my real name, but the fact is that my name is tKC . :-) And yes, I was deaf and grew up in a school for deaf children until I got into the usual one at the age of 13, because my speech was well developed and my condition was a little “better” than was required for special schools. I don’t speak sign language with my parents, which is why I communicate better than the rest of the deaf, if you know what I mean. And I don’t speak English because I grew up in an Afrikaans-speaking environment where I read lips.
In childhood, my friends and I were bad guys. We stole cars and motorbikes, rode a night or two, but then always returned them back, but not directly to that place. There were good times. Once we hijacked a blue Ferrari and, oh bl *, the cops stopped us. The girl who was with me told me to pretend to be deaf - they did so: they used sign language, pretended not to understand, and we were eventually released. After this incident, we decided not to engage in hijacking anymore.
On Christmas 1984, I got my first computer - Spectravideosimilar to Commodore, Spectrum, etc. and of course I loved messing with him. Some of my friends also already had computers. We exchanged games, and it was on Spectavideo that I began to learn programming on BASIC, but after a couple of months my computer was covered with a basin and my parents could not afford to buy a new one. It’s a pity, but in 1987 I graduated without computers.
First PC and first BBS
In 1988, I got a job as a regular clerk at the bank, and in the evening I went to college, where I studied programming at COBOL. But those courses sucked and I scored on them after 5 months - too slowly. After that, I thought that my computers were not mine, but already in January 1990, I decided to look at the new XT (8088, 8 Mhz). I could not resist and bought. So I got my own PC, which I bought myself (8 Mhz, 20 Mbg HDD, monochrome). Damn, I didn’t even know what DOS is, I didn’t get it, what is C:>etc. I have never seen a PC before. But since I bought it, I decided to figure out what it was. I hung around the computer for days, with breaks for sleep before work. He began to forget friends, did not hang out with girls, etc. Within a few months I understood DOS well, and once South Africa got a new AT (80286, 12 Mhz) and I upgraded my PC to 286. Then I made friends with computer sellers and through them I got my first “free” software - Norton Utilities , PC-Tools, etc. I also got Pascal, which I still love.
I could no longer without a PC, only computers were in my head, people did not bother me anymore. Once, one of my friends gave me some toys ( Space QuestI / II). I’ve gotten rid of them, but all these copy protections soared me. I turned to my friends with the question: “ Where do you get crackers? ” But no one could directly answer me. I asked around and someone said that for this you need to learn ASM and HEX ... what the hell is this? Someone promised to get me a Borland's Turbo Debugger and Assembly. Without any manuals or lessons, after some time, I myself figured out how to edit HEX (using Norton's DiskEdit) and program on ASM. It was not so easy, because I did not write much, but simply broke and left the original EXE for backups (I did not know how to write patches then). And then I started asking friends to bring me games without crack so that I could hack and learn them myself, but my friends were happy that I gave them hacked games.
In February 1991, I heard about a new Beltel chat, similar to IRC. One of my friends decided to try this thing. All that had to be done was to buy a modem and create an account in Telkom, which he did. One evening I went to see him what it was, and I liked it. Then I bought my first modem (2400b) and created an account, and then the fun began. There I made a lot of friends, got access to Beltel spiral accounts that could be used for free. With hacking skills, Blade Runner and Doc Hollywood helped me a lot . I used the nickname Dr. Wolfen in Beltel after Blade Runner advised me on a cool game - Wolfenstein 3D.
In April 1991, I moved to another bank and this time to the computer department. After a couple of months, hackers asked me if I had heard anything about the BBS scene about which I had no idea then. They explained everything to me and gave me a couple of numbers of some BBSoks. I remember my first call to LeClub , it was very cool - a collection of files! I drew attention to how many crackers have already been made by different people. I downloaded them all that I saw, and studied on them. Most of them were created by the Razor 1911 team (for games). I started to hack more by downloading shareware from BBS. And soon I made and filled so many of my crackers that people paid attention to me. It was then that The Keyboard Caper was born .Wolfenstein BBS and the first conflict
August 1991, Blade Runner told me that at that time there were 2 main teams in South Africa: MoT ( Masters of Terror ) and HAi ( Hacking Attack Inc ), with MoT specializing in warez, and HAi purely in hacking, and I like- I didn’t have a burning desire to enter somewhere. One night, Acid Phreak (one of the founders of the Forest Crew hacker team ) said that I should start my own BBS and shortly afterwards I created my own board - Wolfenstein BBS. As a sysop, I was known as Dr. Wolfen because he didn’t want anyone to know that this is a tKC board. My BBS grew into the largest in South Africa and contained a large collection of crack and shareware programs. I became interested in MoT, and, after several calls, I managed to find the WHQ BBS that belonged to them. In addition, this board was quite "secret." I logged in under a fake name to look around. A feature of this board was that it received calls from other countries, which interested me. Most of the foreign calls came from Razor 1911.
Later I met Midi Maniac , who was a South African distributor of Razor 1911, and I also met Aphex Twin. I was obsessed with MoT and I wanted to know more about them, it seemed to me that they know much more than they want to show. I examined them WHQ BBS from bottom to top, and after a couple of weeks I was figured out. MoT members phoned my BBS and hacked it, leaving a message so that I would no longer meddle with them.After several HDD crashes, I asked myself: what the hell am I letting them do this? If they can bend me, then why don't I bend them? Their WHQ BBS was the only UNIX-based system in South Africa, so it was hard to crack it at first, but it motivated me to learn UNIX (thanks to my friends at Beltel) and I broke their board. Of course, MoT lost their temper and released a whole demo, where they revealed that tKC is Dr. Wolfen People began to ask who I really am. On behalf of Dr. Wolfen I explained that tKC was supposedly my good friend. After many clashes, the MoT died ... finally.
After all this chaos, my board became more and more, growing with my crack, because I received a lot of requests for hacking. The question arose - what to do: hack it yourself further or join a group? At that time, HAi was the only cracking group in South Africa. After a couple of weeks, Acid Phreak taught me how to make free calls to the USA and South Africa. I got through to HAi HQ BBS and met her sysop Sputnik (who was the leader of HAi), we became friends, I also met SandMan . Friends or not, but I decided to show them who is the coolest cracker in South Africa and put tons of their crack on their board, sometimes beating them according to the speed of the first release. And then Sputnik invited me to join the team ... but I refused.
Windows era and first raid
For several months I continued to crack software myself and at the request of. By then, I was already using Windows 3.0 for multitasking, although I didn't like it. He began to learn to hack Windows programs - hacked Windows Commander 1.0. :-) Once I noticed that someone Powerlord was logging onto my board , I looked at his address - the same school for the deaf I went to. I thought that he was also deaf (it later turned out that he wasn’t) and over time we became good friends.
June 1993, another computer department was transferred to the bank under my subordination. And you know what? There were more than 40 girls! Oh yeah! This is a job! :-) Most of them were 17-24 years old. It was fantastic.
Somewhere in 1993, Aphex Twin invited me to Forest Crew - it was a hacker team, strictly underground, with more than 30 members. I joined Forest Crew as an ANSi artist and demo coder. By that time, I had already made friends with a bunch of warez groups from across the ocean: Razor 1911 , ACiD , Hybrid , The Dream Team , etc. A few months later Forest Crew changed its name to Frozen Crew. But in 1994, without any announcement, Frozen Crew died out. Rumors claimed that most of the participants were covered in the raid. Yes, the cops and I rummaged at home, but could not find a single confirmation that I was also a hacker. I was crushed - how so, what now to do? I lost many contacts with hackers and continued to hack software alone. Some time passed, suddenly, Aphex Twin called my BBS. How glad I was! It was good to see him again.
(During its existence, tKC teams more than once fell under raids and arrested some participants, which subsequently caused the entire cracking scene to begin to take anonymity more seriously, although South Africa has always remained an island of safety for pirates - approx.)
Creation of Phrozen Crew and the Internet
I continued to crack software and didn’t want any teams, I wanted to make a name for myself, but after a few months I thought that I could do even more - still create my own team. I asked Aphex Twin if I could use the name Phrozen Crew and revive the team as a cracker, not a hacker. He gave the go-ahead and in June 1994 Phrozen Crew came to life with me as the founder, Lucido as the ANSi artist, Psylocke as the demo coder and Mutha as the musician. All members were complete newcomers to the cracker scene in South Africa.
Phrozen Crew released so many crack, demo, ANSi / VGA, which eventually became the largest team, overtaking all other South African groups, but I wanted more ... In May 1995, through a friend, I got a copy of Windows 95 Beta . I was stunned, it was cool, but with a lot of bugs, so I had to roll back to Windows 3.1. Fortunately, they soon drove me a copy of Windows 95 Final.
March 1996, I heard a lot about the Internet, and then, in one of the crackers uploaded to my board, I found UCF.nfo. From the file, I learned that contacting the UCF ( United Cracking Force - the unconditional elite 0day - approx.) is possible through IRC. IRC? What the hell is this? I talked to a friend of the sysop and he said that I definitely should try. By that time, his BBS was supported by the Internet, so I called him and went online through his board. Damn, well, everything was slow - a 28.8k modem, but it went online at a speed of 2400b. :-) With grief in half, I figured out how to use IRC and went to channel # ucf96, blurting out something in the chat. LostSoul ( one of the most powerful crackers in the UCF - approx. ) Asked if he could help me, to which I replied that I was from South Africa and just wanted to meet UCF. He was friendly, but because of the brakes, I could not stay online for more than 15 minutes.
In April 1996, I decided that I needed personal access to the network, although it was expensive, but I connected. Dial-up! I installed mIRC 3.x and went to # ucf96. LostSoul was polite again and we later became good friends. He invited me to #cracking and made me Opp there. Soon after, I met Marquis ' (founder of UCF - approx.) . He made me a member of the UCF, and my board became the official SA HQ for the team. I also joined several cracker teams and released crackers through them, but I did not forget about PC. My BBS was getting bigger and bigger, tons of crackers made people in South Africa happier. :-) I had 25+ distro sites, 50+ online conferences, 200+ calls per day.(At that time, there was still no intense competition between UCF and PC, as many members of Phrozen Crew were also members of UCF. This sometimes created confusion on the boards, but held back the situation until PC got the so-called “elite positions” - according to in fact, just Elite badges in .nfo and a custom hirez art for each member. After that, some UCF members left the team for the sake of PC. Another factor that contributed to the transition was a larger number of distribution channels from Phrozen Crew - approx.)
The largest team in the world
In May 1996, I decided to create a Phrozen Crew channel in IRC and launched # pc96. He himself began to learn hacking through Softice , and once discovered W32Dasm 2.0. More and more people joined Phrozen Crew, and from July 1, we officially began to release cracking through the IRC ... and then it broke. Suddenly, people noticed me, the channel began to grow by leaps and bounds and I decided to close my Wolfenstein BBS, because it was hard to maintain both the board and the IRC.
After many months of hard work, Phrozen Crew has become the largest cracker team on the Internet. Because of this, I left all other teams except the UCF. Of course, the team leaders asked me to stay, but I still left them. You have no idea how many dating I made in the IRC, how many messages I received every day.
Suddenly, Marquis kicked me out of the UCF without explanation. I think that he just became envious, because the PC released a lot more crack than the UCF. Nevertheless, I still treated him as a friend.
(At this point, the UCF consisted of 14 people, with only half of them engaged in hacking; at the same time, the PC consisted of 20 people only directly crackers with a total of 32 people. Largely because of the competition between UCF and PC , the first ones decided to crush everyone with skills and began to concentrate almost entirely on keygens. So, in 2000, keygens accounted for 91% of UCF releases - approx.)
Disease
In December 1996, I announced my departure from Phrozen Crew, left the IRC to spend more time in the real world. I sold all my computers ... God, what have I done?!?! Yes, you understood correctly - I got a girlfriend. :)
(By the way, tKC was never shy, and a significant part of his love affairs with scenic girls was omitted in this translation, because she still has little to do with Habr’s theme. In other words, he never has problems with women it was and at a certain period he even lived as an "alpha" - approx.)
In June 1997, I picked up some kind of virus, I could not walk, I could not even move, it was a hell of a pain. Doctors could not make an accurate diagnosis, and only in July 1997 it became clear that it was a fucking Schistosomiasis! I felt a little better, but I still could not walk, because legs did not work. During July, when I was bedridden, I was wildly bored and wrote my first tutorial on a laptop, which I lent. A friend at work sent this tutorial to Thatdude ( who later became the third, and in the later history of the PC, the second person in the group - approx. ), Who distributed it and soon I wrote the second, but then I did not know if it was in demand or not, because I was offline.
(Already, with its first tutorial, tKC literally blew up the Internet and the curve of interest in cracking and the scene among the general public sharply went up almost at an angle of 90 degrees. This resulted in a rapid increase in cracker teams and, consequently, an increase in pirated traffic. TKC tutorials were published in some e-mages and communities - approx.)
In August 1997, I was still in the hospital. Although I felt a little better, my legs still did not move. And so, one of the doctors discovered why - the veins in my legs hardened. I had an operation to replace the veins, cutting my leg from the ankle to the groin and after that ... I could move my toes! Later I wrote my third tutorial, and by mid-September I got home for my two.
Return to the stage
In October 1997, I bought my first laptop and decided to return to Phrozen Crew. By November, I bought an external modem at 33.6k and returned to already # pc97. It was great to meet all these people again, everyone was happy and I started hacking like crazy, though Softice didn’t pull my laptop (486, 8 Mb RAM). I wrote the fourth tutorial, and then the fifth, and only after that I found out how much demand they enjoyed and how famous they made my name.
In January 1998, I bought a Pentium (P166, 64 RAM, 6 Gb HDD, CD-RW and, oh yes, a 56k modem), finally it was possible to play again with Softice! :-) I released even more serials, keygens, and crackers to make people happy. May 1998, BRipperinvited me to write Oscar 10.x and I was glad to do it. On June 14th, I released Oscar 10.0, oh my God, people were thrilled, and soon after that there were rumors of new anti-piracy laws in the USA.(Oscar was one of the first, if not the first, offline database of serial numbers and keyfiles for various programs. The database included thousands of accounts, at its peak collecting almost 8 thousand serial numbers. Since the year 98, it has been releasing PC, but other teams also supported the Oscar format and released their updates for this collection.In the 90s and early 2000s, Oscar could often be found on CD collections like “Everything for Hacking” or “Hacker Toolkit '99” - approx .)
(At that time, there were already 59 people on the PC, most of whom were crackers and thanks to such a large staff Phrozen Crew literally bombarded the stage with releases, in most cases winning the rest of the teams in reaction time on a large number of boards. A huge fan community was formed around the team, which helped the members of the group in many ways, including distribution - approx.)
In July 1998, I quit the bank, deciding that I could make more money by programming. The superiors at the bank did not allow me to do programming, because I am deaf. What the hell is this? I knew Pascal, Delphi, Basic, Visual Basic, Visual C ++, C ++ Builder, Cobol, Assembly, Clarion, Fortran and a bit of Java. But everything went wrong as I wanted.
Sudden Death and CIA
Because of all these anti-piracy laws, too many members of the group, too much openness for people from outside ... In short, I wanted to do the best for the PC and, after consulting Archimede ( actually - the team manager, the second person in PC after tKC - approx. ) made the biggest mistake of his life. On September 13th, I kicked out most of the members of the team and proclaimed the PC dead. The idea was to create a new team with only some of the old PC members. It was a damn hard day, as if the world had stopped spinning.
(In 1997-2003 there were many raids on the pirate scene, which led to the fact that many of the top teams even suspended their activities for a while and almost all decided to reduce their numbers in order to maintain security. By this time, the PC had a list of more than 5,000 releases - approx.)
A few days later the “fired” PC members decided to unite under the old name, but I told them that the PC was dead and dismissed everyone again. Bad thing. After that, I literally felt that I was no longer welcome and I understood their feelings. I finally resigned as the head of an already dead PC, and a couple of days later I found out that they voted to ask me to come back again, but it was too late for me. The head was thinking poorly, so much in just such a short time. I think I just finally had to pay for fame and fame in the underground environment. And the price was great. I cried…
October 1998, I continued to release crackers under my name through the #cracks channel and so far I had no desire to work in any team. In mid-November 1998, after many shocks from the outside, I decided to create a new group - CiA, Crackers in Action . At the same time, I met the store owner who once sold me my first Pentium. He asked if I knew anyone who could help him hack one program (no, I did not tell him that I was tKC). I replied that I could do this and the next day I gave him a patch. And before I could say anything, he put a new Pentium II in my hands (P2-266, ATX, 128 RAM, 6 Gb HDD). Wow, that was a gift! :-)December 1998, CiA grew rapidly and by the 31st we released 121 crack for December only and 157 in total.
(CiA, too, in general, was not a small team and consisted of an average of about 20+ members during its activity, expanding to 31 participants as much as possible in 2000. At the same time, CiA, like Phrozen Crew, was not they took great care of the rules of the scene, did not follow the dupes, were rather mediocre about the slogans “only keygens” and were generally quite free and democratic team, which attracted users to them, as they once attracted to the PC. - approx.)
Unemployed
In January 1999, I still did not have an official job, so I took on any hack to repair / configure the PC that my friends threw up. In addition, I was banned on #cracks, because, allegedly, I was trying to capture the channel. That is insanity. It became quite tight, on January 16th I turned off the phone, because I could not pay the bills. Oh, it seemed like time to find a permanent job. In March, an ex-girlfriend once went to visit, I quickly cooked something. They listened to music, joked, talked, talked, talked. I showed her all the programs that I wrote, even hacker ones. When she left in the evening, she said that she would try to come up with something with work. The next day, she called and asked to come to her. I came. Silently she handed me 2000 rand ( ~ $ 200 - approx.) and said that for now this is all that she can do. I felt like a beggar, it was unpleasant for me and I rested until the end, but still agreed, saying that I would definitely return everything. I was infinitely grateful to her. I paid the bills and returned to IRC on March 6th.
Back in '98, both hearing aids broke down when a girl at a party drunk pushed me into the pool and until May 1999 I had to live without them, because the new ones cost around 14,000 rand ( ~ $ 1400 - approx.) And in May, I helped a friend of my friend, who asked why I did not use a hearing aid, because I did not hear it corny. I explained to him that I could not afford them. The next day, this man, whom I hardly knew, came to me and presented me with two new hearing aids. What? How so? He explained that I seemed to him a good guy and definitely the coolest deaf of all that he saw. I accepted his gift.
In July of the 99th, I got a penny job in the Internet Cafe, but at least now I could sit in the IRC as much as I wanted, and I used it. However, there was still not enough money to pay the bills. In September 2000, I finally found an official job and was able to pay all bills.
Epilogue
October 9, today. Now you see that fame and fame may not be as attractive in real life at all as in the underground. And my life was far from so good, you have to pay for everything. Speaking of CiA. As of October 9, 2000, we had already released 1859 crack, counting from November 1998, not bad. And we are still growing. To all my fans: I will always be there, cracking software for you, as long as I can. I'm not an old man yet. :-)
Cracking in my blood ...
October 10, 2000,
tKC - The Keyboard Caper,
PhRoZeN CReW / Crackers in Action
Translator's afterword
This text was written by tKC for one e-mage, released in 2000, and was intended for people aware of the current state of affairs on the pirate scene. Whenever possible, I tried to clarify with my notes the roles of various people, as well as some features that tKC did not describe because of their banality, as it seemed to him. I also diluted the text with illustrations.
CiA grew, as befits a good team, but in the end it also sunk into oblivion in 2001. However, tKC did not lose heart and in January 2002 joined the Phrozen Hell team , which lived until 2006 and released more than 2,000 crack. At the same time, PC continued to exist, and in 2004, a girl stood at the helm of her - Nitallica , which, perhaps, everyone knew on stage. It was rumored that under the pseudonym tKC was hidingMichael Steyn and several people with this name even exist on LinkedIn, but which of them is still unknown to the end, and the experience they have indicated differs from what is written in this article.
In any case, tKC has always stood out from the crowd of founders / leaders of pirate groups with its constant positiveness, openness and ability to win over any interlocutor. Everyone who has ever talked to him at the IRC will confirm that he is a wonderful conversationalist and just an interesting person who also left a huge mark in the history of the pirate community.
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