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THE WATCHMAN THE TWISTED lIFE AND CRIMES OF SERIAL HACKER KEVIN POULSEN JONATHAN LITTMAN AUTHOR OF THE FUGITIVE GAME . CURRENT AFFAIRS/CRIME $24.95 FPT $33.95 in Canada The Fugitive Came exploded the myths about cybe rc ri mi nal Kevin Mitnick - and established Jonathan Littman as the world's premier chron- icler of the hacker underground. Now, in The Watchman, Littman returns with a riveting portrait of the most flamboy- ant and dangerous hacker of all - Kevin Poul sen Written like a California noi r thriller by way of William Gibson, The Watchman brings to life the wildest, most auda- cious crime spree in the history of cyberspace. Busted as a teenager for hacking into Pac Bell phone networks, Poulsen would find his punishment was a job with a Silicon Valley defense contractor. By day he seemed to have gone straight, toiling on systems for computer-aided war. But by night he burglarized telephone switching offices, adopting the personae and aliases of his favorite comic-book antiheroes - the Watchmen. When authorities found a locker crammed with swiped telecommunications equip- ment, Poulsen became a fugitive from the FBI, living the life of a cyberpunk in a neon Hollywood underground. Soon he made the front pages of the New York Times and became the first hacker charged with espionage. Littman takes us behind the headlines and into the world of Poulsen and his rogues' gallery of cyberthi eves Draw- . ing on hundreds of hours of interviews with Poulsen, his confederates, and the authorities, he spins a thrilling chase story on the electronic frontier. The nation's phone network was Poulsen's playground. On Los Angeles's lucrative radio giveaways, Poulsen worked his magic, winning Porsches and tens of thousands of dollars. He 03972445 Digitized by the Internet Archive 2014 in https://archive.org/details/watchinantwistedlOOjona THE WATCHMAN ALSO BY JONATHAN LITTMAN TheFugitiveGame:Online withKevinMitnick Once Upon a Time in Computerland: TheAmazingBillion-DoUarTaleofBillMillard WATCHMAN THE THE TWISTED LIFE AND CRIMES OF SERIAL HACKER KEVIN POULSEN JONATHAN LITTMANl 18 3 7 LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY Boston NewYork Toronto London —— Copyright© 1997 byJonathanLittman Allrightsreserved. Nopartofthisbookmaybe reproducedin anyform orbyanyelectronicormechanicalmeans, including informationstorageandretrievalsystems,withoutpermission inwritingfromthepublisher,exceptbyareviewerwhomay quotebriefpassagesinareview. FirstEdition LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-FublicationData Littman,Jonathan. Thewatchman thetwistedlifeandcrimesofserialhacker : — KevinPoulsen/JonathanLittman. isted. p. cm. Includesindex. ISBN 0-316-52857-9 — I.Poulsen,Kevin, 1965- 2.Computerhackers UnitedStates — Biography. 3.Com—puters andsociety UnitedStates. 4. Computercrimes UnitedStates. 5. Computersecurity UnitedStates. I.Title. HV6772.P68L57 1997 — 364.i6'8'092 dc2i 96-47168 10987654321 HAD PublishedsimultaneouslyinCanadabyLittle,Brown & Company(Canada)Limited PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica ForSherry hue andElizabeth Claire