HipCrime: A History in URLs July 1996 - May 1998
Rob Mitchell
The origin of the name "Hipcrime" is often attributed to author John
Brunner, whose 1968 futuristic novel "Stand on Zanzibar" (which won a
Hugo award for best science fiction novel the following year) includes
the character Chad C. Mulligan, a sociologist, who in the novel has
written a book entitled, "The Hipcrime Vocab." As the quotes from
this "book" which appear in the novel are considerably more erudite
than the Internet entity which is the subject of this present series,
the choice of nickname can perhaps be passed off as insignificant.
7-18-96: The earliest mention in Usenet of www.hipcrime.com archived
by Deja/Google. The site is, sadly, as is the case with quite a few
others Hipcrime created, no longer available:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=86c56e65b7c0a609
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=5e55981fea71d11d
7-30-96 to 8-28-96: A bit about Hipcrime's "hostile applets":
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=1213d1d3c0cb88c0
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=164e56e874798d7d
9-12-96 to 9-13-96: My, but it seems that Hipcrime was into Internet
abuse from the beginning. Here is the first description of an applet
which apparently scoured the Internet for mailto links on webpages, &
then sent emails to advertise Robert's site. Apparently Robert was in
San Francisco at this time:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=34c66f8d2444b1be
9-26-96: It seems that, even as early as this in France,
www.hipcrime.com was entering blacklists & making its acquaintance
with Dave Null, along with such noble company as Cyberpromo &
grubor.com, both of which are also, alas, long deceased, although the
latter still as of this writing [7-13-01] appears as an empty index
(Message 8 in thread; you must click "Read the rest of this
message..." to view the entire article):
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=d4d8ae884b53bcfa
9-28-96 to 10-5-96: Apparently those little hostile applets were
starting to become more widely known:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=966c2b13fafb01f9
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=46fd1af11daf352a
9-29-96: Hip soon decided that it would be a good idea to begin
advertising his site in Usenet also, although what on earth this had
to do with this particular science fiction television show I'm sure I
don't know:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=ec82fca717f31909
11-3-96 to 4-9-97: The little applets were now starting to catch the
attention of despammers. Note the author of the 1st article in the
last thread in this group, "Forged e-mail to government? Mailing list
bombs?"; he'll be discussed again presently:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=de472a3842e616e5
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=b7169e44710ebe4f
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=e684bba493462a06
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=1c33589407e2df26
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=f00c95087184eebe
http://groups.google.com/groups?&th=105749aafcb807f9
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=9565aef6ff4cfd2
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=e74f7ac80f10177e
http://groups.google.com/groups?&th=a80054e00752e807
1-18-97: Here we see HipCrime advertising ActiveAgent in, of all
places, alt.fan.howard-stern, a newsgroup which, interestingly, he has
flooded with nonsense articles much more recently in July 2001, as
part of his little war against anti-spammers. Unfortunately for him,
this may well turn the readers of that group into anti-spammers
themselves. The advertisements were also posted to the rec.scuba*
hierarchy, though what these scripts had to do with underwater
expeditions I'm sure I don't know; apparently Hip thought his "vitally
important message" was of greater import than the subjects the readers
of those groups had gathered to discuss:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=2389689a2409cf31
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=5acdc4a79b524b77
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=805aa58ef5be9e52
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=4c245f59687082cd
1-23-97: Lysergic acid & hipcrime.com? Well, no wonder. ;-) :
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=61e77e9e696ff78b
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=eca179fe1b029885
4-6-97: Here a full explanation is given as to how ActiveAgent works,
apparently copied from a response by HipCrime himself to an inquiry:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=7c852a86956d1b1a
4-23-97: HipCrime graduates to listbombing his critics, &
coincidentally contributes to more email lists requiring closed-loop
confirmation. This would hardly be the last time his tactics would
inadvertently result in sterner measures against Internet abuse. The
reader may note here that this victim was also the poster who started
the 4-9-97 thread cited above, "Forged e-mail to government? Mailing
list bombs?" This is the earliest documented example in Usenet of
Hip's fondness for floods of messages with random nonsense texts,
which he would display ad nauseum to many people over the next several
years; one also sees here the earliest documentation of HipCrime's
typical confusion of censorship with fighting abuse which threatens to
drown out all other communications ("Shortly thereafter, a 'Fight
Censorship' web page went up on the HipCrime pages..."). Note in the
2nd thread the earliest appearance of Mr. Sam of nanae fame in a
thread discussing HipCrime:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=820ba71fd12c1703
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=12fda6876a1df28d
5-3-97 to 5-15-97: This was the real beginning of fairly continuous
attention being paid to HipCrime in nanae
(news.admin.net-abuse.email), due to that naughty little applet
emailing quite a few addresses on quite a few webpages; it appears
also that anti-spammers were specifically targetted. Of course, the
Geocities pages indicated, which contained the addresses of over 200
anti-spammers, are long gone, their untimely demise being announced in
the 2nd thread (click "Next 10 messages in thread" to continue to each
subsequent page of articles). Apparently the proprietor also
advocated email-bombing. Here are seen the first citations of
HipCrime's view (expressed many times since) that any email address
published on the Internet is "open season," to be emailed by anyone
about any topic at any time, even if the address is on a webpage
accompanying statements to the effect of "for questions or comments
about this site only, send email to..." An interesting statement by
HipCrime reproduced here is, "censorship is never going to be
tolerated. This is becoming a JIHAD, so it's better to quiet up now
and save trouble later." This sentiment would be repeated by him ad
nauseum within the next few years. Apparently also there were some
interesting sites available at this time: "Do some searches in
dejanews and altavista on this guy. You will find some real laughable
stuff regarding his plight as a homeless person around circa late
1995." Note the reference in the 1st thread to Sir Himself, Dan
Hufnal:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=cb44946f496d09f6
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=70c8b9cba96165ad
5-7-97: Here are claims that immediately after visiting the "BlueList"
Geocities sites mentioned in the previous thread, computers seemed to
be infected with a virus:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=3bddf0c0f02277c0
5-10-97: This is the earliest suggestion that HipCrime cancelled
articles by his detractors (which he has indeed done many times
since), only to find it an exercise in futility as the articles were
immediately reposted by a 'bot designed to combat just this sort of
thing. Paradoxically, he himself has often stated that no one's
articles should ever be cancelled by a third party, & has even cited
RFC-1036 as justification. And interestingly, given his supposed
views on censorship, he has himself attempted to censor the articles
of others many times without their consent by doing this very thing.
Numerous other examples of his blatant hypocrisy will be given in this
series:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=667a658bdb16cebb
6-2-97 to 6-10-97: Here HipCrime apparently attempts to Joe-job CAUCE,
an anti-spam orginazation. For the uninitiated, a "Joe-job" is an
advertisement via spam of someone else's website without their
consent, usually for the purpose of causing trouble for the site,
giving it a bad reputation, or causing the host of the site to
terminate it due to complaints from the recipient. It can also be
applied to a forgery of someone else's email address for the same
purposes:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=b755d7ab3e654800
6-5-97: This is apparently the earliest direct response attributed to
being from HipCrime to an anti-spammer. Note that the sender's
address was forged, & this began a pattern which would be seen many
times later, in which HipCrime for some strange reason believed that
forgery of the addresses & domains of others without their consent was
justifiable in a rightful protest about "free speech"; he would
sometimes later make statements to the effect that he was giving
anti-spammers a taste of their own medicine, even though most if not
all of the people whose addresses he forged never forged anyone else's
address in their life. The hypocrisy on this occasion in 1997 did not
pass unnoticed, with HipCrime saying, "Are you so afraid to debate
this issue openly," while hardly being "open" himself, but instead
masquerading as another person. Yet again we see here HipCrime
failing to understand that spam actually inhibits "free speech" on the
Internet, rather than enhances it, by threatening to drown out the
communications of all other Internet users.
He would still be failing to understand this 4 years later:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=a80671c1d7aacb15
6-9-97 ff.: The nuking of the BlueLister email-bomber by UUNet. For
the first time, the name "Robert T. Morris" came up in connection with
HipCrime. Given the evidence presented here, it is difficult to
believe that this person was not in San Francisco at the time; the
regular disguising of origin did not come until much later, & I have
the impression some of this was done from a dialup whose location was
clear, not an unsecured machine that could be regularly counted on to
be continuously connected to the Net:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=2f1592e2022be02b
6-25-97: The BlueLister Joe-jobs Ian Hayes again. Here again, I fail
to see what forgeries of the addresses of others have to do with "free
speech"; I had no idea that pretending to be another person & thus
speaking in that person's name was at all protected by the
Constitution:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=1561f669f2793a6c
7-3-97 to 7-5-97: A HipCrime site (redirecting to another HipCrime
site, both now long deceased) is advertised in spam originating quite
plainly from a dialup in San Francisco, not a compromised machine:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=65d7334cb6681188
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=8e26e767a0e5ea73
7-19-97: To all this HipCrime replied that "Reports of my death are
exaggerated," although he did end up losing the accounts mentioned
here anyway:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=6cd678500887370e
9-15-97: Rather a lot of HipCrime sites had been taken down by this
time:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=5vkec5%24bni%40nntp02.primenet.com
11-7-97: Here we see HipCrime doing a newsposting test through Deja
using a posting account created with hipc...@mailcity.com . With
Deja then, as with Google now, to create a posting account displaying
a given address on the From line, one must have had Deja (Google) send
a confirmation email to that address containing a unique URL sent only
that one time to that one address. The posting account could not be
created without accessing that URL, thus proving beyond all possible
doubt that the user of that address created that posting account.
One can see that the first article originated from a San Francisco
netcom.com dialup.
The 2nd test shown below was posted on the same day, contained an
identical text, but was this time posted through ica.net with no
originating IP shown in the header as archived; hipcrime@feedME was
displayed as the From "address":
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=878900904.16751%40dejanews.com&output=gplain
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3462f458.0%40lightning.ica.net&output=gplain
11-7-97 to 11-11-97: On the same day HipCrime began, interestingly, to
participate in a thread on alt.2600 about ANI. One may imagine him
speculating at this time on ways to avoid traceability by hiding the
ISP from which his communications originated, since an ISP using ANI
can identify the phone number from which a person dialed in to access
the Internet, no matter what billing info was used to create the
account, & thus is a fairly accurate way of identifying the person who
is using such accounts, no matter how many different identities are
used, since most people would have only a very small number of phone
lines available to them to access the Internet, far smaller than the
number of potential identities. Once again, although the IPs are
widely different in these & the Deja article above (199.35.210.210,
207.93.61.177, & 205.184.16.43, possibly by dialing in to different
access numbers), all of these point to one or more San Francisco
netcom.com dialups. Had Netcom been using ANI at this time (which
possibly it was) & had there been any reason to subpoena info about
these accounts, this user could probably have been positively
identified quite easily, no matter how many different identities were
used to create the Netcom accounts.
Doubtless this was a concern to HipCrime, & almost surely motivated
his later development of methods such as proxy chains to make
virtually impossible the identification of the originating ISP from
which his communications came:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=878920640.613%40dejanews.com&output=gplain
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=879259615.23775%40dejanews.com&output=gplain
11-13-97: It would appear that hipc...@mobsters.com was among the
persons who voted "No" regarding a certain CAUCE issue. It was noted
at the time that there had not yet been any Usenet posts in which this
address was displayed on the From line; this would change about 8
months later:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=64efhq%24bo%40news1.panix.com
12-15-97 to 12-21-97: The roller coaster begins to accelerate towards
a fairly continuous confrontation between HipCrime & the
news.admin.net-abuse* hierarchy which would reach its early peak
during the following year. At issue in these threads seems to have
been whether or not HipCrime had participated in any "Brownlist"
activity by this time. But this would hardly be the last time that
addresses known only to HipCrime would emerge as evidence against him,
as will be discussed later in this series. Note that the
contributions by HipCrime were posted through ica.net, as can be seen
by clicking on "View this article only" & then on "Original Format"
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=255b8aed340a82de
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=17284624ff505835
12-22-02: Here we see HipCrime responding to "The illustrious Dr.
Dimitri Vulis KotM" (about whom another entire History series could be
written) with an assertation that one Lance Cotrell was "of the
opinion that the 'net' should 'punish' those that he doesn't
agree with." Upon perusing the example of Mr. Cotrell's
communications provided here, however, the impression is gained that
Mr. Cotrell merely objected (as so many others had before him) to the
spam being sent by accessing the mailto link on his webpage in the
manner described above in this History article, & that the content of
the spam was irrelevant. Note the ica.net Message-ID:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=349e00f5.0%40lightning.ica.net
1-19-98: The famous "I'm outta here" post by Ian Hayes, with its brief
mention of HipCrime. Much later, in May 2002, HipCrime would attempt
to put the spin on this that Mr. Hayes had retired from anti-spamming
specifically because of him, quoting only the last paragraph; however,
upon viewing the complete original & the replies to it, it is obvious
to the reader that Mr. Hayes' reason for withdrawal was infighting
between anti-spammers, & had nothing at all to do with HipCrime. In
perusing his previous posts in the months leading up to January 1998
in preparation for this series, I find that Mr. Hayes actually felt
fairly successful in his efforts against HipCrime, with numerous
terminations of HipCrime accounts already in evidence as is shown
above, & with that worthy entity being still very much small fry
during this period, & hardly significant enough for anyone to retire
from anything (as could be said is still the case today); many other
spammers were still being discussed far more often in the
news.admin.net-abuse* hierarchy.
And of course HipCrime has not, even at any given moment during the
entire 5+ years he has been known, come within light-years of "having"
the Internet:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=11e62e40b1eeb551
3-4-98: One of the earliest articles in which HipCrime openly
mentioned his maintained list of misconfigured servers, & named
software that could abuse them "spambots," posted to 2 newsgroups
whose traffic could be most charitably described as "infrequent."
There were apparently no takers for his offer, at least in this
thread:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=34fcad91.0%40lightning.ica.net
3-12-98: He then talked about it in nanae:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=415d16798d7e318e
5-11-98: That something had been brewing in the critter's little brain
became apparent soon enough, for on May 11 1998 HipCrime openly
declared himself to be a rogue Usenet canceller, engaging in the sort
of activity for which he would become quite well-known. (The reposts
of some of these articles appear to have been "backdated" to May 7-9
1998.) All of these were posted through vsnl.net.in accounts, which
is probably the initial event which gave rise to the notion that
HipCrime had moved to India sometime in April 1998. In reality,
however, these were probably just the earliest unsecured servers
through which he was known to have committed extensive Usenet abuse;
as has been shown above, he supposedly had knowledge of quite a few of
these to work with. Nevertheless, rarely, if ever again, would any
communication come from him which was traceable to San Francisco, an
eventuality which he had apparently been contemplating carefully for
about the past 6 months, also seen earlier in this installment:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=202.54.58.147&num=100&scoring=d
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=202.54.99.3&num=100&scoring=d
On the same day, HipCrime posted an article entitled, "HipCrime's
NewsAgent - a Cancel Client for the common Netizen!" which was not
archived, but was quoted in these responses. I find incredibly
interesting the juxtaposition of these 2 sentences:
"Fight Censorship!"
"Now it's possible to CANCEL what's bothering you."
This dichotomous contradiction, in which the movement against abuse
"of" the Internet was confused with "censorship," yet while this
person paradoxically attempted to "censor" a great many people, would
remain at the heart of his actions to the present day, & an astounding
pile of evidence exists that in reality he has only cared that his own
Internet communications not be interfered with, & that he has never
had the slightest concerns for the communications of anyone else, any
claims to the contrary only being transparent attempts to win
supporters:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=bef840186afd0bf7
To be continued.
Rob Mitchell
5-25-02