Arrested with a Commodore 64

Note: The following is the first installment of emails we sent prospects when they joined the ReFirm Labs mailing list. We attempted to embrace the marketing concept around one's origin story. The following is a true story.

Thanks for your interest in ReFirm Labs and firmware security. Whether you’re ready to work with us or not, I want to make sure you have a crystal clear sense of who we are, what we do, and why we do it. Understanding our origin story will help you decide if we’re the right company to help you.

Sound fair?

Then on with the story…

Cold, smelly, tired. That’s how I felt around 4:00 AM as I rummaged through the dumpsters of the Sandusky Mall, looking for carbons.

Back in the mid–1980s, 1985 to be exact, finding and collecting the carbon copies from credit card transactions was like finding gold. They were a new form of currency, like Bitcoin is today, except you didn’t need CPUs to generate them. You just needed the courage to jump into smelly, disgusting dumpsters in the middle of the night, rip open garbage bags, and pull out as many carbons as you could find.

My friend and I drove back to his house in the blackness of night. There, we hunched over his cold, metal desk under a cheap, flickering desk lamp where we pieced together the ripped-up carbon copies like a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. I guess the cashiers thought that ripping up the carbons into little pieces before throwing them away was a good security practice.

The following night, between 2:00 AM and 3:00 AM, I fired up my Commodore 64 and connected it to my 300-baud US Robotics Modem. I called into my favorite BBS, The WELL. There, I would connect with other dumpster divers, and we would swap credit card numbers. Our theory was this: when the numbers were used to order stuff, law enforcement, if notified, would be left scratching their heads as to how a stolen credit card number in Sandusky, Ohio, ended up in California, or vice versa! Remember, this was a time when you paid for long-distance calls, and the Internet wasn’t available to the masses yet.

This was my summer routine in 1985.

Thursday, August 29th, 1985. The first full week of the new school year, my senior year. It was just after lunch. I was sitting in Mr. Taylor’s calculus class, bored out of my mind and doodling in my notebook, when the assistant principal, Mr. Pitts, knocked on Mr. Taylor’s door.

Mr. Pitts, standing there in his plaid pants, solid yellow turtleneck, and brown blazer, apologized to Mr. Taylor and his calculus class for the interruption. Mr. Pitts pointed his long, skinny index finger at me and motioned for me to come with him to the principal’s office. As I stood up from my desk and began to walk toward him, Mr. Pitts said, “Bring your things. You won’t be coming back.”

Ominous sounding, I thought.

He was silent as we quickly walked to the front office. As I approached the outside of the office, I caught a glimpse of my mom and Mr. Schaffer, the principal of Perkins High School. As I stepped into the office, my heart skipped a beat. I suddenly felt a cold, fluid sensation running throughout my body, as if someone had injected ice water into my veins. Near one corner of the office stood a Perkins Township police officer.

Now I’m worried. But, still not sure exactly why…

I was shoved into the backseat of the cop car. The door slammed. Now it all made sense. Sitting next to me in the back of the cop car were my two 5.25" Commodore floppy hard drives, my US Robotics Modem, and my Commodore 64. Apparently, the cop had already been in my bedroom and confiscated evidence he thought was necessary to make an arrest. Arrest for what, he didn’t say, or I blocked it out and I don’t recall.

I sat in complete silence. He fired non-stop questions at me like, “Is Tom Arkin your alias?” and “Why do you have two plane tickets to Florida in your post office box?” and “Why do you even have a post office box?” and “How did you plan to pick up the Cadillac you ordered?”

I never said a word. I can’t recall if I was too stubborn or too scared. Maybe both. Nevertheless, I remained silent.

After a lengthy, time-consuming booking process at the Perkins police station, I discovered members of “my crew” – as they became known by the Perkins police, as if I’m some mastermind – sitting in a secured area where we were waiting for our transportation to the Erie County Juvenile Detention Center. I was the oldest of the group at 17. The others were only 15-years old.

Instead of spending just a few hours or a day in juvenile detention, we spent a frightening five days locked up. It was Labor Day weekend 1985. We were housed with other teenage criminals charged with serious crimes like auto thefts, drugs, concealed weapons, you name it. We didn’t belong. We were out of our element. It was a horrible experience for a bunch of honor roll students, to say the least.

The courts opened on the following Tuesday, September 3rd. I think they wanted to make an example of us. Here’s why: They dressed us up in bright orange jumpsuits and shackled us all together at the ankles, as if we were part of some jailhouse chain gang. Embarrassing and over-the-top, I thought.

There we sat in the courthouse inside a bullet-proof glass isolation tank with a long, cold, metal bench to which we were all handcuffed. My mind raced with questions: What would become of us? Would they throw the book at us for our reckless summer adventures? Would our lives be forever changed by this one mistake? As time seemed to stop, we were led away, one by one, to the courtroom to discover our fate. Like lambs to the slaughter, we stepped into the unknown, not knowing what was about to happen or how it would shape our futures.

Terry Dunlap co-founded Tactical Network Solutions, ReFirm Labs, and Gray Hat Academy. Before that, he worked at the US National Security Agency developing hacking tools and exploit capabilities, which would have landed him in jail in any other capacity.