In the spring of 1975, Doug Foxvog and David Holladay wrote up a document describing various hacks they were aware of or part of. This was part of an elaborate hack by George Plotkin to portray MIT undergraduates to Esquire Magazine as being far more politically aware and sophisticated than they were. George was approached by a writer from Esquire, who wanted a few tales of zany, lighthearted college hijinks. Esquire did not want to deal with the material, and used another source. One result is that we are left with an interesting artifact from 1975. In 2022, I converted this into html, and added some more hacks at the end. Enjoy.
A "hack" is a difficult term to define at MIT. A hack is a practical joke. The converse is rarely true. Here are some of the criteria which hacks are judged at the Institute:
A friend moved into a new apartment and found a missile in the backyard. It was really a war surplus airplane attachment and had once been used as a sign for a war surplus store. It looked like a real missile, Foxvog and I (Holladay) went to investigate, riding on my tandem bicycle. Although it was long (13 feet) it was relatively light (120 lbs.). We decided we could transport it strapped onto the tandem, with one of us on each side pushing it, Viet-Cong style. It attracted a lot or attention. Just before we would have to go in front of the Cambridge Police Headquarters, a van stopped to help, Foxvog and the missile hitch hiked to Bexley. Plans to install an engine, guidance system, and small nuclear warhead fell through when we decided that the government might resort to extralegal means to stop our "Brooklyn Project", instead it has been used as a centerpiece of anti-Shah demonstrations.
Some MIT hacks are boorish and show bad taste. One dorm, mad because they couldn't get their old piano replaced, threw it off the roof with great fanfare. It made the yearbook.
The MIT press people had a sign across Mass. Ave, saying "MIT PRESS BOOK SALE DEC, 4-5-6-7" made up off letters strung together. Foxvog called up ESC and asked everybody to try to find a good anagram for it. In half an hour, the winner was ",75 MIT DOPE SALE-SCORE 64 KS". A crew arrived at 3 in the morning to cause the transformation. Unfortunately, the students on the top of the lamp posts noticed a steel cable that held the letters together. We didn't have the equipment on hand to unhitch it, so the project was canceled.
Once some Bexleyites decided to play capture the flag around the Institute buildings, it was repeated several times with elaborate flags, armbands, telephone hot lines, maps, walkie-talkies, and other paramilitary paraphernalia. It was only interesting when one dorm was fighting another. It will never be a varsity sport.
A short time after we had dropped paper helicopters from the inside top of the small dome into the main lobby during a speech by Weisner, president of MIT, Holladay and I thought of a fantastic variation of the theme. A pound of inactive dope had been sitting around for a year which none of us could think of a use for (an extraction of active ingredients had been tried with no success). Why not a dope drop? I created a multicolored sign with magic markers on computer paper that said (see margin). The plan was to have the sign unfurl in the lobby and the dope to fall from the center of the dome at exactly noon. The sign was designed so that by releasing a piece of tape it would unroll from the third floor balcony to the floor. To be inconspicuous, it was placed behind an outdated sign, which was then removed. Someone found a megaphone that gives out a loud tone. We told many friends to be in building 7 lobby at noon no matter what ("you can go to that test 5 minutes late"). Just before noon we were all in our places, Holladay was looking down out a window in the top of the dome, Rich had crawled out on the ledge of the fourth floor with a megaphone, roommate Doug was nonchalantly standing next to the sign, and I was standing on the second floor balcony to synchronize them. At exactly 12:00, I chirped once and the sign was dropped, and a second time the megaphone blast went and the dope was cropped. People looked up to see it descending. It ended up in a 14'x16' oval in the center of the lobby, A huge crowd gathered at first a few feet away from the dope. Every once in a while someone grabbed a handful, examined it and threw it back. Suddenly, everybody started scooping it up: secretaries putting it in their purses, students scooping it up with notebook paper, etc. One campus cop stationed himself at the top of the sign, unknowingly lending an air of officiality to the affair. A Cambridge cop was seen talking on a payphone. One good thing for the Institute, the floor got cleaned. Half an hour later a dog lapped up the remnants. |
F R E E D O P E ! |
One or the favorite places of Institute hackers was a partially finished room in the subbasement of building 9 affectionately called the crypt. It was big and out of the way and could be used to train an army without anyone noticing, in fact, one January, a phone hacking course was held there. In fall 1972, it was taken over for the storage of videotapes. In the fall of 1973, the Institute started to reclaim the crypt. New lock cylinders were put on the doors, which didn't matter since some people had a master key to the Institute. A dead-bolt was put on the back door to prevent entry that way. This action was unpopular; the bolt was often mysteriously unbolted. The Institute escalated and put a keyholeless cylinder on the back door, and a large metal plate between the double doors. This meant that only people who could convince the lock to open could get in. This action by the Institute was uncalled for and was met with instant action: it was decided that the Institute game of only letting those who have the appropriate key open the door should be played against them. A lock that they couldn't open would replace the one that they could. The Institute has 5 "master" keys to open most of the doors, four of them identical except for the last pin. The lock was made with the following properties: The top plug would be turned by any of the four close to identical keys while the bottom plug would only turn with the fifth master key in it. However, even that wouldn't open the lock, pieces of enough locks were used so that picking capability and other esoteric skills were demonstrated. The Institute had to wrench out the lock to open the door.
The annual J. Edgar Hoover memorial dope party is an MIT tradition. The day after J. Edgar Hoover died, a sign went up around the Institute that the following day, Friday May 5, 1972 would be the "First Annual J. Edgar Memorial Dope Party", in MIT's Great Court. It was attended by more than 100 students, several Cambridge narks, and 3 FBI agents. City police also watched the proceeding through binoculars. It is now a yearly event and the cops don't bother coming.
One day at ESG, I (Foxvog) heard some people walking on the roof, so I climbed out on top of the sash window and looked up on the roof to see what they were doing. I heard them talking about removing the WWII radar dish that was on top of the building. I called out to ask them what they were doing but couldn't get a straight answer from them since they were too busy being freaked out at a head and a set of arms appearing from over a 7 story high wall. I went back in and reported what they seemed to have been saying and it was decided that we should move it out that night. Opinion was almost evenly decided between placing it in the main lounge of Concourse, a rival alternative to the regular curriculum (Brand X), and on top of the small dome of MIT, It was finally agreed that it should go on the dome since more people would notice it. That night it was disassembled, trucked in pieces through the halls of the Institute on loading carts, and then taken up a freight elevator and up a stairway to the roof. A number of routes through the 'tute were used so as to avoid passing the same night janitor twice with strange equipment. Once the material got to the dome, it was not taken up for several reasons: 1) the top of the small dome is made of glass brick and might not be able to hold the 700 pound radar dish (this is nonsense) 2) Things had been put on the dome before (e.g. shopping carts, a cow). This is no reason not to give the dish the same level of attention and 3) it was drizzling and most of the people were wearing shoes and got no traction up the slope. It was set up in front of the dome, aimed at Westgate dorm. The whole operation from the footsteps on the roof to setting it up took less than 12 hours.
Once streetcars went along Mass. Ave. A generation ago, dozens of students streamed in when one stopped in front of MIT, They went out the back and came in the front again. When the conductor was convinced that he had a small army in his car, he tried to start up, only to find that the car had been welded to the tracks with Thermite. They had to pick up the train and the car with a crane.
Once a students greased the subway where it goes above ground. The train didn't get out that morning for a while. A persistent story places a present dean as involved in the last two hacks.
Once a student paid a barber to rent his barber pole. While carrying it, he was picked up by the police, hassled, and released, An identically dressed student did the same. And then another. Finally the students monitoring the police radio heard what they were listening for: an All-Points Bulletin ordering patrolmen to ignore students running with barber poles. The MIT archives has a photo of the athletic field covered with Boston's barber poles. They were returned.
Once a student left for a vacation with his model T parked in front of his dorm. He returned to find it perfectly assembled on the roof of his dorm.
The most famous MIT computer hacking incident occurred in the early 1960s. The MIT telephone system is interconnected with other institutions with tie-lines. These other institutions are interconnected to other ones. Learning about tie-lines has always been an irresistible challenge to the MIT student. Some students programmed the legendary PDP-1 computer to systematically call these numbers. If a number started ringing, it would hang up and record a dead end. If it waited, it would systematically follow every branch. One day, people in the Pentagon noticed that a phone would ring and then stop, the next phone down the hall would ring, and stop, and the next, and the next. It was very suspicious. They traced it back to NORAD headquarters, then back to a military installation in California, and then to some schools and labs in Massachusetts, and finally back to the PDP-1 room in building 26 of MIT. An investigation revealed that the computer called a red telephone at NORAD that was only supposed to ring in event of nuclear war. Fortunately, the computer immediately hung up. All the students involved were given instant Q (scientific) clearance, which was immediately rescinded, they could get in a lot of trouble if they revealed any of the numbers that they discovered. Even though they have tightened up on tie-line security, I was able to call General Westmoreland's Pentagon office from my dorm room in 1971.
One Bexleyite didn't like his freshman roommate. Fortunately, the freshman knew what he was up against and always checked for trip-wires. He found one connected to 3 sticks of pseudo-dynamite in his bed. He called the campus patrol who aided in his finding a new roommate. Unfortunately, the next one was just as bad.
The next roommate made an elaborate shackle which he chained to a 350 pound wrecking ball painted to look like a Sunkist orange. An equally elaborate scheme attracted this freshman to building 7 lobby (main MIT entrance). He was waylaid by 7 Bexleyites who, after vicious struggle, chained him to the ball. At the time, a choral group was performing in the lobby. The choral leader was upset at the disturbance that the freshman was the center of attention, ordered him to leave. He pleaded that he couldn't, that he was chained to a 350 pound wrecking ball. After several minutes, she finally walked off in a huff, saying she would call the campus cops. The freshman pulled out his lock picks from his pocket and tried to work on the locks. This was forseen, the locks were destroyed by nails and solder, preventing an easy escape. He finally dragged the ball across the lobby, down the steps (severally damaging one), across Mass. Ave. and into the Bexley courtyard. He parked the ball under his window, opened it, and reached in to his desk to get his hacksaws. A scuffle ensued as these instruments were taken from him. But it was decided that since he had shown such great resourcefulness that he deserved the hacksaws. The campus patrol came in with a boltcutter, but he refused, saying he would rather do it himself. Most of this was filmed in 16 mm by someone in a movie course. The movie "A tool and his Ball" has become an underground MIT classic.
Two friends or mine (Foxvog), my roommate Doug and Fort Felker, while elevator hacking one night, stopped an elevator between the 14th and 15th floors of MIT's tallest building. They got the door of the floor below them open. Fort slipped out through the crack between the elevator floor and the top of the outside door and dropped to the floor. Doug tried to follow but accidentally started swinging and was flung into the shaft by the pendulum motion. Fortunately, there were insulated electric cables hanging from the bottom of the elevator which he was able to grab onto (although he suffered severe rope burns) and stop himself after falling 3 floors, He was able to swing over and unlatch the door, but couldn't pry it open while still hanging on the cable. So Fort ran down to the 11th floor and let him out. The medical department listed the cause of injury as "burns by wire".
Getting onto MIT's great dome has always been a primary hacker's goal. One has to convince an elevator to open, go up into the engineering library when it is closed, unlock a door, unscrew a window and climb up a ladder supplied by your logistics crew. In Nov. 1971, I (Holladay) was on top of the great dome (different from the small dome, which is trivial) with 2 other persons when the ladder blew down. It was the night before Thanksgiving, the campus was empty and we were trapped. There was a drop of at least 20 feet, a ledge and a wall, then a 3 story drop. I went to the edge, held the wrists of my 2 "friends" and let go. I hit a patch of ice that I hadn't seen and fell hard on my right side. After a while I picked myself up, put up the ladder and cheered with my friends about our escaping without the campus cops finding out. We heard a scrapping sound, turned around to see the ladder falling down on us. If we hadn't heard it, we wouldn't have caught and it would have brained us. After those two escapes we wandered (I limped) around the Institute basements spreading double doors with a screwdriver.
Sometime later I (Holladay) was part of a crew that installed a "dome line" (named for the MIT dorm line phone system) onto the great dome. We disconnected a bell from a library phone, and carefully wired an extension onto the top of the dome. Our original plans called for a phone booth there, but failing that, we turned a piece of ventilating duct into an indestructible phone housing. We had a lot of fun calling people around the Institute saying the call was from the great dome (in one case the called looked out of his window at us). Unfortunately the whole assembly was stolen the next day by a rival student group.
[This was written in the spring of 1975 and was part of the package sent to Esquire magazine. The logo in the original was based on a photo of the CIA's heroin produced in the Golden Triangle of Thailand. Text in square brackets added in 2022.]
I was born in Calaveras County, California in 1953. I have lived in California, Colorado, Illinois, Beirut Lebanon, and Massachusetts. My father is an old Testement scholar. He was a missionary for 7 years in Beirut, giving me a chance to travel extensively in Asia, Europe, and North Africa. I also gained an understanding of international intrigues and conflicts.
I was rejected by all my "good" schools except MIT, I ended up in Bexley by accident. The story about telephone hacking in the Oct. 1971 Esquire was pointed out to me by my family. Though I was ignorant of it, I soon learned that all sorts of people around me knew about phone hacking. I was determined to equalize things and set about collecting everything I could get my hands on about telephones, especially hacking them. [I soon learned that my new friend Caryn Navy was adept at using tones played from a cassette recorder.]
I soon learned that all sorts of sources were open and considered harmless. It was only when it was all put together that it became significant. What could be more boring than a list of international operators standard phrases. But if you are a phone phreak and don’t know how to deal with overseas operators it could be very useful. I soon had a collection of printed material that surpassed anything else like it around MIT. I began writing phone companies around the world for information about accessing their system. Only I would phrase it "How can your country be reached by the CCITT #5 switching system? Israel even sent their manual they give to foreign operators, I punched up extracts of this information on IBM cards and gave out copies of the printouts. I got an intelligence report that Captain Crunch had a printout of mine, even though I only gave copies to friends at MIT. I have defrauded the Bell system out of only $30 personally, though I must have spent at least twice that in information.
In my sophomore year I saw several news stories on the threat of "Backyard Atomic Bombs". I wrote up a poster signed by the "Backyard Bomb Coordinating Committee" and put up several hundred Xeroxs up around the campus. They all got ripped down to end up decorating MIT labs and dorms. But that was the point. [This poster was shown on the CBS show "60 Minutes" episode "A Do-It-Yourself A-Bomb". The original air date was August 10, 1973; it was repeated on April 14, 1974. At the end of the episode Mike Wallace referred to the author of this poster as a terrorist. Now that is something to add to your resume!]
Several friends of mine and I became the committee, and we printed up more posters, silkscreened ads and other paraphernalia. We sponsored an Atomic Bomb Design Contest. We got no entries, but that was OK, it gave us complete freedom to forge some winners. The BBCC has gotten into the MIT vocabulary as "a strange, unnamed source", used, for example to announce dope parties. [After the BBCC had run its course, I produced other posters for the hallways of MIT.]
Around this time I developed an interest in the Kennedy assassination, I began Xeroxing articles, learning of some of the strange occurances, and getting some of my friends interested in the subject. [I produced my cross index Dallas to Watergate using IBM cards.]
I wrote up and printed the Surviving a Nuclear, a Guide for the MIT Student in about a week. It gives a glimspe into the world of official emergency planning and is meant to be informative and to be a grossout. [Much of the material from the second half of the guide was based on The Massachusetts Emergency Management Guide, which was mailed to me by a civil defense worker who got tired of answering my questions. I later learned that it was restricted from from the general public.]
In McCormick, the women's dorm, there was a rivalry between the third and fourth floors on the west tower. This was formalized in an agreement for "12 days of April Fools." I (Holladay) never saw the agreement, but I remember the rules prohibited things like putting stolen things in locked rooms. For example, someone could steal the oven knobs from the other floor, but they had to be kept in a "public place", such as under the cushions of the sofa in the public lounge. But the knobs could not be kept in a locked room.
Now that we have the rules down, I will tell you what happened. After three days, the fourth floor was frustrated. There were many violations of the rules by the third floor. Negotiations were not fruitful. After discusions with Caryn, my girlfriend, Foxvog and I were called in as "hired" Bexley pranksters to assist the beleaguered fourth floor. Remember, this was almost 50 years ago. Now it would not be appropriate to call in men to solve a problem like this in a women's dorm.
Doug and I found ourselves walking the short distance from Bexley to McCormick with our pockets carrying some tools with not much as an idea of what to do. We went to the third floor bathroom and started removing the sink traps from the sinks. We thought it would result in causing water used in the sink to just drain on the floor. What really happened is that we only did this to one sink, causing foul, black liquid to splash on the floor. And then we were discovered. We found that the residents of the third floor were strong, members of the rowing team (many were wearing their "womens crew at MIT" sweatshirts that left out the first space). Doug and I were uncermoniously thrown down the stairwell to the second floor.
Our egos and bodies slightly bruised, Doug and I found ourselves in the basement. Using two screwdrivers, we easily popped open the double doors of the elevator room. We studied the device that controlled the elevators. This being the 1970's, it was controlled by relays, not by integrated circuits. We quickly determined that there were four relays for each floor:
Doug and I decided that we did not mind if the elevator knew it passed the third floor, but we didn't think that the elevator needed to know about items 1-3. We placed thin bits of cardboard between the relay contacts on those three relays. After our surgury to the elevator's brain, it had amnesia, and forgot about the third floor. Feeling good about ourselves, we walked back to Bexley.
Halfway back, I convinced Doug that we could be in real trouble. Service workers used carts at McCormick (unlike the student slum that was Bexley). These workers would call in maintenece, who would in turn call the campus cops. We would be quickly identified by the third floor rowers, and charged with "tampering with an elevator" which would affect our criminal records. So reluctantly, we went back to McCormick, forced our way back into the elevator room, and removed those three bits of cardboard that were destined to betray our futures. Feeling somewhat defeated, we went back to Bexley.
The next day, we found out what had actually happened. Almost immediately, the third floor residents figured out that elevator was ignoring the third floor, that pushing their buttons had no effect. A delegation was sent to the sixth floor to pound on the door of the faculty resident, Stephen Senturia, interrupting his dinner. Dr. Senturia was a professor of Electrical Engineering, which makes all of this more interesting. He was brought to the third floor (presumably by stairs) by the outraged members of the third floor. After repeatedly pushing the elevator button for Dr. Senturia, the elevator door opened up! Unknown to us, we had taken out the bits of cardboard at precisely the right moment. Our "failed" hack was actually a rousing success. And thus ended the 12 days of April Fools.
In the fall of 1974, there was an acrimonious strike at MIT involving the service worker's union. Douglas Foxvog, Richard Hilliard, and David Holladay produced a fake Institute Report causing more chaos to the already chaotic situation. You can read a series of publications relating to the strike here.
The concept for the fake Institute Report started with a spaghetti dinner in Doug's room. By the time the dinner was over, we had a rough draft. If I recall correctly, it was typed up on an IBM Executive typewritter (the IBM Executive had a distinctly variable pitch output) located at the office of Thursday, then reproduced at the offices of LSC. The Lecture Series Committee (LSC) had an offset press. Since these were about the only such facilities in student hands, the investigation narrowed quickly. Someone at LSC said that one person involved was named "Fox something". A glance at MIT directories showed a few people named "Fox" and one "Douglas Foxvog." Doug was brought in for questioning. He denied everything. After negotiating with Prof. Jerry Lettvin, and Chief Oliveiri (for only minor punishment), we decided to come forward. Here is the confession of Doug, Rick, and David. The MIT administration, who wanted us crucified, was pissed off about the back-channel negotiations.
Besides the fake Institute Report, David Holladay and Doug Foxvog did other activities, such as removing paper products from bathrooms and interferring with the campus mail. We did one fun prank which deserved to be remembered. During the strike, the administration closed two-thirds of the restrooms on campus, to make it easier for the sketeton crew of supervisors and scabs to maintain them.
To close off a restroom, they were locked and had distictive signs. The signs were poorly Xeroxed, displaying bad handwriting with thick strokes of big marker, saying "This restroom closed, the closest men's room is 7-039." We found that we could copy the style of the signs with the right handwriting, the right marker, and several generations of Xeroxing. Our signs said:
Due to the strike, |
We thought that having each restroom swap sexes every 15 minutes was very funny. We also liked writing the shift changes in a style resembling a math problem. Doug and David put the signs at a shift change around 7 a.m. They were quickly taken down. On my way back to Bexley, I (David) saw one man approach a men's room, look at the sign, then look at his watch, then the sign, then the watch again, finally he walked away looking frustrated. To me, seeing that was worth the whole effort.
