Darknet Diaries - Ep 20: mobman

Episode Date: August 15, 2018

Chances are, if you were downloading shady programs in the early 2000's, you were infected with malware he wrote called SubSeven. Hacking changed mobman's life. Hear how it happened by listening to this episode.Image for this episode created by dr4w1ngluc4s. Check out his Instagram to see some amazing artwork! Check out the podcasts Van Sounds and True Crime Island

Computers aren't always right. They make mistakes, encounter errors, and crash. Sometimes the errors can be frustrating. Especially when the computer is at a big company and it makes a billing error that says you owe them $1,000. And when that corporation won't admit it's their mistake and insists you pay for the bill that you didn't create, this can be infuriating.

But what can you do when you try to fight it but the corporation refuses to admit it's their problem? Well, some hackers know exactly what to do. These are true stories from the dark side of the internet. I'm Jack Recider. This is Darknet Diaries. This episode is sponsored by Delete Me. I know a bit too much about how scam callers work.

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That's joindeleteme.com slash darknetdiaries. Use code darknet. Support for this show comes from Black Hills Information Security. Thank you. I'm sure they can help. But the founder of the company, John Strand, is a teacher, and he's made it a mission to make Black Hills Information Security world-class in security training. You can learn things like penetration testing, securing the cloud, breaching the cloud, digital forensics, and so much more. But get this, the whole thing is pay what you can. Black Hills believes that great intro security classes do not need to be expensive, and they are trying to break down barriers to get more people into the security field. And if you decide to pay over $195, you get six months access to the MetaCTF Cyber Range, which is great for practicing your skills and showing them off to potential employers.

Head on over to BlackHillsInfosec.com to learn more about what services they offer and find links to their webcasts to get some world-class training. That's BlackHillsInfosec.com. BlackHillsInfosec.com. Hey. Yo, what up? You want to tell us your name? Everybody calls me Mob Man. Hacking changed Mob Man's life.

But to understand how it changed his life, we need to go back to when he was just a kid. All right, so I started off, you know, I'm a little kid. I'm like eight, nine years old. Got a Nintendo, right? You know, the old NES square box, blowing a cartridge, you know, push it in a few times. I was addicted to video games, non-stop so i'd sneak out

in the middle of the night and go play it while you know my mom's asleep his mom would catch him doing this and take his nintendo away little mob man was addicted so i'll go find it and then uh you know skip school just to play the video games very sneaky kid so i was like the devil and then eventually she took a hammer and smashed the shit out of the nintendo so you know that was my first you know computer so i i got to see the insides look at it take it all apart try to figure out how to get it back to working and stuff um that did not happen it did not get fixed but i learned a little bit about it so um then the next thing was you know i got a computer um then i started playing a game called ultima line uh it's a massive multiplayer role-playing game a lot of people people now, they would be able to

relate to it as like World of Warcraft, except in Ultima Online, if you die, they could take all your stuff and pretty much leave you naked and bare. As you might have guessed, Mob Man became addicted to Ultima Online. As a teenager, he found himself playing it every chance he could. The computer breaks and the mom's like, I ain't paying somebody to fix it because you broke it like three or four other times. I had to learn how to fix all that stuff and like how the actual operating system works. He gets it working again

and starts taking an interest in computers. He learned how to do a little programming and troubleshoot problems on the computer. But still he find himself playing Ultima Online all the time. Now back then to be online, you need a phone and a modem to connect to the internet. So he'd often hear his mom shouting, phone's busy. I know you're on that damn game. So she'll go and disconnect the phone. So I'll go outside and I found the little phone box thing and I'll splice the cables of the neighbors and run them into ours so then I

could use their telephone. After years of playing Ultima Online and using his computer every day for hours a day, he started to become pretty good at computers. And he started visiting some of the more popular online bulletin boards and chat rooms and learning how to do different hacks, like making free phone calls and stuff. And he started learning that software has exploits. So what does he do? So in Ultima Online, so me and my buddies, we'll sit out there and we'll figure out ways to exploit the game. We'll hide out in front of people's houses,

stealth our way, which you basically turn invisible, and we'll wait outside somebody's house, their door, when they opened it. And then we'll just walk inside their door, invisible, and then wait for them to leave and then steal all their shit. We built our own scams. Like, we'll pull up, like, the trading window

to trade somebody for stuff and then, like, we'll close it. And then, like, their stuff will be too heavy and it'll fall and drop on the ground or they can't move and we'll just kill them and then take it. So eventually, you know, we bought a boat in the game. You have a boat you could like sail around and do shit and there's a little like a cargo bay like in front of the boat and you can store your shit in it and it works like a house

like you have to have a key or whatever and you can open close the you know lock it whatever so you can't get it but we learned if you park a boat uh the bow in front of another bow of another boat and you're standing on your boat apparently your privileges of your boat links over to their boat and you could like open their cargo and take all their shit so we spent like a couple weeks just going and hitting every boat on the whole damn server and stealing everybody's stuff. Players could open tickets and complain on the forums, but Mobman and his pirating friends never got caught doing this. He made a lot of in-game money stealing from all these players, and he wanted to show off his epic loot.

So he made a website showcasing what he had. So we'd take snippets of the game, and that's how i started learning action script and flash and put some music behind it and release them all up on online on our geo cities websites then we used to hack each other's websites and take them down and stuff in the 90s when you play ultimate online it asks if you want to save your login so you don't have to type it in next time and if you do this it actually saves your username and password in a clear text file called uo.cfg. So we figured that out, and we're like, oh, cool. So if we get other people's uo.config file,

because there's some idiots at school that play it, we could log in as them. Now we have all the ingredients for a fresh baked hack. Mobman is now one part computer tech, two parts griefer, one part programmer, and a dash of greediness. His mission is to somehow take that uo.cfg file from other players online. So he mixed all this together and created a pretty clever program. It's a remote access tool and it was a Trojan horse virus. He built a program that would allow him to take control of another computer. You could open and close the CD-ROM. You could flip the screen.

You could hide the start button. You could move the mouse on their screen and, you know, click around. You could open up their C drive, change their wallpaper. And then there was a whole bunch of other stuff. He also connected it to ICQ, a common messaging app back then. And when they get infected with it, it'll send you an ICQ message and it'll tell you their IP address and that they're online. Mobman called his virus Sub-7. Now that he spent some time creating it, it was time to put it to work.

So at Altamont Live, we to work so in ultimate live we'll stand by bank so we'll go by there like oh man we got because because we were rich in the game like we had castles and millions of gold and all of our characters were like badass because because of our thievery and and stealing everybody's stuff from like the boats and the the other things and killing everybody and stuff so people are like how do you get all that stuff? You know, like, oh no, we got, we made this little program and it gives you unlimited gold. We're like, Hey, do you want it? And we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're like, cool. What's your ICQ? You know, we'll send it over to you. So, you know, we'll message them and then we'll send them the EXE and then we'll put up like an error code. File not found, error, you know, OK, cancel or whatever.

And then we'll send them the thing. So they'll run it and they're like, oh, it didn't work. Like it gave me some error. And then they'll run it again, infecting themselves again and then run it again. And then they affected themselves like three or four. Like people infect themselves like 10 times before they figure out like, oh, I guess it just doesn't work. I'm like, oh man, I must've, I'm missing a file.

I forgot to send it to you. Then like you give up or whatever. Then they go off on their own merry, merry way. You know, and then you remove them off ICQ and be like, oh, sorry, I guess the hack didn't work. Once that player is infected, Mobman would swoop in and grab the uo.cfg file, which contained the username and password of that player. You're man would swoop in and grab the uo.cfg file which contained the username

and password of that player you're looking for other cheater people that want to cheat in the game and you tell them that you have the cheat for them and i think that still goes on to this day like i mean you see like minecraft and all those other stupid things like youtube videos out there and they're like oh we got this hack get free gold or sort of wall hacks and shit and then all those other stupid things like youtube videos out there and they're like oh we got this free gold or sort of wall hacks and shit and then all those are infected with some type of malware or whatnot you know you can scan them um so i mean it's the same typical thing but i mean that's just how we came up with you know doing this stuff back then now nobody else was doing that keep in mind like we came up with that method to like to like say hey who are you gonna get cheats here's you know here's the file run it and then they'll log in and then you

know i mean there's some stories you know i'll log into people we'll log in real quick take all their stuff i'll have a couple guys standing by the bank we'll just do all their things you know go to their house and then i'll go and like delete their characters like these people spend like years like leveling up their dudes and stuff and i just like delete confirm yes or no yes gone there's no recovery like you're it's over like i would i would probably commit suicide if that happened to my account oh you're so cold man, I look back, and it's like, oh my god, those poor little kids. You know?

It's so bad. So I'll delete all their shit, and then we'll make a new character, dress it up with a skirt or something, or whatever. You know, just fuck with them. And then they eventually figure it out. What they figured out is that they've been hacked

and that somebody logged into their account, stole all their items, and deleted their character. This would be a character that they had worked on for years, and it's all of a sudden gone. High-level players that were wiped out by Mob Man and hit with this sub-7 virus must have felt a level of rage like no other. But they can't prove or know anything and then i can't even

keep up i get so many people i had so many people that i had coming back to me where i could go and log in in their accounts not just their accounts and uo but i could log in in their computers now i don't really log into computers but there were a couple times like they some of them have webcams and i'll turn on their webcam because that was another option. You could like turn on the webcam and watch it. So, you know, I see like their moms be up on their computer, you know, watching some sexual stuff. I could tell you some stories like that, you know. This sub-7 virus was working really well for Mobman.

He was able to social engineer dozens of players to install the virus. And he was able to take tons of in-game items and gold from them. Right. So I started getting overwhelmed in the UL. I started making so much bank. You know, so much money and being like awesome and getting all these people and stuff like that. You know, I wanted to share it with my other buddies, you know, the, my friends that were in my clan or a guild, uh, that, that

we, we had. So I, I sent it to those, those ding dongs on ICQ. I'm like, here, here's the, you know, here's the client, here's how you use it. You know, go start saying it to people, uh, you know, do what I do. Y'all been hanging out. You all see how it works and stuff. Cause we're all on ICQ. So, um, so they started using it and then sending it to people. And then apparently they sent it to their friends and their friends sent it to their friends. And then they built the fucking website and started giving it away to everybody and stuff like that. And the next thing I know, everybody knows about sub seven. Like I see other idiots in you. Oh, like, oh, hey, you want to get a cheat? And I'm like, oh, sure. Yeah. What's your ICU number?

Like, you know, they'll they'll try to send it to me and infect me with it. And I'm like, that's fucking pretty awesome. I don't have to talk with my friends because I told them not to give it out. But they did. So they gave it out. It spread. I'm not the one that like kind of like

gave it away to everybody, if you will, or made the website or anything. That was my ding dong juvenile delinquent friends. Even though Sub7 was created to steal Ultima Online logins, Mobman had built a lot of features into it, like the ability to grab any file, change files, upload files, and turn the webcam on. So Sub7 started to spread and was used by all kinds of different people for all kinds of different reasons.

Some students would infect their teachers with it and change their grades. They sent it to their friend and they're playing the cup holder game with the opening, closing the CD-ROM. They got them inspired and interested in computers, you know, because they have to learn social engineering. You have to convince somebody to open the file and run it. And it got people learning about the operating systems. But some people already knew how computers worked

and took this to the next level, infecting dozens and hundreds of people at a time. You can attach it to anything though. First there's a button like browse, and then you pick like an executable, like calculator, and then you click meld, and it'll meld the malware with the executable and the executable will still run and act normal except it has sub 7 infects you when you run it you know

you know i started thinking about some of the stuff i downloaded back in the where's days i'm pretty sure i probably downloaded this and oh yeah you got got infected. As a kid, I did download a lot of shady things and ran them. And as I think back, I do remember getting my grandma's computer infected with the sub-7 virus and having to learn how to wipe it off. I never thought I'd ever meet the maker of that virus that hit me in 2002. This is why, even today, you should never run a program that you don't trust, because it could infect you with Sub-7 or another Trojan. This malware that Mobman made was spreading all over the internet like an unchecked disease. Mobman only used Sub-7 to steal Ultima Online logins for himself.

He never used it to steal anyone's credit cards, bank statements, or anything like that. It's like, I don't want to, I don't, I don't know, I just don't like stealing credit, like, you know, money or things from them. that it's like i don't want to i don't i don't know i just don't like stealing credit like you know money or or things from them but because all like all through our line i didn't think of it like that because it was like virtual right because it was like on the internet i don't know i think of like my grandma i always get the image of like my little old lady grandma and like if somebody would rob her i would kill that person you know what i mean mob man finished high school with good grades but his obsession with video games

grew stronger because he was tapping into his neighbor's phone lines and spending all night on the computer his relationship with his parents evaporated oh yeah they don't ever talk to me during all that whole time like they i, I was disowned as a child. Because of this, he hardly ever went home. No, I wasn't. I mean, most of the time I was staying over at my girlfriend's, you know, apartment or whatever. Or out over at friends' houses, couch surfing, trying to get on that internet. He was drawn like a moth to a flame.

He would go wherever he could find free internet access. Video games ruined my, Ultima Online ruined my life. Or my early livelihood. I'm like 18 at this, or I was about to turn 18. And I got a cell phone. I was 17. They let me sign the contract because they're idiots. I thought you had to be 18 to sign a legal binding contract.

I got a phone bill. It was like 900 bucks. And that's a lot of money. He looks at the bill and it says he called Kansas and some other states for an ungodly amount of time. I don't know anybody in Kansas or Arkansas or wherever the hell. I didn't make these calls. So he decides to refute the bill with AT&T. Let me call them up and see what the hell this $900 charge is or whatever.

And they said I called somebody in like Kansas or Wisconsin. It's like, I don't even know anybody up in that state. I did not call somebody up there for 20 hours. So you need to remove this $900 bill charge on my phone. They're like, no, sir, we're not going to do that. You made that call and you're going to have to pay it or we're not going to give you service. And I'm like, well, I'm not even 18. You signed this contract, so I don't have to pay it anyway.

And they're like, well, then we're going to disconnect you altogether. And I'm like, well, I'm just going to log in and change it myself. And they're like, we got smarter people working here than you. You're not even, you know, you're a young punk kid and stuff, you know. So I hang up. By this point, Mob Man has developed a complex because of his previous online exploits. He was thinking to himself, I made this Sub 7. I fucking own everything

in Ultima Online, like the greatest game ever. And after he hangs up with AT&T, he feels powerless against this large corporation. He honestly didn't make the calls they claim he did. And there's nothing he can do about it except pay it. So rage brews inside him. And he just heard AT&T tell him that their systems are too secure for him to hack into. And I'm like, oh really? They think they're smarter and better than me? And they can push me around?

I didn't make these calls. You know, and whatever. So I get on my vengeful, you know, upset. I see red. Mobman got a list of AT&T phone numbers that had modems on them. So he would use his computer to dial the number and see if it connected. This is called war dialing.

He would go down the list, dialing number after number to see if it connected to any computer in the AT&T network. So I spent all night logging into different PBXs, calling up all kinds of weird exchanges. And I'd get into a couple of them. And every once in a while, he would connect to an AT&T system. And amazingly enough, the systems he accessed did not have a username or password. So when you dialed into it, it would immediately give you a command prompt. Yeah, it just throws you in. Dude, there's no fucking security back then, man.

There's no nothing, ever. But this was an operating system Mobman had never seen before. Some weird AT&T terminal or something. So he didn't know any commands. Yeah, I'm typing like question mark and help and stuff. And then like, it gives you a little list of commands. And then you like, you type in that command and type help. You know, and you keep getting lists of different stuff.

Try to figure out what everything freaking does. He keeps getting access to one system after another. And he's exploring and learning the AT&T network, studying it, mapping it. And he keeps going deeper. Man, if they had Red Bulls back then, I mean, I'd be just a lot more Red Bulls. It's just a natural high. It's just like, I don't know, you're just doing it. You know, it's just like the whole world closed off. I get enveloped and closed into that. Like,

I don't, it's me, the computer, that's it. Like, you could be houses on fire and I wouldn't even know. My man spends eight hours gaining access into AT&T's network, slowly making progress, but still nothing significant yet. Eventually, I typed in the wrong command. And at that same moment, the computer he dialed into went offline. And nothing worked. And then I tried dialing some of the other numbers that I was able to connect to prior to some of the other machines and they were all off too so then I thought it was me so I tried calling in from a different address and then that didn't work um then I decided to give them a call call at&t customer support again see if they could fix my phone bill. So I got them on the line.

And again, we're not fixing your bill, blah, blah, blah. We made these calls. I'm like, I did not. But, hey, how's your all's network over there in California and Nevada and stuff? They're like, well, we just have a big network outage over there. It's been out for a couple hours. He realized the commands he typed on that computer

had caused a major outage at AT&T. And apparently it rewrote the firmware on it and bricked like one of these central switching PBXs, which happened to run

like the whole like West Coast telephone systems or something i'm like oh really well if you want to know why i'll tell you if you fix my phone bill so you know and um you know so i get in there i start bragging i brag to them you know, and, you know, so I get in there and I start bragging. I brag to them, you know. I sit there and I tell them what I did and all that stuff. And obviously I gave them my name, my phone number and all that, you know. So, obviously that's one of the situations you probably reflected back on a lot what do you

what do you think about that now yeah so i mean yeah don't be an idiot you know i mean nowadays obviously you got vpns and all that shit you know if you want to do something illegal i mean i could i could definitely get away with stuff if i want to now. But I don't. Yeah, I don't do anything illegal. This episode is sponsored by Shopify. The new year is a great time to ask yourself, what if? When I was thinking, what if I start a podcast? My focus was on finding a catchy name, some cool stories, and working out the best way to record.

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so that they could remove the charges from his phone bill. He sat there after hanging up. No, I mean, I'm still upset. They didn't fix my shit. You know, I hacked all their stuff. I'm waiting for them to call me back, so I just get back on and keep trying to do other shit, you know, hack and do stuff.

And then I think I went and played some ultimate line afterwards you know whatever you know a few days go by still no callback from at&t yeah my my friends my girlfriend and my mom got a visit from like a detective or an fbi guy or something that left them their business cards. I was like, I was like, oh shit, oh shit. What am I going to do? So I had a job. I forgot what I was doing. I was like working at Taco Bell or some shit. And you know, these, these, these detective people were looking for me and I was worried that I'm going to get picked up. I'm going to get arrested. I don't know what's happening. So I said, all right, well, let me face, you know, let me confront it, you know? So I had lots of friends, um, computer friends. One of them

lived in Washington and there was a library in Washington. And apparently that library had a database, a little computer that was like the white pages. And you could type, put in anybody's name or phone number, reverse lookup, front lookup, whatever, sideways, whatever you want to do. You know, it's like it has everybody's information. Mobman uses this computer to look up the information on the detective that's looking for him.

And I get his house phone number and his address and stuff. And I call him at his house at like 3 o'clock in the morning. And he's asleep. But he answers the phone. And I'm like, hey, what's up? And I heard you're looking for me. He's like, yeah. I just want to talk to you about AT&T.

Like, they said that you were having some issues with them. And I think, why don't you meet me up and get a cup of coffee? And we could go over, you know, this stuff. And I'm like, dude, I'm not stupid. Like, you've been looking for me for like a month. And knocking on all my friends doors and shit and i think you're gonna arrest me so i'm not gonna meet up with you with some coffee like i'm not stupid and he's like all right yeah i mean i get it you are wanted and i'm gonna have to you know take you in and stuff uh where are you I'll come and get you

and I'm like I'm not gonna tell you where I am I'm not stupid again I'm gonna alliterate that but however I get my paycheck Friday and I'll meet you at my girlfriend's apartment complex on Saturday at the pool and I'll turn myself in. And he's like, okay, well, where do you work? Like, you know, and I'm like, dude, really? Like, and I hang up. He wanted to do the right thing. He didn't want to be a criminal or a fugitive. He just wanted to face this problem.

He thought he might go to jail. So he spent the next few days stashing all his computer files and safe spots all around the internet and sorting out any loose ends. I was just like, all right, well, I went and got my paycheck and I went in that Saturday and went to the pool and like I went and walked in there. And they came like they had like SWAT team there, like a bunch of dudes with machine guns and surrounding me basically and put me in the back what what did you what did you think as soon as you saw like

a SWAT team no no I was just like I'm frozen I'm just like whatever I'm just standing there what am I gonna do pull out my nine and start shooting at him no i mean i would just be so scared like why are there people pointing guns at me i don't know i don't care i mean it's cool my girlfriend she's there you know walking up they let me you know kiss and hug my girlfriend goodbye and they give me my cell phone like they're letting me make calls in the back of the cop car. I'm calling up like my buddies. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to jail, you know, send me, write me a letter or something. Then they took me to jail. His girlfriend was not happy to see him arrested at her pool.

Yeah. She was sad and she was good. Like she kept, she came to the jail and visited me a lot and all that stuff. So my man was questioned and taken to jail it sunk in like the first like you know couple days like two or three days it's like man i'm missing people and a lot but then it becomes like a whole different world inside of jail it has its own ecosystem if you will you know so you start learning all the stuff in there and and whatnot and i was like the pretty cool guy in jail i mean i'm a young skinny nerdy fucking dude but nobody fucked with me at all because i was like the cool hacker guy that could like when they get out we could all hook up and like make lots of money and do shit

so everybody wanted to be like my friend um so i mean i had it made i mean i was good in chess i learned p-knuckle uh played dominoes i got sent to lockdown a few times uh that was fun got to hang out with all the murder people um you know so it's it was an experience it opens your eyes you learn i learned how to become humble and very respectful in there strangely enough he was still able to get on a computer while in jail some of the guards there the officers they were going to school for computers or they had a computer there and they want to learn stuff. And who's the guy they come and talk to about learning things? This guy.

Which was a lot of fun for Mob Man. Hell yeah. They let me go hang out, play on the computer, show them things. And then there was the Law Library. Law Library was amazing. And that had the internet, but you couldn't get on the internet so i had to hack the computer locally i remember how i did that was um magnifying glass yeah magnify.exe i deleted magnify and renamed cmd.exe to magnify. And then I went back to the login screen.

And then you hit like Windows H, and it brings up the accessibility magnify, which was actually command prompt. And system launched it for me. So now I have like admin of their little log library computer. Then I got everybody's name address all the i mean not everybody but like all the correctional officers like got into their hr department and got all their information printed that out um signed up for like pretty much every magazine

on the planet like the mail that i got every day was like bags, like those big garbage bags full of mail. How did you pay for that? But cash on delivery, bro. Back then. You sign up, you know, sample, subscription, whatever. Done. Every magazine. Back then, you know, magazines were a thing.

So, yeah. So there was like, I don't know, were a thing uh so yeah so there was like i don't know thousands a day so like the jail people got upset and came to my cell and had a talking with me and wanted to know how i did it all or they're going to charge me with more crimes so i sat down with their it guy some old dude and showed him that his computer skills are lacking stuff and how i did all that which was fine so i mean i got to be on a computer you know and do things um here and there he spent five months in jail and it was time for his trial i get a public defender pretender is what we call public pretenders they're scaring me you're like, you're going to prison for 15 years. We got all the evidence that

we need. We got you. We got AT&T saying that you called them, saying that you called them and told them that you did this. So I was scared though. And I wanted to get out of jail, right? And they're like, hey, if you sign here, you could get out tonight. We'll put you on probation, done. Or we go to trial and you'll lose. I mean, the public defender's like, you'll lose and you'll go to prison for 15 years. But if you plea out to here,

we'll lower your charge down to a third degree felony instead of a second degree felony and we'll let you out tonight and you can go home i'm like all right so i signed and pled out but then i didn't get to go home that night because the judge wanted to have a whole other hearing for restitution. And I'm like, what's that word? What's restitution mean? It's like, oh, that's the money you got to pay back for the damages you caused. It's a lot of money. So we're going to have an all hearing on that.

When's a good time there court reporter person oh next month we got an opening oh cool all right we'll send them back to jail and we'll see them next month so i sit in jail wait a month come back restitution hearing yay i get out today whatever the fuck y'all want to say i want to pay i don't care but their lawyers didn't show up at&t ding dongs and um they're like oh well can we get a continuance uh lawyers couldn't make it today you know um i stand up i'm like fuck no i planned out a month ago i should have been out a month ago i'm not going back into jail because these guys can't be respectful enough to the court to show up when you told them to be here and then the judge is like you know what you're right if they want any money from you

they're gonna have to sue you click no restitution and then i i did like the little deuces sign deuces and then i got to go down i got out and left i went to find the nearest ashtray to find a cigarette butt to smoke and then i went to like mcdonald's got a cheeseburger for free. Because I told them that I ordered something the other day. And it was because I just got out of jail. I didn't have no money.

I ordered something the other day and they forgot to give me a cheeseburger in the bag. And they're like, all right, well, here you go. And I'm like, sweet cheeseburger. Social engineering. And then I went to go live at the Salvation Army. My man had nowhere to go after getting out of jail. So he was homeless for a while with no money and had to start from scratch. His friends were all gone and his mom wanted nothing to do with him.

Well, because she was a police officer or whatever. And I was a convicted felon at that time. I don't know. She just kind of disowned me. So yeah, I lived on my own. Did day labor. Digging ditches. It was cool.

I went out on one. They had a submarine once. Parked at the thing. And it was in for cleaning. It was like some old Russian sub or something. And we had to like, choop off the barnacles. It was pretty fun.

Yeah, laying sod. Doing whatever. Eventually was pretty fun. Yeah, laying sod, doing whatever, eventually saved some money, got a little apartment, got another job. He was starting to pick his life back up and be productive again. But then something happened. So, um, I seen a crime happening

one day while I was walking down the street, but it was pretty bad. It was, like, somebody was getting their ass whooped in and there was like a knife and, and you know, all kinds of other stuff. Right. So I like, I'm like, Oh, here's a pay phone. Let me call 911. Let me be a good citizen to save this person's life. And, um, I do that. Cops come and they want to come over and talk to me and they ask for my id and stuff and lo and behold i had a warrant out for my arrest apparently i violated probation because i was on probation. And I never had a probation officer or checked in or did anything that I was supposed to do.

So I got arrested. They took me to jail. They didn't take the other dude to jail, by the way. They let him off. They just gave him a court date. The guy that was like killing somebody. But I get to go to jail because you know i violated my probation which is fine it's the law so i went to jail um sat in jail had to wait go to court and then i'm

like i don't want to get put on probation again apparently i can't do it like well we're gonna put you on it again all right cool so i got put on probation again this time i actually did check in meet with the dude and everything's like well you gotta get a job you gotta do this gotta do that i'm like fuck that put me back in jail so i went back to jail and then i tell the judge like i told you i didn't want to put on probation just tell me how much time i gotta do and i'll do it and don't put me on probation he's like all right well you gotta do a year i'm like all right cool i've already been sitting in here for six months so all right a couple more months ago already been sitting in here for six months. So, all right. A couple more months to go. Done.

Because you get like extra bonus days because I was like a trustee and I did good stuff. And you get like good behavior. So you really do like eight months out of the 12 months for a year. So I did my year. Got out. Free and clean. Done. He gets back out.

Starts over from scratch again, doing day labor, earning a little bit at a time, and saving up for an apartment. I eventually met a chick, moved down to Fort Lauderdale with her. She had some money, so I lived with her. I didn't really have to buy or pay anything or whatever. And then I got a job running Cat5 Cable or whatever. And then they were working on poker software and like their

programmers were like idiots it's like i'll look over their shoulder or see what they're doing because i'm running all the cables and i'd go and help them like fix their little problem they're having with whatever of that day and eventually you know the boss he's seen me doing that he's like hey you want to just work here and i'm like cool yeah you know, the boss, he seen me doing that. He's like, Hey, you want to just work here? And I'm like, cool. Yeah. You know? So I started, I was like the assistant it guy. Eventually I stayed with the company and everything. I just became like one of the head dudes, um, you know, there and my knowledge just like skyrocketed from, from working there. Um, and then I started, I went back went back to college i i started going to school

so i put myself through college to get a degree which is pretty much worthless didn't learn a lot while i was working there and i was getting certifications so like 200 different microsoft certs later um after i took one like like i took one like every other day just for kicks and giggles because they're like free. So I'm like, cool, I'm gonna take all these certs. So I was taking certs like every day. It was fun. The place he was working at was an online casino, but it was at this time that some

harsh online gambling regulations went into effect in the U.S. So the business started to wobble and he knew he needed to move on to something new. I eventually got in an argument and left that company and went and started my own. And, you know, I made a cybersecurity company, and then I sold that company to McAfee. That's John McAfee, who started the McAfee antivirus software. But John is no longer part of McAfee and is doing his own ventures.

But still, Mobban made some pretty good money selling his company to John. Yeah, I bought a house and a car and paid off all my debts and student loans. I moved to Alabama. Mob Man has just been living a nice, relaxing life for the last few years, which brings us up to now. Now, just hanging out. Looking for a job. Now, I'm in Huntsville, Alabama, and the scenery here is all DOD.

Everybody has clearance, secret clearance and all that. Obviously, me with my criminal past, I don't have the clearances. So a lot of people won't touch me or hire me. So I do contract work, and I'm actually looking into maybe even starting a recruitment company. Because I know so many people, and I like to help, and I'm really good at making resumes and knowing if somebody's full of shit or not. But I think I'm probably going to be one of them people where I just have to keep doing my own companies and my own thing unless somebody gives me a chance to show them

that I'm not a criminal or whatever. A lot of companies are scared of me. Oh, and remember Sub7? Apparently while he was in jail and homeless and struggling, that malware became really popular. Thousands of people started becoming familiar with it. India, and a few other places. It's very, very weird to see that it's still out there and in the wild and working to this day. After a while, Mobban would go and attend security and hacker conferences. Then I started seeing the impact that it had on the industry and changing a lot of the people.

I'll go to DEF CON or whatnot, and people come up to me, and they're like, oh man, we use Sub7. And everybody tells me a story about their use of Sub7. Some people that run these billion dollar cybersecurity companies, they come up to me,

and they're billionaires. And they're like, dude, man, you got me, the one that got me into computers. I wouldn't be where I was today without Sub7. I'm like, you owe me a beer. They're like, whatever you want, man. Let's go to the bar. me the one that got me into computers like i wouldn't be where i was today without subset i'm like you owe me a beer you're like whatever you want man well let's go to the bar you buy everything on me you know so it's like cool because i'm you know poor so so where i was it's hard to tell but

some people claim that sub 7 was the first remote access tool that became popular with hackers a few other trojans came out around the same time and And so with that, you know, it's history, kind of historical software. A few years back, Mobman saw an article online and it said that AT&T found an error in their billing system, which ended up in a class action lawsuit. And it said the errors in their billing system dated all the way back to when Mobman was erroneously hit with that $900 phone bill. I'm like, yep. I've been saying that for years. I've been telling them their shit was broken for years.

So yeah, AT&T burning hell. Like when they come on my lawn and they ask me if I want to get AT&T internet, it's like, oh, I feel bad for that sales guy. Yeah. So trolled him. What did you say to him? Dude, I go down and file restraining orders at the courthouse against them. If they send me one letter in the mail, I go down and file something at the courthouse. I'm livid against that company.

I just don't like, see the only thing I learned, like I don't have no anger issues or anything. The only thing that ever upsets me in life, you can do whatever you want to me. You accuse me of something I did not do, I get upset. But I've learned to control it. I'm not going to go and hack you or do something. But that's the only thing that really pisses me off in life. It's like being accused of something I didn't do.

And it upsets me when I go to a lot of companies and they think that I'm going to do this and this and that or whatever. Like if they upset me, I'm going to fuck all their shit up or something. That's ridiculous. But whatever. It is what it is. like if they upset me, you know, I'm going to fuck all their shit up or something, you know, that's, that's, you know, it's, that's ridiculous, but whatever it is, what it is. Wait a minute, wait a minute. I have an addendum to this story. If you haven't listened already, you need to go and listen to part two of this story right now, which is episode 150. And it's called Mob Man 2. You've been listening to Darknet Diaries. If you want to help support this show, head on over to darknetdiaries.com slash love.

There you'll find the best ways to support this show, including a link to the Patreon page and a shop where you can buy t-shirts and stickers. This show is made entirely by me, Jack Re-Cyder, and the theme music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.