Hackin' on a Star: Matthew Bevan

Macy's Day Thanksgiving Day parade. So what happens is there's winds whipping around. The winds are like at forty three miles an hour that day, they decide we're gonna do it anyway. Now, these are huge, exactly, and it takes like teams of people to hold them down. So I watched the footage right, and this was like amazing because they lost multiple floats in the parade. The Pink Panther goes out like a street the Quick Bunny, the cat and the hat they both go down at thirty six Street.

But the one that I loved the most happened to be Barney the Big Purple Dinosaur. So after the Pink Panther had been you know, taken out with a knife by the NYPD. Barney comes down the path and Barney is like getting whipped around and the handlers have to lose control of him, right, and it comes this menace where the wind is going so fast the handlers are literally lying down on the street. Another handler is lying on top of them trying to hold them down because

the wind is lifting them. Wondering if anyone got flung over on the roape completely not that good, but there were some people like things fell and stuff people got actually hurt. But aside from that, there was when Barney goes down and I quote one lady said, everything turned purple. Right, So what happens is like as the balloon handles are trying to fight to hold Barney, he hits this like light post and then all of a sudden rips open

his side. So now Barney the kind of story's eviscerated in the air, flailing away and the wind is going right into his torn open side, and so people are screaming. Children's yeah, the families are screaming, And so what did people do? Because now also the wind is starting to whip this thing around like a kite. Handlers are trying to hold it down, so they're able to cut the ropes that are tied around one lamp post. Now Barney's flapping around and he's down at like street level, so

he's getting close to like hitting people. Then White Pet once again rushes in. Someone's like, give me a knife, and then so they get a knife and they go at Barney with knives and they cut a heart. Stop it. They cut a heart Barney in front of all the children who were there, and then all the children watching the millions at home. And it is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Is there a documentary about this? No, you can find it on YouTube. Oh I don't really.

I don't know that. I think there should be. And I wanted to be very solemn the day that Barney went down. Oh it's insane. Yeah, I would watch that if you want to see it, it's on YouTube. Okay, Well that's ridiculous. Do you know what else is ridiculous? Hit me with it. Two kids hacking major military installations in search of UFO intel. Oh, I love these kids. This is ridiculous. Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists and cons It's always murder free and one ridiculous.

I am not particularly computer literate. I mean, I'm proficient in Microsoft Office Suite applications, says right there on my resume. But I'm kind of I'm in awe of hackers. Well, I'm in all of the nineties version of them, you know, like they were more adventurous than now. It's like malicious and financial, right, but like to know the back door operations of things like that, and back in the day with people would be cracking in just because they wanted to.

I could get in if they wanted to see what was being held in there, and that stayed these UFO to know how to do that rather than only know the front facing things. Um, I'm going to focus on the golden age of hacking, late eighties early nineties. Do you remember that Angelina Jolie film Hackers, Yes, the one you mentioned often. It had a really good theme song, hacking on a Star Really yeah, Randy Newman sang. It had other classics on the soundtrack, Nights of hackst Asia

Are you serious? And then Computer Pooper You're not kidding? Disc is how we do it? I t are you kidding? I'm completely kidding. I had I could have believed you. Yeah, you know what, Well, okay, I shouldn't joke. But in all honesty, there were three soundtracks for that movie. Did you know that? So? And that's a hundred percent true. They just couldn't stop. Do you know what was songs written the movie? Well, I don't know what. There's track one,

Disc one is called Original Bedroom Rockers by Cruder and Dorfmeister. Okay, so now I have to assume you're telling the truth. I hadn't heard of it, but I listened to that song for the sake of research. It's the music that you play when you're like in the nineties and it's dark and it's wet, and you're in the city scape

and you're sneaking. That's what that it's for. You're like wearing a choker and thick sold Doc Martins and you're just hacking it at That's what that's for, Just poking around and you have tiny bangs of course male female, none of the above, tiny banks. Do you know? It was track one on disc two? Um, this is how we do it? Firestarter by the Prodigy. Like, if that doesn't take you back, I don't know that. So in the movie, they talk about the essay Hacker Manifesto, which

is also known as the Conscience of a Hack. It defined the whole hacker business that you know, the biz as we like to call it. Yeah, it was written by a hacker, a hacker named the Mentor. Yes, he was a hacker. His MoMA named him Lloyd Blankenship. He called himself the Mentor. Can I read you the very end of it? Um? Should I do it? In my junior high drama kid voice, I was going to ask, this is our world now, the world of the electron

and the switch, the beauty of the bad. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore, and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge, and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias,

and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat and lie to us and try to make us believe if it's for our own good. Yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is out of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that about smarting you something that you will never forgive me for. I'm a hacker and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,

but you cannot stop us all. After all, we're all alike. Reminds me of the Simpsons. Joker Ed Bakley drives a car that's powered off of his sense of self satisfaction. Yes, there's like serious Jean Valjean and doesn't make you want to go to coding class and just pop off once I get done. Waiving this flag over my head makes me want to go back to seventh grade and do a play. So Hackers, that was a real star turn for all. Angelina Jolie, Oh yeah, I think guess how

she met and married Johnny Lee Miller sick boy. I think you're actually right about that. I'm right about hackers. It came out. It was in the public consciousness. Hacken. Yeah, it'd been there for a while. You know. He had Matthew Broderick in wargames the Net, that's right. Yeah, that was like the sanitized version. That was like the Kelly her out or visit her outlook, Hello Microsoft Excel and

proficient Microsoft Office Suite. Um, yeah, no, that was the net is like the panera version of hackers and hackers is like the hot topic everything. So hackers. In six June, there was a U. S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that held a hearing on security in cyberspace. So you know, let's protecting as internet we got to. UM. Hearing was really all about the National Information Infrastructure as well as

America's dependency on said infrastructure, the NII. It's basically, according to Senate staffers, quote, the advanced computer systems, databases, and telecommunications networks throughout the United States that make electronic information widely available and accessible. Start talking about like the Internet, cable, wire, satellite. So this was the telecommunications follow up act. I guess cell phones. Um, it's just a part of the global infrastructure,

just the US. And so this this subcommittee, they put together a report and they figured out like what the vulnerabilities were for this infrastructure weakness in hardware and software. This week weeksauce human factor and then a lack of security culture. Ah, that's like the whole my passwords passwords. Yeah, it's like the I have the people who put a post it note with their password under their keyboard or people do that. You you don't work in office. Yeah,

I don't know anything about office. That's like if you, yeah, you just lift a keyboard, you're probably on a on some people's Yeah, you're probably going to find there. But I don't even tape it underneath their desk draw They might do that too. I mean, if I were really trying to look for someone, that's what I would do, not that I would. Um So. In an example, the congressional staffers, they said, quote, the staff requested from various agencies the name of the individual or office in charge

of computer safety. Most agencies responded that they did not know who that individual was, or that they did not know if such a position existed, or that the position was spread over numerous departments. Like who's in charge of security at the State Department? They're like department like like security security and the front door diversity. He plays a lot of games. Um so, but this is lot's changed since then. But still, um so, this subcommittee, were they

just reacting to the smash hit movies hackers? Likely? No, there was a specific hack that was detailed in Appendix B to the report, and this is a cautionary tale, um, they said, quote the following case study is a good illustration of the type of threat facing our Department of Defense information infrastructure. Although the incident has been fully investigated by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, numerous questions remain unanswered. So now we're not just talking like random

business at at the at the government level. We're talking about Air Force. So it's like some war games kind of stuff, like the attacked into the d D and they're like getting nuclear. Do you want to play a game? So let's talk hackers. My story today. What's important is what I'm going to talk about. It's a grouse him to some a buddy story. Two young hackers taken on the world. The first guy someone you've already heard of, Angelina Jolie, Yes, her, No, it's Matthew Bevan. He was

the name sounds familiar. He was, Yeah, he was on that British TV show The Heist, starring our Personal Savior. Um. He was a Welshman, or is a Welshman internationally known. He's still he's permanently internationally known. Hacker started young, he eventually became a white hat security expert who knows what he's doing today, we're hoping for his best life. But let's go back to the start. Born four Whales, Europe.

His dad was a cop. So he gets his first computer, first real six during when he's twelve, and when he's fifteen he gets his first real mode M from my fellow math deficients. Right, okay, so it seems kind early for modems in such eight nine, at least for like the average person. Yeah. I had a friend whose father was a journalist and he used a modem to send his newspaper column in and we thought that was why had put a phone on this thing? Yeah, the little

cradle thing. Well there there's little Matthew scouting and computing. You know. I mentioned it in the heist episode that he got his modem and he started freaking freaking out with the girl, free phone calls, hacking the phone, mainframe and the so on the week. So that then got him internet access. And since it's the early days, not everything is online, everything college networks. Yeah, but the stuff that is connected, he's just tuting right on in now. Um,

he picked his hacker name Cougie. Yeah, comes from cougi kiri. Are you familiar with that? Hell? No, that's I'm ashamed for you. Um as we as the rest of us all know it's ninja sign language. Is it really that is? I'm not making that one up. It's hand signs that

ninja's used to call upon their powers when they're in danger. So, according to my new favorite website, Way of the Ninja dot Com, kuji means nine symbols, and kirie refers to the cutting motion, and the nine symbols are written pyo, toe, shah, kai, jin, retzu, zai, and zen. I know I'm saying things wrong and I deep apologies for that. Each symbol, according to this website quote, each symbol has a specific meaning, so to invoke a

specific ability, you have to perform the correct symbol. For example, if a ninja gets injured, he'd performed the kujie symbol for healing while in a meditative state. In other words, kuji kiri is like a meditative prayer. The combination of hand signs, breath and visualization induces a powerful mental state. There's no proof of people gaining extraordinary senses or healing powers. What cougie does is to trigger a specific mental state. For a shinobi, this optimal state of mine helps him

function well under stress. It may also create the ideal conditions for his body to recover tad faster. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit, but at one time I did know this when I was a twelve year old boy, and I was like, oh, I know, you can't. You know you can't be a twelve year old boy and I have a little bit of ninja. Oh my god, I had a lot of ninja and like folding up throwing stars. Yeah, we used to go down to Chinatown

and buy them. In fact, one of my favorite memories is coming back from Chinatown throwing them up in the air and we were wearing, you know, flip flops, and the ninja star fell and hit my friend in the foot and blood spread it up higher than his head. Can we talk about how that's here one of your favorite memories, you said, because we were so happy to get the ninja stars, And it's about the ninja stars, not about the blood, not about the guys are of blood.

But he was impressive. He was impressed. It sounds it well. So Matthew called himself, Guji go on um, I need to take a break right now and practice my cog kitty. Um, let's listen to some ads. When we come back, I'm going to tell you about Cougie served from the Web in search of alien life. All right, Saron. When we left off, Matthew Bevan a k a. Cougi was crafting a mission, my favorite hacking in Ninja. Yes, he's doing

a hacking mission. He started small colleges businesses because not a lot of stuff was online like the Prodigy network back then. Yeah, he and his hacker pals, they'd race each other to see who could hack the most systems in two hours. So that's fun. In an interview at the BBC, he said that hacking was quote perhaps the feeling that a parent might get if they find their child's diary. They know they should not read it, they know it's wrong, but they just can't help themselves. Wow. Right,

kind of an apt analogy, I think. Yeah. But also it's like, so he has a cop for a dad, he probably doesn't have a whole lot of like privacy and homes. He's like, I know my parents are going to get off reading this. Um, they know they shouldn't, but they can help themselves. So he and his pals hacking it up hack in the USA, well, uk, okay.

One of his pals is a teenage boy and he's like, you know, Matthews and his early twenties at this point, teenage boy named Richard Price who called himself data stream cowboy, data stream cowboy. Huh. Now what I love is that the government kind of insults him and only calls him data stream. How can you drop the cowboy, dude? I mean, it reminds me of drug Store Cowboy, one of my favorite nineties movies. I can never hear the words drug

store that. Secretly my head, I think they're just dropping it so that first of all, it makes him feel a little familiar and he's a kid, and then they're like insulting him. But I'll so maybe because in those days you had to print things up in hard copy, if you took the word cowboy out, it would reduce over time the page count and you could save money. Really No, we're going to talk about all data stream

seed later, but um, it was the nineties. Matthew was a young man, not a whole lot of real life friends. So of course he's a big fan of the X Files and he's fascinated with the Roswell incident. I'm not capping on him for that at all. Fascinated right, and I loved the x He'd hear about hackers breaking into army and navy bases to find information about UFOs. He's like, you know what, I'm gonna give it a try. Why

not me? So so I want in. So there were rumors of forty previous hackers who tried this to get into all these military things, and then they disappeared. They disappeared, get out. But you know what, Matthew, how did they know the hackers disappear? Like did hacker community say like they stopped all of a sudden, they're not logging on. They're like, well, yeah, but is that okay? I don't know. They weren't like disappeared, disappeared like black helicopters. It's a rumor.

So I'm sure that some people heard that, yeah, black helicopters came or they were thrown in vans. Other people are like, I haven't seen them online in a while, so you know yeah. Um, Matthew took my informal motto who knows who cares? And he just went with it. Who knows who cares, I'm going to try it. So he summons data stream Cowboy, and I just like to imagine they're both wearing like crushed velvet capes. I don't

know why. And then they get their freak on. Okay, so there's just a couple of freaks off the leash. Am I right? People, is this thing on? Um? They wanted to know what the FEDS had on the UFOs, the UFOs, as we say in the biz. It was the nineties X files, the rage Internet spreading out like a cancer across the globe. And there's kan data stream here, cancer totally righting the cancer. He ha, Okay, so Matthew, a web of cancer, a couple of freaks off the leash.

Matthew hacks into the computer network at Air Forces Rome Laboratory at what was then Griffith's Air Force Base in Rome, New York. Did you know I've been to that Air Force base? I did, and I wanted to talk to you about that. No, I had no idea. How would I know about? Because, my good dude, that's where they

held with stock yours truly right there. The whole time I forgot you suffered through I was working for Mother Jones magazine at the time, and we're doing like marketing stuff there but also very loosely covering it for the Mojo website and as a whole other story for a whole other time. You've written about this medium, ye, so that Yeah, I've been to this Air Force base. I haven't been in like the brain center of it, the computer because it was decommissioned when I was there. You

just suffered anyway, Oh yeah, smelled terrible anyway. Time in the hack Row Lab was quote the Air Forces Premier Command and Control research facility. Its projects included artificial intelligence system, radar guidance system, and target detection and tracking system. Why is this description side? It comes with a slow gin fizz like it happens when you when you go into the Internet now and you type it in. That's what comes out of your computer. That sound the voice anytime

you want a description of anything important. Did you ever notice now if you go to look at anything for the Internet when you research it's like, oh, did you want to buy that? I'll go and research anything. It's like, oh, hey, did you want to buy that Air Force base? I'm like, Oh, I just wanted would you like to buy a black hole hook me up, So Maddie bevans uh, he said. His quote soul tool was a Commodore Amiga loaded with blue boxing program called rocks Box Hell. Yes, shout out

to the Amiga I had. My brother and I had an Amiga when we were growing up. Yeah, my neighbor Ja had when we loved it are it was so way too sophisticated for our use, Like we played kids educational games like he had to solve math problems and collect carmins to like navigate a castle. That was what I did on there. My grandma got us that computer at this craziest store in Berkeley that was half computer store half tennis store. It was called it was called

Winner's Circle. It legitimately sold computers and tennis gear interests. I think, Yeah, I thought I was misremembering it and like confusing two stores, and I was like, hold on a second. I had to look it up their old YELP reviews at this place that it doesn't exist anywhere, but it existed. Then I got my rackets restrung there. But then we'd also be like can I get a cool educational game like popular kids would do? Like I may have been wearing orthoped or like orthodontic net gear

when I went in there. I don't know who's to say whatever. So Matthew, he had an Amiga shout out to him. He goes um he hacked the Rome Lab. He said he was doing it because he wanted to like prove UFO conspiracy stuff. He said, I was not interested in weapons codes, just the UFOs um. He thought that they were totally hiding UFO information. He wanted to find out what it was. He said, quote. There were a lot of weird coincidences which add up to the

possibility of it most likely being true. I like to think what I saw was not misinformation. He saw some stuff. Did he tell the blink when a D two guy? That's my question. So the Air Force figured out pretty soon that there were two people they didn't know who who had hacked into seven of the computer systems at Rome Labs and gained complete access to all the information in their systems. Just waltzed right in. They downloaded data files.

They installed sniffer software programs on each of the seven systems, which meant they were able to read, copy and delete emails, read and copy sensitive unclassified battlefield simulation programmed data like they were just poking around where they really shouldn't have been. So the Air Force realizes, okay, we got to two creepers in here. They figure, we're going to leave a couple of these hacked systems open, but secure the other one so that we can trace them if they come

in again. So April four, the Air Force they see Cougie Sneak Sneak Sneak doing little hand signs into the Goddard Space Flight Center at green Belt, Maryland, and they said they were able to cut his connection before he could take any information. That same day, the Air Force said he also attempted to hack into Write Patterson Air Force Base. Now Right Patterson is where a lot of

UFOs allegedly stored. So the next day, on April fifteen, the Air Force said that they saw him trying to break into Right Patterson again, as well as NATO headquarters in Brussels. You know why listen, It's like you're wandering around. You see a nice little shop, like, oh, I will go in there for a second. You know. It's like you go to the store and when they're like did you find everything? Okay? You know what actually I found

more than I needed. That's him poking around. So there's this guy named Ryan Sprague, and he's a regular on such hit shows as Mysteries Decoded Ancient Aliens, one of your favorites, hard hitting stuff. He wrote a piece on medium about this, so well vetted um. He said that Matthew realized, after spending some time on those computers that he quote had the potential to single handedly launched missiles

from the base. Wisely, he decided to veer his focus away from warfare and concentrated solely on trying to find any information related to highly advanced aircraft searching for space related activity. He first looked at Goddard Space Center. He began to download and copy dozens of files that he

had found about space related technology. But this did and seemed to satisfy his appetite, and then he shifted his focus to a base that held a hefty reputation for supposedly storing the wreckage of a down UFO Right Patterson Air Force Base. So Matthew admits, you know what, I'm just doing it out of curiosity. But my call, Lee, it's so easy. That's the other reason. It's like takes

no effort. There's this website great spacing dot com. I found the Yeah, they said that Matthew found information from Right Patterson because they're the ones who supposedly had the Roswell incident stuff. And then he also supposedly found a description about um the powerful engine that was in the Roswell Incident Technology vehicle UFO Space Sky thing is so much fun. So he also found files about Room eighteen, and he was heavily questioned about what he knew about

Room eighteen when they finally caught him. Did you know there's a Megadeth song called Hangar eighteen that is about it's about this place. Yeah, Hangar eight teen, Room eighteen. It's supposedly an area fifty one where they keep all the special all the alien interstellar I'm sorry, but if Mega Death wrote a song about it, it's Legit has never lied once, and it's not only knows is the

truth and guitar licks. Yeah, that's it. Pure. So the Air Force they finally figure out who these people are, right, and they figure they're working together. Cougie data stream cowboy or just data stream to the overly familiar FETs or Mr Cowboys. You're nasty, So they figured that Cougie was like coaching data Stream via online chat sessions when he would have a trouble and then data Stream would try

again successfully. So per the Senate Subcommittee hearing a few years later, quote Cougie was a far more sophisticated hacker than the sixteen year old data Stream. Air Force investigators were able to observe that Cougie would only stay on a telephone line is short time, not long enough to be traced successfully. So he's just you know, pushing him and go on out there. You you poke around, You tell me what you find, uh, data Stream, though he wasn't.

He did big dog stuff on his own too. He hacked into a couple of NASA's systems, Lockheed Martin and then allegedly another NATO computer. Um. But his next hack is what really got him on the radar for US officials. He somehow got into a system in Korea and obtained all the data stored on the Korean Atomic Research Institute system, and then he took it and deposited it in Rome Labs files. So, like the people of Rome, all this Korean stuff pops up, and at first they don't know

North Korean, South Korean. It just says Korean, and I mean, I I don't understand how they get confused by this, but what have you? Um. They were probably waiting on a translator. They're like, Okay, this is Korean, but I don't know what stripe so um. But the problem is if it's North Korea, the North Koreans are going to

think that this is like an aggressive act of war. Luckily, a few hours later, I suppose they wrestled up a translator, they figured out that he had hacked into the South Korean Atomic Research Institute, so they're able to smooth it over, like, hey, look, we had a problem on our end. Uh. The US believed that that these hacks had quote caused more harm than the KGB and made him a number one threat

to the world. Were they being a little hyperbol slightly slightly, but I mean because they're thinking, he has all this free access. If he did this under our noses, totally unexpectedly, what else could he do? According to Matthew, Special agent Jim Christie at the Air Force Office of Special Investigations claimed that the work of Kujie and Dad Stream quote nearly started a Third World War and then a Pentagon source allegedly said that he was possibly the single biggest

threat to world peace since Adolf Hitler. Don't hope her stated, I mean like a couple of other candidates, but whatever, a couple a few. So in a twenty six day period, these two then unknown hackers, they struck more than a hundred and fifty times. So they're just one after another. Military didn't know who they were, where they were, and then an informant steps up. I would love to know

who that was and what their motivation. If we don't know who this niche was, it's probably like a you know, a hacker who wasn't invited into this cool hacker was somebody who knew them. It was like, oh yeah, I'll watch this, tell everybody what you're doing. It'll see how long that last. Well, thanks to this snitch the FEDS, they get pointed towards datastream Cowboy, who is a sixteen year old boy named Richard Price lives in the UK. He said he liked to attack military sites because of

how insecure they were. A man named Dick Price, who is going to talk about he's bullying the mill. He's like, oh, you're insecure, I'm gonna attack you. He's a bully. Let's just put it that way. Now, let's take a little look at old the data stream cowboy teen in North London. He got a d in computer science, which says a lot. I mean, is what it tells me? Is that like? Is that a good metric? Well? Is that a good

metric of your abilities? His family said he'd only been like hacking and scooting and rebooting for like six months. That's a quote as a direct. I don't want to get to. Yeah, I'm sorry. I got two technical there pretty second scutin freaking. I'm just learning so much. Everything then comes crashing down. Zareny close your eyes, Okay, I want you to picture it. It's May of by the Crash to stummies somehow clinging to the middle of the UK pop shirts shoot by Salt Pepper has just been released.

It's that time. You live in Collingdale, a suburban district in the north of London. You're you're a retired woman, You're a handsome woman. You're outside of your semi detached house. You sweep in the walkway when a bunch of unmarked cars comes screeching to a hall in front of your neighbor's house across the street. They're a nice family, Nick and Allison. They have a boy named Richard. He's a quiet sort. He's tall and slender, with that like grown

out nineties Prince Valiant Bob haircut. You know what I'm talking about? It right, I'm gonna grow my hair. Um, you wonder what in the world could be going on here? But you're not ashamed of your curiosity. What you're like one of those hackers you might have read about in the paper. Your only crime is curiosity, Mrs dar You lean against your broom, you adjust your glasses. The men

knock on the door. When Allison answers, they enter. Deuced themselves as investigators with the Scotland Yard Computer Crime Unit. I was hoping for Flying Squad Allison. Yeah, Allison seems confused. She invites him in. But you're criminally curious, remember right, So you hike up your nylons and scurry across the road. You like leap over the low brick walls around their back garden, just like take it with one hand on

the wall and jump over. Um. You I mean, like you clear that sprit thing and you just like spring down like a lynx. You are. You creep over to the window to Richard's room. I don't want to know how you know that's his window and he doesn't have curtains, and I don't want to know how you knew that. You're so creepy, oldy, So you peek in and you see as Allison leads the cops into Richard's room, he looks up at him. One says data stream cowboy. I presume that's not what he said. Uh, it was probably

way more clumsy than that. But we're having an imagination exercise. Richard, just like Crump, was to the floor whaling and crying. That part not that is true. Um so you old ladyes Saron, you you fear the net is closing on YouTube if they caught data Stream, maybe they're after your hacker persona giga juice, and then you'd be next. So you go sprinting off towards your secret bunker. I've got machine back to data Stream. Okay. So his family totally confused.

They can't imagine that he'd be a hacker. He's on the floor crying. He's charged Bundle and he's charged with twelve counts of gaining unauthorized access to computer systems, all of them US sites. He go on to plead guilty, pay a fine, but he wasn't the mastermind. That was Coogee. And where's Cougie Right when we come back, I'll let you know if Cougie Ninja Power is kicked in. He's Aaron. You like those ads. I'm sorry I was adjusting my nylons.

You miss out. There's those Those commercials are really good this time. Oh nice, Well, you can tell me about them later. We'll just you know, we'll play him over and over. When we left off datas Stream Cowboy he got pinched for hacking, but Cougie a k a. Matthew Bevan still in the wind US and UK officials have no idea who Coogi is, so they get well, they got the informant on data Stream, but they didn't have

any informants for Matthew. I'm guessing datas Dream told one of his young friends, and a young friend told their parents and their parents cops or something or you rat it him out or me. Yeah, because I didn't want to find my machine and I was like to take a kid exactly. So at first all of the FEDS they think it's an Eastern European spy. Of course, that's always blame the Eastern Europeans, or that they were working

for Chinese intelligence. Again, always just go right there. By the end of the summer of ninety four, Matthew had quit the game, though he stopped hacking on his own volition. As we talked about in our heist episode. He said it was because he met a girl and that he'd be more interested in spending time with her than on the computer. Which, you know, that's fair enough. Um. Why he couldn't find a girl who was into hacking and then they could sit next to each other and hold

hands while hacking. I don't try it out romantic, not really. So within a few years he married the girl he met online. He didn't find a girl. He found a wife. Yeah, fifty six days after their first chat they got married. Um, and he got a job as a computer programmer for an insurance company. You know, he went straight. I'm sure British and American intelligence officials, though they had not stopped

looking for him. June of ninety six, a British official was sorting through the documents that they found on data Stream's hard drive. God only knows. There were enough documents to fill forty filing cabinets, and so it took him like three weeks to get through it. But like three weeks, I'm going to guess it wasn't all interesting hacking stuff. I bet a lot of it was not putting recipes basically. Um So, at the bottom of one file they finally find a name, Cougie and a phone number, and that's

how they were able to find Matthew Bevan. Data stream dropped the ball. He Matthew gave him a pudding recipe and he put a note at the bottom. Cougie gave this to me, call if you have questions. Um So, they arrest Matthew Bevan June. He's in his office. That's got to be fun. The insurance company here, the computer program. Um they brought him in due to the hacks of the U. S. Air Force, NASA and NATO. That's another one. Like you know, you get a rest, did it work?

But then that's that's a big arrest. So you're kind of thinking like, yeah, this is this is cool. Like when I get back, I should ask for more money, right, look,

how good I am? Come on, So he's held in question for thirty six hours, charged with two counts of conspiracy, which his alleged partner in data stream um conspiracy to access and modified data held on US Air Force and Lockheed Computer Systems, and then later for installing the sniffer program into computers to collect login information, and then also intent to impair operations. So polking and hacken scooting and computing and rebooting. Thank you for putting that in technical terms.

You know, I just want to be precise. I like specificity of language. I'm learning so much. I appreciate you so in that Kevin Sprague medium piece, he said quote. Bevin complied with every question, spouting answers about the information he had uncovered about supposed anti gravity propulsion technology. He was asked if he had any political motivations, in which he replied he had none. Clearly this was boiling down

to a case of espionage and possible military implications. Bevan remained truthful, explaining that he was simply searching for information pertaining the UFOs. With this, the authorities began to ease down, their tone, becoming a bit more light as they began to peg this hacker is nothing more than an x files idiot is one Scotland yard number one status, so he's actually going for really interesting things like all this crazy technolog Oh he's an X files idiot. He's not

a threat. One of those telling Devin gets threatened with fifteen years in prison. He tells David Glover, remember one of the producers of the heist um, that he would have pleaded guilty to his exact hacking crimes, but they were trying to tie him to bigger conspiracies that didn't exist. And he's like, why would I plead guilty? That's not you know what's going to happen. Eighteen months later, case dropped smart the crowd decided quote, it was not any

public interest to prosecute him. I bet the thoughts about the internet changed. So the prosecutor on the case said, the court's hands are tied as to sentence and the role of this defendant was secondary to that of another who was dealt with by a fine. So like we we find data stream, this isn't worth it. I think they just they would bring out too much in court.

That's what I imagine. I mean the discovery alone, Yeah, so, and then the exposure of all these all the ideas of the secrets and how you got there, and the fact that they were there too. You did basically give a wish list to more hackers to come front exactly. So when this it's all over, Matthew keeps a low profile. He worked as a security expert. He also possibly helped on viral marketing campaigns for companies like Nintendo or a

TV channel E for their digital site. At the time of the heist, he was working as a computer security and I T consultant, and he had his own company called Kuge Media Corporation. But I looked and in public filings it looks like that was dissolved in I have no idea what he does now bets with computers. I'm sure he's listening. What's up, dude? Uh A stream cowboy. He flew straight right away, like he had a lot

of like. So he goes to the Royal College of Music in London, studies double bass and he's currently a member of the London Tango Quintet. Oh he's a tango musician. No, let me read you the bio from his from the website. Richard was awarded a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Music, where he won the Eugene Croft Solo Double Bass Prize and went on to do the post graduate Jazz course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Since then, he's been in demand as classical studio and jazz musician, appearing at venues from Ronnie Scott's to the Royal Opera House. Richard has worked with artists including the Dixie Chicks, Jamie Cullum, Nitt and Sonny and Shirley Bassie and he I thought you were going to say that about the Dixie Chicks, and he regularly invited although there's just the Chicks now, Yeah, yeah, I was impressed. I

was just yeah. And he's regularly invited to play electric bass with ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia. Richard was a member of the improvising string court Quintent Basquiat Strings, which which was nominated for a Mercury Award in two thousand seven. During the past five years, he said, he has been busy in London's top studios, recording film scores and working with artists such as Sam Smith,

Ellie Goulding and Kanye West. He is currently working not with Kanye West, because Kanye West and not currently working with the operatic baritone Simon keenly Side performing jazz standards to opera fans across Europe. So there you go. The whole basque that bothers me, but whatever sounds same, like oh Banks the keys. Basically I wanted to investigate further as to what baskuiat strings is and then I thought, you know what, don't hold anger in your heart. I

just don't need that right now. Um. So that's that there's these two hacker boys. I have no idea what they eventually learned, but I'm sure that it was like they have the key to endless energy transportation. Well we now kind of know what they must have learned because like the basically, the Navy has come out and said, yeah, there's all the footage you've seen like off of like the Nimits and some of these ships. It's real and

there's UFOs and we don't know what they are. And it's been pretty much like I would say, admitted by the US military machine that there are things out there and they want to go. It could be Russian though, Chinese, you know, unmanned vehicles that we don't know about, but show I have that it's most likely something that is in her cause or cause. But they'll say, yeah, we don't know what that is. But Matthew Bevans seems to have stumbled into that they do know what some of

the technology. That's that's what everybody's always wanted to get the warp engine, understand. I want to warp engine, basically want anti graph. I just want to be able to like I've always had the dream of being able to repel myself against the gravitational field of the Earth. I would like to do that. Okay, let's let's get on that. I'm just going to boot up the computer, get me an Amiga, and I'll look into it for you. I'm happy to help you. Why why didn't you ask earlier?

I just didn't know if you would be willing to boot and scoot for me. And as long as it involves Excel and maybe a little power point on the side, you know, just a little dablins um. That's it. That's enough. Stop talking about this. You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram, and you can use the I Heart app to leave us a talkback voicemail don't don't email us at ridiculous email took or do you know who? Am I to say? Just don't

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