UNDERGROUND

Passionate about his new calling, Trax went trashing in Telecom garbage bins, where he found an MFC register list - an invaluable piece of his puzzle. Using the list, along with pieces of overseas phreaking files and a great deal of pain- staking hands-on effort, Trax slowly learned the language of the Australian telephone exchanges. Then he taught the language to his computer.

Trax tried calling one of the 'heartbeat' phone numbers again. He began playing his special, computer-generated tones through an amplifier. In simple terms, he was able to fool other exchanges into thinking he was his local Telecom exchange. More accurately, Trax had made his exchange drop him into the outgoing signalling trunk that had been used to route to the disconnected phone number.

Trax could now call out - anywhere - as if he was calling from a point halfway between his own phone and the discon- nected number. If he called a modem at Melbourne University, for instance, and the line was being traced, his home phone number would not show up on the trace records. No-one would be charged for the call because Trax's calls were ghosts in the phone system.

Trax continued to refine his ability to manipulate both the telephone and the exchange. He took his own telephone apart, piece by piece, countless times, fiddling with the parts until he understood exactly how it worked. Within months, he was able to do far more than just make free phone calls. He could, for instance, make a line trace think that he had come from a specific telephone number.

He and Mendax joked that if they called a 'hot' site they would use Trax's technique to send the line trace - and the bill - back to one very special number. The one belonging to the AFP's Computer Crime Unit in Melbourne.

All three IS hackers suspected the AFP was close on their heels. Roving through the Canberra-based computer system belonging to the man who essentially ran the Internet in Aus- tralia, Geoff Huston, they watched the combined efforts of