Susan Headley

Last updated

Susan Headley (born 1959, also known as Susy Thunder or Susan Thunder) is a former phreaker and early computer hacker during the late 1970s and early 1980s. A member of the so-called Cyberpunks, Headley specialized in social engineering, a type of hacking which uses pretexting and misrepresentation of oneself in contact with targeted organizations in order to elicit information vital to hacking those organizations. [1]

Contents

Biography

Born in Altona, Illinois in 1959, Headley claims to have dropped out of school in the eighth grade after a difficult childhood. [2] She later moved to Los Angeles, California where she worked as a teenage prostitute and was a rock 'n' roll groupie, claiming all four former members of the Beatles among her conquests. [3] She met computer hacker Kevin Mitnick (also known as Condor) in 1980, and together with another hacker, Lewis de Payne (also known as Roscoe), formed a gang of phone phreaks. In The Hacker's Handbook , [4] Headley is referred to as "one of the earliest of the present generation of hackers" and described as successfully hacking the US phone system as a 17-year-old in 1977.

On October 25, 1983, Headley testified in front of the Governmental Affairs oversight committee as to the technical capabilities and possible motivations of modern-day hackers and phone phreaks. [5]

Public service

Headley was elected to public office in California in 1994, as City Clerk of California City.

Personal life

Headley is married, and lives in the Midwest. She is a coin collector. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hacker</span> Person skilled in information technology

A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals by non-standard means. Though the term hacker has become associated in popular culture with a security hacker – someone with knowledge of bugs or exploits to break into computer systems and access data which would otherwise be inaccessible to them – hacking can also be utilized by legitimate figures in legal situations. For example, law enforcement agencies sometimes use hacking techniques to collect evidence on criminals and other malicious actors. This could include using anonymity tools to mask their identities online and pose as criminals. Likewise, covert world agencies can employ hacking techniques in the legal conduct of their work. Hacking and cyber-attacks are used extra-legally and illegally by law enforcement and security agencies, and employed by state actors as a weapon of legal and illegal warfare.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin Mitnick</span> American hacker (1963–2023)

Kevin David Mitnick was an American computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker. He is best known for his high-profile 1995 arrest and five years in prison for various computer and communications-related crimes. Mitnick's pursuit, arrest, trial, and sentence along with the associated journalism, books, and films were all controversial. After his release from prison, he ran his own security firm, Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC, and was also involved with other computer security businesses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Koch (hacker)</span> German hacker (1965-c. 1989)

Karl Werner Lothar Koch was a German hacker in the 1980s, who called himself "hagbard", after Hagbard Celine. He was involved in a Cold War computer espionage incident.

Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term phreak is a sensational spelling of the word freak with the ph- from phone, and may also refer to the use of various audio frequencies to manipulate a phone system. Phreak, phreaker, or phone phreak are names used for and by individuals who participate in phreaking.

<i>True Names</i> Seminal cyberpunk novel by Vernor Vinge

True Names is a 1981 science fiction novella by American writer Vernor Vinge, a seminal work of the cyberpunk genre. It is one of the earliest stories to present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace, which would later be central to cyberpunk. The story also contains elements of transhumanism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Markoff</span> American journalist

John Gregory Markoff is a journalist best known for his work covering technology at The New York Times for 28 years until his retirement in 2016, and a book and series of articles about the 1990s pursuit and capture of hacker Kevin Mitnick.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social engineering (security)</span> Psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information

In the context of information security, social engineering is the psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. A type of confidence trick for the purpose of information gathering, fraud, or system access, it differs from a traditional "con" in that it is often one of many steps in a more complex fraud scheme. It has also been defined as "any act that influences a person to take an action that may or may not be in their best interests."

Freedom Downtime is a 2001 documentary film sympathetic to the convicted computer hacker Kevin Mitnick, directed by Emmanuel Goldstein and produced by 2600 Films.

Katie Hafner is an American journalist and author. She is a former staff member of The New York Times, and has written articles and books on subjects including technology and history. She co-produces and hosts the podcast series Lost Women of Science. Her first novel, The Boys, was published in 2022.

A security hacker is someone who explores methods for breaching defenses and exploiting weaknesses in a computer system or network. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, protest, information gathering, challenge, recreation, or evaluation of a system weaknesses to assist in formulating defenses against potential hackers.

Brian Keith Reid is an American computer scientist. He developed an early use of a markup language in his 1980 doctoral dissertation. His other principal interest has been computer networking and the development of the Internet.

<i>Track Down</i> 2000 film by Joe Chappelle

Track Down is a 2000 American crime thriller film based on the non-fiction book Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw—By the Man Who Did It by Tsutomu Shimomura and John Markoff, about the manhunt for computer hacker Kevin Mitnick. It is directed by Joe Chappelle, with a screenplay by Howard A. Rodman, John Danza, and David & Leslie Newman. The film stars Skeet Ulrich as Mitnick and Russell Wong as Shimomura, with Angela Featherstone, Donal Logue, Christopher McDonald, Master P, and Tom Berenger.

Psychological subversion (PsychSub) is the name given by Susan Headley to a method of verbally manipulating people for information. It is similar in practice to so-called social engineering and pretexting, but has a more military focus to it. It was developed by Headley as an extension of knowledge she gained during hacking sessions with notorious early computer network hackers like Kevin Mitnick and Lewis de Payne.

Ida Simone Russakoff Hoos was an American sociologist best known as a critic of systems analysis using mathematical formulae and disregarding social factors, especially when analyzing technology and public policy.

Justin Tanner Petersen was an American hacker, concert promoter, sound engineer, private investigator and an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. While tasked with helping to catch other hackers and fugitives wanted by the FBI, he continued to commit serious crimes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Heart</span> American computer engineer (1929–2018)

Frank Evans Heart was an American computer engineer influential in computer networking. After nearly 15 years working for MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Heart worked for Bolt, Beranek and Newman from 1966 to 1994, during which he led a team that designed the first routing computer for the ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet.

References

  1. Bradley Barth (10 July 2017). "Female blackhats" . Retrieved 11 December 2018.
  2. Mary Thorton (21 May 1984). "Hackers Ignore Consequences Of Their High-Tech Joy Rides". The Washington Post .
  3. Hafner, Katie; Markoff, John (1991). Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier . New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN   0-671-68322-5.
  4. Hugo Cornwall's New Hacker's Handbook 4th Ed. Century 1990
  5. United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Governmental Affairs. Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management (1983). Computer Security in the Federal Government and the Private Sector.
  6. "Searching for Susy Thunder". The Verge. 26 January 2022.