By  Steve Knopper   (Contributing Editor)

The White House was bombed early Saturday morning, Aug. 10. But there were no explosions. Nobody was hurt. And most likely, neither the President nor the Vice President knew about it.
        The bomb merely clogged up the White House's e-mail account. The President, it turned out, was one of about 50 victims of Johnny, who has since been dubbed "the Unamailer." A self-described combination hacker/phreaker signed up his victims to every mailing list on the Internet.
        The bomb hit the e-mail accounts of journalists (including Time's Philip Elmer-DeWitt, The Netly News' Joshua Quittner and The New York Times' John Markoff); politicians (Ross Perot and the White House); entertainment figures (MTV executives and Howard Stern); and famous hackers (John "Cap'n Crunch" Draper and 2600's Emmanuel Goldstein). In an "open letter" posted to the news.admin.net-abuse.misc newsgroup, Johnny owned up to the attack.
        "The Net is chaos," he wrote. "We are on the Net. Therefore we must be chaotic."
        Quittner, using his Netly News pulpit, fired back an equally juvenile response. Quittner posted the familiar hood-and-sunglasses picture of the Unabomber above his column. "Wake up, son!" the columnist shouted. "How long would a geek like you last during shower time on Cellblock E?"
        I know Johnny purely by coincidence. I did a story a few months ago about phreaks and, after posting to phreak pages throughout the Web, was referred to him. He called one night for an interview. We've been talking sporadically ever since. The following is an excerpt from a recent exclusive interview that took place shortly after the "unamailing":

Internet Underground:    What is a "mail bomb"? Johnny:    It's basically just a really quick, dirty and easy hit to show someone they messed up somewhere. I see it as a one for one trade on bad publicity, wrongdoings, whatever, that you deny them some of their mail service on the Net. Unfortunately, it hit a few other people who didn't deserve it. IU:    Really? Like who? J:    Basically everybody on the list did deserve it. There's a couple of people on there who probably didn't deserve to get hit quite as hard. IU:    For example? J:    I probably shouldn't have hit Philip Elmer-DeWitt quite as hard a second time. I told him I wouldn't. ... My apology goes out there. I've talked to him, by voice, a few times. He's actually pretty fun to talk to on the phone. IU:    What do you mean, "a second time"? You've done this before? J:    Technically, it's the second. I did two big waves of them. Philip Elmer-DeWitt was the first hit. There wasn't that big of a deal about it. The second run went through, and that's when it hit Quittner and everybody else. Then Quittner went completely overboard. IU:    You really pissed him off. J:    I see it as "Gee, I haven't released anything in several years. Gee, more journalists are more popular than I. What's a better way to get more publicity." You know? IU:    Quittner and other journalists on the Web have begun calling you the "Unamailer." What do you think of that label? J:    It's a nice attempt to get people on the side of Quittner and those guys, trying to put me in the same ranking as the unabomber. It's clever--stupid, but clever. IU:    Why do you hate journalists so much? J:    One thing that struck me as completely unfair is how journalists can talk to millions or thousands of people and be completely biased and go unreprimanded. If I can do this back to them and not get caught, then it seems like it's a fair thing. They shouldn't have any real problems with that. IU:    Did you talk to any journalists after the most recent mail bomb? J:    Actually I talked to Markoff, and Markoff is none too thrilled. He was all pissy and real defensive about it. I tried to call Philip, but he's been out of town. If I had a chance to talk to him again I would. Don't think I've talked to anyone else. IU:    You've been calling yourself "Angry Johnny," which you once told me was from a song by the band Poe. What's your given name? J:    Johnny is my given name. Markoff was like, 'You even hide behind a fake name.' I was like, 'No, this is my name.' IU:    Some of your victims have threatened to report you to the authorities. Does that worry you? J:    Now that things have quieted down just a tad I don't have as much fear. The fact that I'm not in cuffs tells me you haven't pointed them in any specific direction. Rumor, complete rumor, is there's a $30,000 bounty on my head--the Secret Service, supposedly. I seriously doubt it. But if they do, I wouldn't mind knowing about it. Hell, I'd turn myself in for $30,000. IU:    Do all these threats and rewards scare you? J:    I've had a few minutes of worry, as far as the mailbombs went. One thing-and Quittner will love to hear this--is his pages kind of spooked me a little bit. Thinking, "Wow, this guy has blown it so far out of proportion like that." I thought of it for about an hour--the best case is I go scot-free for all time, the worst case is they try to make an example of me in the court system, which they would do, I imagine. IU:    Have you heard from any police organizations--the FBI, the Secret Service, whoever? J:    Indirectly. Cap'n Crunch made a big to-do about the FBI being involved (Editor's Note: Ironically, this interviewer was in San Francisco interviewing John "Cap'n Crunch" Draper for a story in our upcoming October issue when Draper received the e-mail bomb). Technically, yeah, they'd probably be involved because it's across state lines. Supposedly they're doing their little investigation. If I could, I would call the agent in charge. I have no problems talking to him to a degree. Who knows? Maybe someone's going to come out of nowhere and make me do it again. If I did, it probably would not be the same attack. Most of the majordomos and heads of the listservs are taking steps to make sure it won't happen again. IU:    How do you create a mailbomb? Is it easy to sign people up to all the mailing lists? J:    It's a simple script. Right before you run it, you edit two lines. You say which mail server you want to go through and which e-mail address you want to hit. So I could go through "whatever.com" and hit the address "whitehouse.gov." Takes about 15 minutes to run. IU:    You hit Rush Limbaugh and the White House. Does that mean you're a bipartisan Unamailer? Do you worry about politics much? J:    I'm nonaligned. I do worry about politics. I think that overall the entire political system's pretty jacked up. In the coming election you have the choice between the worst of two evils--that's not a democracy--So I will be writing in my own name. I will vote just to show one more person is not interested in the current system. As far as politics go, aligning yourself either way is just sad. IU:    Your "Open Letter" had some very specific gripes about certain people. Were you trying to make a general statement by doing this? What message would you want your victims, or interested observers, to take from this? J:    There is no legitimate law on the Net. One obvious lesson is don't try to regulate the Net if you don't know what it is. Don't report on the Net if you don't know what it is. There was no super philosophical deep reasoning behind what I did per se. Mostly that--and I think I made the open letter clear enough that you could go through and extract the reasons behind it. IU:    How long have you been hacking and phreaking? J:    Over five years. I really haven't kept track. Some months I actually do something, some months I don't. IU:    What are your proudest accomplishments as a hacker or phreaker? J:    Part of me said that this was a pretty damn good accomplishment, certainly not by any technical means. It just takes 5 minutes and a sendmail book to know what I did--but more the organization of who and why. Probably truly the greatest accomplishment is learning how to get into and totally manipulate some of the phone systems to just look around and know how they work. IU:    What do you do for a living? J:    I do computer security. Ironically [laughs], for the government. IU:    Are you planning any more attacks? J:    As far as I know, it's over. No promises there. Can't do that. I know that poor journalism will continue to plague the Net. IU:    You keep harping on bad Net journalism. Can you give some specifics? J:    The Cyberporn article in Time would probably be the most glaring. After I bombed Phil and said, 'This is why I did it,' he actually apologized to me. He said 'I wrote a bad article and I'm sorry about that.' That was kind of cool. IU:    If you hate the Net press so much, why do this interview? J:    I don't work for a major magazine. Nothing I write will get the circulation or publicity unless I'm written about. This is probably a contradiction, but I don't want press. I don't want people knowing about me. But this gets my point across. Yes, I hate journalism but in this case it's the only tool to get my message across. That's why I'm making this phone call. If any other journalists want to get a hold of me they can post on news.admin.net-abuse.misc. Or write a bad article - that will get my attention. IU:    You're a phreaker. Are you paying for this call? Am I paying for this call? J:    I'm not paying for the call. It's cellular fraud. That's kind of the nice way of putting it--I just put someone else's information in my phone so I can make a phone call. John Doe gets the bill for this call and not me. So if you do get a call from law enforcement or any of the security agencies [laughs heartily]--sorry.