UK Hacker Says He Found Anti-Gravity Engine File
At W/P AFB
By Matthew Williams
2-7-99
Mathew Bevan is a 23 old computer hacker with an interest in UFOs. Recently he made front page world headlines when he was charged with hacking offences which included access to the most secret military computers of the United States Military. Mathew was able to access computers, which had the ability to launch nuclear missiles or other missiles. Described by one pentagon spokesman as being “The biggest threat to world peace since Adolf Hitler”, Mathew Bevan talks to Matthew Williams about how he did it and the fact that whilst in Wright Patterson Air Force Base computers he saw plans to a secret Anti Gravity propulsion engine….
Matthew Williams: How many years have you been into the Internet.
Mathew Bevan: Since about 16. It was a case that over here there were very few Internet providers. The only one was Demon Internet and the closest phone number to dial was in Bristol, so it was just easier to do a free (hacked) phonecall to the States and use a free provider and not worry about paying any bills.
MW: How does one “hack” the phones – what is the procedure involved.
MB: You use a little program on the old computer… The Amiga was the first computer to be used for “Blueboxing” (hacking phones) and the reason was that it has four channels of sound whereas the PC could only go “BEEP”. To get the blueboxing to work you had to play dual tones into your phone. There was a set of frequencies of tone not dissimilar to DTMF which is on most modern phones (DTMF – the tones played when you press a number on your phone keypad). When the special tones were played it would cause the network to do a number of special things.
What you then needed to do is to call a 0800 number for a foreign countries operator service – such as Columbia or Hawaii. You would play a few tones down the line and it would cut the operator off and BT would think that you had hung up the call but in fact you were still in the trunking system and you play a few more tones and you could re-route your call anywhere.
MW: Is it complicated to do these things because playing sets of musical tones down the phone line sounds quite complicated and what if you make a mistake.
MB: Well it is complicated but is a case of playing around to see what you could do. If you make a mistake you just hang up and try again. There were some other interesting things you could do like dialling a number and when you get the engaged signal then play a couple of tones and break into the call and listen without the two parties knowing you were there.
MW: You are saying that there are ways to listen to calls without being detected and this can be done from any home phone with such codes! Are you saying that you could listen to another call anywhere in the world?
MB: Yes but most of the time I was calling into the States anyway so that’s where I did it the most. I think that secretly listening in is what it was designed for.
MW: So when did you go from hacking innocent university computers into hacking the military computers?
MB: It was a case of getting onto a system and getting the password file and then running the encrypted passwords through a code cracking program so that you get the passwords. Once you have the passwords then you can get a higher level of access and get into peoples files and folders and you can monitor the system to see what it is happening. You can see that there are people that are themselves who are going from computer to computer with legitimate reasons. Now it would just happen that some of these people would be working on projects with the military. You could find that a professor would be contacting a military site (computer).
One would get fed up with doing small computer systems and would want to try to hack something bigger. The thing with people is that they tend to like the same password for multiple systems and so if you have hacked their account on a relatively unprotected system then the password will probably work on another more well protected system. The professor probably has some silly password like “professor” on the university computer and more often than not would use the same on a military system.
It is not a case of sitting there typing in millions of passwords and hoping that you get the right one. There are much more intelligent programs to do that for you and get you in to a system.
We now use things called SNIFFERS, which are covert and do not harm the system in any way. These sit in the background and watch for people’s passwords and they send them back to you. This is something that I was charged with and the offence read “modification to a system with intent to impair the operation of the computer”. Well the whole point of a sniffer is that it sits there and nobody knows it is there – if it did any harm we wouldn’t use them.
Well once inside you would use various hacker techniques to bump up your access level to that of systems administrator, so that you would have the entire system under your control. You could connect to other systems on the network with the same authority. You could monitor people’s emails and you could get into their project folders and look at their research and development work or papers that they have written. Occasionally you would get into somewhere that was quite interesting but it wasn’t always that way. Most of it was quite boring. Back in the old days before Internet Browsers that give you nice pictures and buttons to click on, it was all text based and you had to use the keyboard to type commands. There were pictures, but you had to manually download them and view them “offline”.
MW: So what were the most exciting computer systems you hacked?
MW: Firstly there was the FLEX system. This stands for Force Level Execution, and this is the thing which the News of the World newspaper picked up on. The reason this system was of interest because it had control of nuclear missiles. To explain what this program does; the official line is to plan an air war and to find out what things are incoming and what air strikes are pending. The system would then advise you of where to strike next with the best killing ratio and where to launch you missiles etc. From looking on the computer and through the “source code” I got the impression that the system had direct access to real missiles. What type of missiles I do not know and the News of the World printed that these were in fact Peacekeeper Missiles, but that didn’t come from me – I don’t know where they got those details from…?
The easiest comparison I could make is that it was a very similar system to the Skynet System in the Terminator movies. This means that the computer has access to all available information and can make intelligent decisions about how to operate a war and even control the weapons.
Of course the FLEX system is secret and something that they do not want the public to know about and the fact that weapons are controlled solely by computer. You would think that there would be other failsafe system but, as far as I could tell, that was not the case.
There were other systems such as Wright Patterson Air Force base and White Sands Missile Testing Ground, some now I forget – I went to a lot. I had been to so many I had to tell the police that I could not remember all the systems I had been in.
The lawyers couldn’t get their stories straight even for a trial of this type, which you would have expected. They would not present evidence to show how I was able to hack into their systems. So with the details of the computer systems real purpose having been removed from the case then I am now pretty sure that I did have a good idea about the real function of the programs – they didn’t want this information out in any form. This was probably the reason that they were so pissed off about it because I came forward and told everyone. You see after I was arrested then I started to get some very strange phone calls from people claiming to be in the military, Koreans and other people. I had weird semi-threatening things said to me and this is why I moved away to get away from these treats and this is another reason that I spilled the beans, in order to keep myself and my wife safe, after all what is the point of silencing me after I had talked.
MW: Where were you living and did the police give you any assistance in your moving because of these threats.
MB: Firstly I was living in Grangetown and then I was moved by the benefits agency to another location. They were aware of the court case and the sensitivity and people from Scotland Yard were helping in this respect also. I was given a new name under the benefits agency computers and was living under name of Mr Smith for a while.
MW: Why do you think they were prepared to go to this trouble to help you?
MB: What you have to understand is the fact that there was a big Senate hearing on the fact that two hackers had got into secret computer systems. One of these was a 16-year-old who they had arrested and the other person was supposedly thought to be a foreign spy who was paying the 16-year-old for information. I was made out to be the foreign spy and I was prepared to believe from the threats I was getting that these people were serious. So I had to move home.
To give you an idea of the level of the ominous phone calls I was getting, at the time I was just about to change my phone over to British Telecom. Just days before I was arrested I was due to sign the BT phone forms and send them off, but had not done do at that point. Then I had another threatening phone call and I told them to **** off and said that I was now having my number changed. The voice on the other end of the line said “yeah we know that your new number is going to be 01222 233blah blah blah” and so they knew my new number already! My wife asked often who was speaking and one name we got was Chung Lee Makasuki and he gave some phone number in China, I think.
MW: When you were arrested what happened?
MB: I was working at Admiral Insurance at the time in their computer department for around a year and a half. One of the managers came in and asked me to come and have a look at one of their computer systems and I got up and went with him. I went with him to the MDs office and there were seven people in the office, your typical men in black so to speak but as this was the MDs office I didn’t at first see this as abnormal. When I got inside one of then said to me “Mathew Bevan” and I replied “yes” and then he put up his hand and said “I am placing you under arrest for hacking of NASA and various Air Force bases.” I was standing there stunned and I was going “Oh, gosh… ummm.” They then told me that they were going to search my desk, which they did, then they took me back to my house and searched there too.
When they got to the house they took all my X Files videos and X Files posters and the reason was because the “KUJI” hacker that they were after had a computer user description which read “The Truth Is Out There”. So they wanted to use the X Files material to prove that they had the correct “KUJI”. They just wanted to pin me on anything they could. They took all of my computer kit as well as my passport.
During the interview I agreed that I used the handle ‘Kuji’ and afterwards the police gave me my property back such as the X Files videos, posters,monitor and the keyboard back but they kept everything else.
I was taken to the Central Police station in Cardiff. The officers were from the computer crime unit of the Met Police. I believe that the C.C.U. also uses the code S.O.6 which leads me to believe that they are intelligence (MI6) related but I don’t think they would admit that.
MW: What was the atmosphere like in the interviews?
MB: It was a good cop bad cop scenario. The one person was very nice and the other guy was quite nasty and was giving snide remarks and shouting at me. There were bits in the interviews that were really stupid too where I was asked by the nice cop if I had any political leanings and I said no – then the other cop stepped in and said “Yeah, but your a vegetarian” and he then said “So you do have a leaning then.”. To this I then replied “Well if being vegetarian is a political leaning then I plead guilty!”. The other copper then steps in and make a lighthearted comment and then the other one steps in again and says “ah so you indicate a leaning then” and so on.
I was under arrest for the best part of 36 hours but there was about 28 hours spent in the cells. I wasn’t allowed to speak to my wife or anyone else. They threatened that they would arrest my wife and I pointed out that she knew nothing about computers and they said tough because they would arrest her anyway. This was part of their oppression tactics. I said what do I have to do to stop you arresting her and they said that if I co-operated then they would not arrest her. So the only telephone calls I was allowed were to my solicitor because they didn’t want me to tell anyone I had been arrested.
One thing I didn’t realise but found out was the fact that in Cardiff police station they bug the cells with listening devices and recently a few people have had tape recorded evidence used against them when they have admitted to things whilst in custody. This is immoral but they seem to be able to do it.
MW: What sort of specific questions were you asked by the police in the interview.
MB: They asked me about the Rome Labs computer and if I had placed a sniffer program on the computers. I would not admit to this. They also asked me about Goddard Space Flight Centre and Wright Patterson, I admitted to these but was never charged with them! They don’t charge me with the right things. They then charge me with conspiracy with the other hacker, but by the time they realise that they don’t have any evidence to prove this it transpires that they could not charge me with the original intended charges anyway because they are out of time by 6 months; They would have had to charge me with a summary offence within six months of my arrest. They also found out that they were out of time for a 3-year clause
The Americans position in court was that they claimed that they had to spend 1/2 a million dollars to repair their computer systems. A fundamental question that my defence asked was could we see a backup of the system to show before and after these so called repairs to prove what was being claimed. The Americans said that we could not see the records because they were so sensitive and also said that it was not in the jurisdiction of the British courts to order them to show the files. If it were any other trial then you would ask how could we accept this evidence but because we are asked to take the Americans word, this is supposed to be good enough.
The next thing that happened was that my barrister had meetings with the prosecution and he then turns around to me and says that he feels that they will find me guilty on some charges so I should give in and change my plea to guilty. So I ‘relieved’ him of his professional duties and got a new barrister who was then completely on my side and who felt that I did indeed have a worthwhile and quite solid defence.
MW: What was the final stage of the case and how did you get acquitted?
MB: The judge surprised everyone by saying to the prosecution that because my charges were lesser than those of the other hacker and that the other hacker had received a small fine of ?1200 then my sentence at best would be non-custodial so to proceed with such a case would not produce a large penalty whilst the costs for running such a case would run into millions. It was estimated that if I would be found guilty I would get a ?450 fine and considering that the court’s daily costs would be ?10,000 it would not be worth it.
However the prosecution was determined still and said that they would still proceed and then at the last stage they pulled out and said that they wished to offer no evidence and that it wasn’t in the public interest to run the case. Verdicts of not guilty were entered, this being the equivalent of a full acquittal and so ensuring that the police would waive the right to re-arrest me in conjunction with these charges.
This being the case I was then free to admit to the press and everyone else that I had in fact done some of those things and that I did hack those systems. This pissed Scotland Yard off immensely and they are now being very awkward about returning the seized goods that are in evidence storage even though the case has been dropped.
MW: How were you tracked down?
MB: I cannot be sure because this was never disclosed – I have my suspicions that I was grassed on by a hacker. They said they found my number on somebody’s computer system and traced me back like that but I think somebody told them who I was. The point was if it took them 2 years to find my number on the other hackers hard- drive as they claim then that is incompetence, as a search of a 250meg drive takes less than five minutes.
MW: Where does the story take a turn to where you started hacking military sites for UFO information?
MB: In a hacker magazine called PHRACK, it gave a list of sites that people who said they were interested in UFOs would like to see hacked and that hackers should check these out. Allegedly there were forty people who were trying to penetrate these sites and they got into some of them but they all went missing?
MW: A group of forty people went missing?
MB: Apparently so. They said in the magazine that if you were going to do it then do it carefully and printed a list of the sites. I used that list and used it and I also used some of the folklore of UFOs like “Roswell wreckage taken to Wright field”, “Lockheed space missile company have connection to Area 51” etc. It is then just a case then of picking up the addresses and names of these computers. They are quite easy to find as the military provide you with as much information on their computers as you could ever want.
It was a case of “go for it”, “lets have a look”. As far as I was concerned I was not traceable and not causing any harm to anybody. If I couldn’t get in then no big deal, if I could then I was not going to screw the system up.
MW: You did gain access to some interesting UFO type files – what were these?
MB: The information was obtained through the Wright Patterson Air Base computer system. I was looking for information on the Roswell crash. On one of the computers at Wright Patterson the systems administrator was very un-secured. Captain Beth Long was the system administrator she is supposedly working in a pumping station in Alaska now instead of working at Wright Patterson – the reason being, because she had no password so this meant that anyone logging in as her meant they had the highest level of access on the system with no password needed!
Wright Pattersons’ computers were strange because unlike all other computers I had hacked which had clear warnings to hackers and people using the system regarding the classified information, their system had a banner which read in flashing red letters that no classified information is to be stored on the computer system. This throws you a bit. I was unsure if it was a real banner or if it was to put off people who had got that far.
In getting into that there was one machine on the network where I read current files and future project proposals. I read documents which gave me the impression that they had an anti-gravity engine which was capable of at least Mach 12 to Mach 15. I don’t know how exactly how fast that is but I think that is faster than most aircraft we know of today. Supposedly the aircraft which employs this engine uses a reactor to which there were a lot of detailed numbers and figures for, but I have no idea what all this meant. I can remember that the documents referred to a super heavy element, whatever that means. The element is the main fuel for the reactor. The engine worked by making a disturbance of molecules at the front of the craft so that it was able to stop the inertia or G-force inside the craft. I got the impression that this information was the type of material I was looking for because it was far in advance of our current technology and could be something to do with the Roswell UFO. Finding this threw me ecause I didn’t know if this information was a disinformation exercise and that people were meant to get in and find this stuff or if it was real. I can’t be sure and this is the one annoying thing.
In the interviews that were carried out with the police Wright Patterson was mentioned. Officer D S Janes asked me, had I been in there and I said that I had. He then asked me if I had got any information from this computer and I said that I had found details of an anti-gravity propulsion system. He asked if I downloaded any files from this project and I said no and I had only read the files online. As I said earlier I admitted to this but no charges were brought against me on this matter which is a bit odd. Then the interviewing officer asked me if I knew what Hanger 18 meant. I said “well if you are thinking of a building where they store extraterrestrial aircraft then this is what you might mean but perhaps you mean it is a computer or a bulletin board -is this what you mean?”. He replied that this could be the place that he was thinking of. This was the only time that Hanger 18 was mentioned in the interview.
In one of the hearings at magistrates’ court there was a special agent who came over called Jim Hanson. When asked what did he feel I was trying to achieve by my hacking he said that he believed I was not trying to do any harm but was just looking for information on Hanger 18. The prosecution then asked Jim Hanson in a light-hearted manner if he could confirm if Hanger 18 exists and Hanson responded “I can’t tell you that because I am not party to that information”.
What surprised me is the fact that I was asked about the little known Hanger 18 story instead of somewhere well known such as Area 51. Some members of the press alluded that I had hacked into Area 51, but I never said this and I refused to comment on the UFO issue to them. There were things I was not prepared to talk about to the press because I was not sure if I would be able to sell my story or not, so I did not want to give the information away.
The point was that I knew where Wright Patterson airbase was but I didn’t know, until I read a UFO magazine recently, that Hanger 18 was located at Wright Patterson. This was the first I ever learned about this.
When you put it all together it seems weird – the fact that I hacked into Wright Patterson and found details of a secret gravity engine and then the coppers asking me about Hanger 18, even to have a secret service agent in an open court saying about Hanger 18 and then me later on finding out that the two places are the same.
MW: Wasn’t there a ban on press reporting of your case?
MB: The press were there and they heard many interesting things which the failed to print but yes there was a ban on reporting the case, they said because they did not want the press opinion to influence the case in any way. This is the principal of subjudicy.
The prosecution had originally intended to have the case heard in secret (In Camera) but we did not allow this to happen.
MW: Have you ever seen any UFOs yourself?
MB: There was a time when I was going back to Newport from Cardiff and there were two very feint lights which were like passenger plane lights at first. They looked like they were going towards Rhoose airport but in-between them there was a start which was shooting back and forth between these two points. I had to force my friends to look at the lights because they would not look and said was crazy but when eventually they did look they agreed that they had seen something strange.
My Wife and I went on holiday to Fuertaventura in the Canaries and there were unusual lights in the sky above us which we watched for many hours. They changed colour and went on and off. They seemed so far away that they couldn’t be sure if they were satellites or not. I am not saying that this could not have been explainable phenomena.
MW: What interest did you have in UFOs before the trial.
MB: Just before I got into the hacking scene I was making the free phone calls and I found a Bulletin Board in Australia which had loads of UFO files. There were about 500 or 600 text files on offer so I downloaded them all and waded through them slowly. I found it really interesting and I wanted to know more. I go into the MUFON files and Keelynet Bulletin Boards and they had interesting things on them also.
It seems to me that far more people have seen UFOs and have evidence of this than there is evidence of GOD but people go around believing in GOD and are not ridiculed for this in any way!
My opinion is that there is a lot of information UFO information out there and it is hard to separate the liars from the truthful people. The thing is that some of the wilder claims may also be the truth but sometimes you cannot be certain of any claims either way.
The types of thing I mean are cases where people say that they have been onboard spacecraft and seen the classic alien with big black eyes and that they had experiences which are consistent with other witnesses. You then hear from the same person that the aliens took her for a ride and they were walking around on the moon without a spacesuit and the story starts to take a strange turn. It seems that people seem to go overboard but who knows that person may in fact be telling the truth.
MW: Do you know much about Bob Lazar? Tell me what you about his story.
MB: Well yes, Bob Lazar was able to show documents from his previous work to show that he worked with certain companies, but they deny he ever worked for them.
As I remember he is a really nerdy looking guy that claims to have worked at Area 51’s S3 complex I think? He claimed to have been working on crashed UFO technology. He said that he had seen saucers in hangers and had seen one flying one day. Only recently I saw the original interview he gave on video where he talked about his work and was drawing on a blackboard. I think he got prosecuted for running a brothel, I don’t know much more than that.
MW: Do you know anything about the propulsion systems he was talking about in his work on the saucers?
MB: No not really – I can remember the shape of the craft and I can remember that the propulsion system was in the bottom of the craft and that it is like a segmented thing. I remember a little area in the middle where the “guys” would sit. I don’t really remember the details or specifics of that.
MW: I am interested because you used the term “heavy element reactor” earlier on and I wondered if you have heard about something called “element 115”?
MB: No I did chemistry at school but was very bad at it and got kicked out. I don’t know anything about elements full stop really.
MW: Bob Lazars story was that he worked on propulsion systems, which utilised a reactor, fuelled by a super heavy element. Everyday scientists do not know of the element 115 of which he speaks. Does this mean anything to you?
MB: Maybe that is a parallel. The only things I know about him really is that he worked on UFOs and his involvement in the brothel and the fact that he looks a bit “geeky”.
MW: Can you remember any names of people on the project. Were there dates on any of the letters you saw regarding the propulsion system?
MB: Nope, as for dates all the information was current at 1994. Whether this was a totally new engine or if it was a new version I can’t be sure. I do know that it was a working prototype.
MW: Did they say what type of aircraft the propulsion system would be used in?
MB: Not that I remember, although I believe the engine was in use.
MW: Do you fear going to the United States?
MB: I am, not so much worried about being tried in the US for these things because they still have the same flawed evidence – but I fear that over there they would just stick me in prison without a trial and leave me to rot. This is something I have to look at carefully and to study the international law on these matters because there is a question of where was the crime committed on my computer in my house in the UK or in the US on their systems. This is a legal dilemma and is open to question.
A point is that there is a hacker out there now called Kevin Minick who did some minor hacking and has been in prison for 2 years and hasn’t been charged with anything yet! This can happen.
MW: Why did you do all this? Are you an anarchist or is this political or just for pure curiosity?
MB: I just get a thrill out of exploring new computer systems. If you could see my CV I now have knowledge of all these computers systems I have used. If employers wanted to know how I got that experience it may get a bit awkward to have to tell them that these were military systems I was playing with – but it still makes for a good CV! I can now admit to my hacking and not have any fear because it may be a plus point in that I know a lot about systems security.
I did it for the pure adrenaline buzz of hacking a secret system. This can keep you awake on no food for hours and this is one of the other reasons – because of the thrill.
MW: Thank you very much.
MB: Thanks.
In final clarification on some of the interview I asked Mathew if he saw any images on the computer systems at Wright Patterson Airbase. He says he saw one but remembers that the antigravity engine was a working prototype and is fitted in some form of aircraft and is in use although the type of aircraft was not disclosed. The information was dated around 1994, when the system was originally breached. It is now up to researchers and hackers alike to try and find out more.
