Searching for Susy Thunder
January 28, 2022 2:10 AM Subscribe
CW: sexual assault
In the ’80s, Susan Headley ran with the best of them—phone phreakers, social engineers, and the most notorious computer hackers of the era. Then she disappeared. Searching for Susy Thunder
In the ’80s, Susan Headley ran with the best of them—phone phreakers, social engineers, and the most notorious computer hackers of the era. Then she disappeared. Searching for Susy Thunder
Here's audio of a talk Susan gave at DEFCON 3 in 1995.
posted by juv3nal at 3:19 AM on January 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by juv3nal at 3:19 AM on January 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
this is a great article.
Passwords are hard to crack, but people are easy.
words to live by
posted by chavenet at 3:39 AM on January 28, 2022 [13 favorites]
Passwords are hard to crack, but people are easy.
words to live by
posted by chavenet at 3:39 AM on January 28, 2022 [13 favorites]
Wow, fantastic article; thanks for sharing it, juv3nal. Had no idea about her. And loved the kicker at the end.
posted by mediareport at 4:06 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by mediareport at 4:06 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
The real hack is the assholes we jailed along the way.
posted by flabdablet at 4:47 AM on January 28, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 4:47 AM on January 28, 2022 [7 favorites]
And here she is in a segment with Geraldo Rivera.
Thanks for this post - I had never heard of her - and I read alot about Mitnick in the early/mid-90's - she was paved-over completely to make way for the men. OTOH - maybe she lives and has lived a normal life full of post-hacker happiness.
posted by rozcakj at 4:52 AM on January 28, 2022 [9 favorites]
Thanks for this post - I had never heard of her - and I read alot about Mitnick in the early/mid-90's - she was paved-over completely to make way for the men. OTOH - maybe she lives and has lived a normal life full of post-hacker happiness.
posted by rozcakj at 4:52 AM on January 28, 2022 [9 favorites]
Mitnick is still doing the paving.
She is an extraordinary woman who didn't fit in any stereotype available to people at the time: a groupie who wasn't stupid, a hacker who wasn't a man, a sex worker who existed outside of being sex. A lot of young women are angry at older feminists these days, and largely for good reasons, but they forgot or never knew what the older women know: a man with just one toehold over a woman could do any fucking thing he wanted to her and never pay the price. Susy aimed to fix that, at least for herself.
(Incidentally, the title "Desperately Seeking Susan" was right there. Possibly people have forgotten that movie too.)
posted by Countess Elena at 5:22 AM on January 28, 2022 [32 favorites]
She is an extraordinary woman who didn't fit in any stereotype available to people at the time: a groupie who wasn't stupid, a hacker who wasn't a man, a sex worker who existed outside of being sex. A lot of young women are angry at older feminists these days, and largely for good reasons, but they forgot or never knew what the older women know: a man with just one toehold over a woman could do any fucking thing he wanted to her and never pay the price. Susy aimed to fix that, at least for herself.
(Incidentally, the title "Desperately Seeking Susan" was right there. Possibly people have forgotten that movie too.)
posted by Countess Elena at 5:22 AM on January 28, 2022 [32 favorites]
I've definitely read about her before; I think it was probably in Katie Hafner and John Markoff's "CYBERPUNK: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier"? But wherever it was, the one specific thing that has stuck with me all these years was some utterly irrelevant shade the author threw at Ms. Thunder's physical appearance.
posted by Slothrup at 5:35 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Slothrup at 5:35 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Of her erstwhile co-conspirators, Kevin Mitnick is, of course, notorious, though I was sure that I had seen the name of Lewis DePayne somewhere before. When the article noted that he became a NLP pickup artist, the light switched on: I'm fairly sure he was posting stuff on USENET about how to get women to sleep with you by subtly gesturing at your crotch whilst structuring your sentences to use certain double-entendres or something equally risibly sleazy.
posted by acb at 5:50 AM on January 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by acb at 5:50 AM on January 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
It's a real shame that hacker movies are always so terrible, because I would watch the hell out of a movie about her.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:06 AM on January 28, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 6:06 AM on January 28, 2022 [13 favorites]
Amazing story! This mistake made me feel old: Back then, everyone had a landline, but people in the public eye kept their phone numbers out of the Yellow Pages.
posted by mubba at 6:14 AM on January 28, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by mubba at 6:14 AM on January 28, 2022 [17 favorites]
Fascinating, thank you for posting.
when we fixate on the people who build systems and forget those who maintain, moderate, and use — or, in this case, exploit — those systems, we’re missing the messy realities of how technology actually evolves.
Love it. My husband is a programmer and he's been teaching me that when you build something it is always a good idea to creatively mess around with all of the things just to see what breaks and how it all goes from there.
Also, yeah it is so fucking totally gross that the asshole who tried to publicly shame her for being a dominatrix ended up running porn sites and selling his windbag gas to incels. Asshole.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 6:21 AM on January 28, 2022 [7 favorites]
when we fixate on the people who build systems and forget those who maintain, moderate, and use — or, in this case, exploit — those systems, we’re missing the messy realities of how technology actually evolves.
Love it. My husband is a programmer and he's been teaching me that when you build something it is always a good idea to creatively mess around with all of the things just to see what breaks and how it all goes from there.
Also, yeah it is so fucking totally gross that the asshole who tried to publicly shame her for being a dominatrix ended up running porn sites and selling his windbag gas to incels. Asshole.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 6:21 AM on January 28, 2022 [7 favorites]
I would watch the hell out of a movie about her.
Given the success of Silicon Valley and Halt & Catch Fire and the Me Too moment, a film or TV series based on Susy Thunder would probably be very much viable, and stand a good chance of being considerably more realistic than the usual “I'm in!” cyberninja schlock.
I imagine that in her case, it'd be somewhere between the aforementioned TV series and Catch Me If You Can in style.
posted by acb at 6:28 AM on January 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
Given the success of Silicon Valley and Halt & Catch Fire and the Me Too moment, a film or TV series based on Susy Thunder would probably be very much viable, and stand a good chance of being considerably more realistic than the usual “I'm in!” cyberninja schlock.
I imagine that in her case, it'd be somewhere between the aforementioned TV series and Catch Me If You Can in style.
posted by acb at 6:28 AM on January 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
Great story - thanks for posting it. I'd also watch the hell out of a show based on her and this period.
posted by jquinby at 6:31 AM on January 28, 2022
posted by jquinby at 6:31 AM on January 28, 2022
I could definitely see a movie, but I hope it isn't made until after she dies. Getting famous wouldn't make her life better.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:01 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:01 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
A movie made without her input would be a work of fiction, about a generic fictional badass female hacker. And The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo already exists.
posted by acb at 7:12 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by acb at 7:12 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
A movie made without her input would be a work of fiction...A movie made with her input would be based on the testimony of a professional unreliable narrator.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:21 AM on January 28, 2022 [10 favorites]
A fascinating story, although as is the case with Mitnick, I have a hard time knowing what to believe from somebody who spent much of their life conning people.
Even still, I find the pre-bitcoin era of computer crime fascinating — mostly because the practitioners generally weren’t in it for the money. In fact they probably could have made more money in legit IT jobs. So they tend to be pretty interesting characters.
posted by panama joe at 8:23 AM on January 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
Even still, I find the pre-bitcoin era of computer crime fascinating — mostly because the practitioners generally weren’t in it for the money. In fact they probably could have made more money in legit IT jobs. So they tend to be pretty interesting characters.
posted by panama joe at 8:23 AM on January 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
A movie made with her input would be based on the testimony of a professional unreliable narrator
So - basically "Catch me if you can" ?
Fine - as long as it is entertaining, we are not expecting a "movie/TV-show" to be a completely true autobiography - unlike say - a documentary/docuseries...
posted by rozcakj at 8:32 AM on January 28, 2022
So - basically "Catch me if you can" ?
Fine - as long as it is entertaining, we are not expecting a "movie/TV-show" to be a completely true autobiography - unlike say - a documentary/docuseries...
posted by rozcakj at 8:32 AM on January 28, 2022
people in the public eye kept their phone numbers out of the Yellow Pages
Doesn't anyone else think this is weird? It should be the White Pages or, as we called it, the Phone Book. The Yellow Pages were for businesses.
posted by hypnogogue at 8:50 AM on January 28, 2022 [18 favorites]
Doesn't anyone else think this is weird? It should be the White Pages or, as we called it, the Phone Book. The Yellow Pages were for businesses.
posted by hypnogogue at 8:50 AM on January 28, 2022 [18 favorites]
This was a great read. I was a little uncomfortable with the descriptions of her appearance as the first thing though in this case it's a little bit more relevant than other stories. Still bugs me.
While I really enjoyed reading this and had never heard of Susan Headley (Or Susy Thunder) before I'm not sure what I think about these stories of searching for people who don't want to be found. It seems like this one was treated better than some but maybe just leave her alone?
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 8:58 AM on January 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
While I really enjoyed reading this and had never heard of Susan Headley (Or Susy Thunder) before I'm not sure what I think about these stories of searching for people who don't want to be found. It seems like this one was treated better than some but maybe just leave her alone?
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 8:58 AM on January 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
Fine - as long as it is entertaining, we are not expecting a "movie/TV-show" to be a completely true autobiography - unlike say - a documentary/docuseries...
Though you'd want Hedley's input being a significant proportion of it, whether she's recounting true stories or confabulating in character; otherwise it becomes some person inventing a Cool Hacker Chick character with a modicum more versimilitude than the last one.
posted by acb at 9:23 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Though you'd want Hedley's input being a significant proportion of it, whether she's recounting true stories or confabulating in character; otherwise it becomes some person inventing a Cool Hacker Chick character with a modicum more versimilitude than the last one.
posted by acb at 9:23 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Doesn't anyone else think this is weird? It should be the White Pages or, as we called it, the Phone Book. The Yellow Pages were for businesses.
And there was even a photo of the phone book (White Pages) right above that paragraph...
posted by Lexica at 9:55 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
And there was even a photo of the phone book (White Pages) right above that paragraph...
posted by Lexica at 9:55 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
She is my goddamn hero. Thank you for posting this.
posted by routergirl at 10:24 AM on January 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by routergirl at 10:24 AM on January 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
Doesn't anyone else think this is weird? It should be the White Pages or, as we called it, the Phone Book. The Yellow Pages were for businesses.
And there was even a photo of the phone book (White Pages) right above that paragraph...
The "White Pages" in that photo were business listings -- so now I'm curious if there were ever a time or location in the States where the phonebook paper colors were reversed, or whether the article got this detail wrong? In the Northeast, yellow pages were commercial listings afair.
posted by vers at 10:33 AM on January 28, 2022
And there was even a photo of the phone book (White Pages) right above that paragraph...
The "White Pages" in that photo were business listings -- so now I'm curious if there were ever a time or location in the States where the phonebook paper colors were reversed, or whether the article got this detail wrong? In the Northeast, yellow pages were commercial listings afair.
posted by vers at 10:33 AM on January 28, 2022
Yellow pages business, white pages residential, in the 80s-90s, Northwest.
posted by Callisto Prime at 10:37 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Callisto Prime at 10:37 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
"Doesn't anyone else think this is weird?"
Like the earlier line "when the phone system went electric", as I read this I felt as if I were a hundred years old listening to a young person explain my own lived history to me. I experienced a bit of cognitive dissonance when the writer mentioned spending a year researching phreaking and hacking history. Well-versed in the subject, or not? I don't know — sometimes a cultural gap is so wide that there's some mutual incomprehension independent of the amount of research.
I brushed-up against this culture, though I was about five-to-ten years too young. Phreaking was something I was certainly exploring on my own as a teenager in 1980, and that was also precisely when I began playing with minicomputers and PCs and learning to code. In '81, I had my own visit by Bell Security.
Really, though, I feel some "but for the grace of" about this subculture — I can hardly think of a worse group of people I could plausibly have fallen in with at that time and place. Most particularly the male hackers. As Lewis exemplifies, there's a direct connection from the testosterone-fueled, misogynist, antisocial hacker of the seventies to the PUAs and gamergaters and incels of today.
I can't even begin to understand how Susan Thunder existed within that community, although it makes a great deal of sense that she also did sex work. This is someone well-versed in the demimonde delineated by creepy men and turning its structures against them.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:39 AM on January 28, 2022 [8 favorites]
Like the earlier line "when the phone system went electric", as I read this I felt as if I were a hundred years old listening to a young person explain my own lived history to me. I experienced a bit of cognitive dissonance when the writer mentioned spending a year researching phreaking and hacking history. Well-versed in the subject, or not? I don't know — sometimes a cultural gap is so wide that there's some mutual incomprehension independent of the amount of research.
I brushed-up against this culture, though I was about five-to-ten years too young. Phreaking was something I was certainly exploring on my own as a teenager in 1980, and that was also precisely when I began playing with minicomputers and PCs and learning to code. In '81, I had my own visit by Bell Security.
Really, though, I feel some "but for the grace of" about this subculture — I can hardly think of a worse group of people I could plausibly have fallen in with at that time and place. Most particularly the male hackers. As Lewis exemplifies, there's a direct connection from the testosterone-fueled, misogynist, antisocial hacker of the seventies to the PUAs and gamergaters and incels of today.
I can't even begin to understand how Susan Thunder existed within that community, although it makes a great deal of sense that she also did sex work. This is someone well-versed in the demimonde delineated by creepy men and turning its structures against them.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:39 AM on January 28, 2022 [8 favorites]
The "Yellow Pages" were as much advertisements as a directory — while a business would get a number listing in the regular ("white") directory like anyone else with phone service (an unlisted number required an extra fee), a listing in the Yellow Pages was sold exactly like print advertising was sold, with various tiers and graphic design.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:47 AM on January 28, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:47 AM on January 28, 2022 [6 favorites]
In the late seventies my local phone office had a room full of local directories from across Canada and the US. Having spent countless hours there just perusing books from different places I'm fairly confident white pages were always just listings and the yellow pages were the paid for business listings everywhere.
posted by Mitheral at 12:12 PM on January 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Mitheral at 12:12 PM on January 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
The Yellow Pages were how you found things you needed before Google.
posted by Bee'sWing at 12:17 PM on January 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Bee'sWing at 12:17 PM on January 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
In the LA area, I can verify that white pages were the standard directory, and yellow pages were for advertisement.
Businesses were in the white pages as well, but it was strictly alphabetical, and not organized like the yellow pages by business type.
posted by tclark at 12:24 PM on January 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
Businesses were in the white pages as well, but it was strictly alphabetical, and not organized like the yellow pages by business type.
posted by tclark at 12:24 PM on January 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
I assume the white/yellow pages thing is just an error someone missed because we are all ancient.
posted by dame at 1:00 PM on January 28, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by dame at 1:00 PM on January 28, 2022 [8 favorites]
wow. what a read! I had not heard of her (not so surprising). quite an iconoclast, she is.
posted by supermedusa at 1:36 PM on January 28, 2022
posted by supermedusa at 1:36 PM on January 28, 2022
"Let Your Fingers do the Walking."
posted by Floydd at 2:48 PM on January 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Floydd at 2:48 PM on January 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
I think they were using 'Yellow Pages' the same way people refer to face tissues as 'Kleenex' or bandages as 'Band Aids.' I recall calling it the yellow pages and meaning it generically.
posted by marimeko at 3:59 PM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by marimeko at 3:59 PM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure if the author is reading MetaFilter or not, but the article has been updated at the very bottom with:
Correction January 29, 4:30PM ET: An earlier version of this story stated personal phone numbers are listed in the Yellow Pages. Personal numbers are in the White Pages. We regret the error.
posted by ralan at 4:04 PM on January 28, 2022 [10 favorites]
Correction January 29, 4:30PM ET: An earlier version of this story stated personal phone numbers are listed in the Yellow Pages. Personal numbers are in the White Pages. We regret the error.
posted by ralan at 4:04 PM on January 28, 2022 [10 favorites]
The last line kind of sums it all up:
“All the best hackers, all the best phreakers in the world, we don’t know who they are because they never got arrested. And they never went to prison. This is why you don’t know who the best ones in the world are. This is the truth. Think about it.”
posted by mbo at 5:54 PM on January 28, 2022
“All the best hackers, all the best phreakers in the world, we don’t know who they are because they never got arrested. And they never went to prison. This is why you don’t know who the best ones in the world are. This is the truth. Think about it.”
posted by mbo at 5:54 PM on January 28, 2022
« Older CalCare, AB-1400 Guaranteed Health Care for All. | Infrastructure: Weak Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Susan fell in love.
She and her new friends cruised the city at night, searching for unsecured dumpsters outside of phone company offices. The manuals and interoffice memos they pilfered from the trash were maps to the parts of the phone network that were hidden from view. By leveraging the information they found dumpster diving — everything from internal jargon to access codes and employee names — they were able to pull more complex and ambitious scams.
...woah...
this is good
posted by From Bklyn at 3:00 AM on January 28, 2022