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Who was "Quentin"?

💻 Hackers & UFOs

This is the history of hackers looking for evidence of UFOs.

Early Cases: "Quentin" and Mathew Bevan

"The hacker is aware of the interest his apparent UFO data has provoked, but does not wish to respond." - the late Susan Adams (Dateline NBC producer)

Quentin's true identity remains unknown.

“Possibly the single biggest threat to world peace since Adolf Hitler.” - a Pentagon source

“Nearly started a third world war.” - Jim Christy, AFOSI

Technical details about Bevan's hack are discussed in this Twitter thread by @hackerfantastic.

Of note is that he got into a Wright-Patterson Air Force Base system that took no password and saw plans for an antigravity drive:

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 because 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.

Bevan also says,

I like to think what I saw was not misinformation.

Most Well-Known: Gary McKinnon

2001-2002 Gary 'SOLO' McKinnon, most well-known UFO hacker, breaks into US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, Department of Defense, and NASA computers by targeting systems with administrator passwords of "Administrator," "password," or blank. Gary accomplishes this using a Perl program to mass scan a /16 IP space and probe the NetBIOS protocol on port 139. On some systems, he installs RemotelyAnywhere for remote desktop. He uses Landsearch software to search through all files on all computers across a domain. On a Navy system, he sees spreadsheet tabs with titles such as "non-terrestrial officers" and "fleet-to-fleet transfers", with names of ships not known to be in the US Navy. Also, following Dr. Steven Greer's Disclosure Project and specifically the testimony of Donna Hare, he targets Building 8 at NASA Johnson Space Center where UFOs are reportedly being airbrushed out of sattelite photography before the photos are released to the public. He makes it onto a system and sees a 'raw' photo of a smooth cylindrical craft with domes that has no seams or rivets. However, he miscalculates the time zones and is disconnected by a local computer user before he can take a screenshot. Months later, he is arrested by the UK's National Hi-Tech Crimes Unit (who seize his computer) and he is put under an extradition order from the US. It will be a 10 year legal battle before his extradition is finally blocked by the UK over human rights and UK charges eventually dropped. Gary still faces US charges.

"The biggest military computer hack of all time." - US prosecutor

McKinnon spoke at the 2017 MUFON Sypmosium via Skype, as announced on his blog.
I have uploaded the full talk with audience questions here. Just the talk is on Gary's YouTube.
The symposium proceedings include a transcript of Gary's speech, which I have archived here.

Edit: I found this program in an old CD-ROM's contents: About Proxynator screenshot
I used these same hacking techniques at around the same time, idea attributed to 'SOLO', capitaziled the same.

Additional Articles for Further Reading

Author, Professional Speaker: Richard Thieme

Richard 'neuralcowboy' Thieme, while not a hacker in the traditional sense, is an author and public speaker, who talks on UFOs at the annual DEFCON hacker conference in Las Vegas, and at the MUFON Symposium:

Thieme has given talks on other topics as well, see a more complete index here.

Thieme also wrote a monthly column which was compiled in his book Islands in the Clickstream. In the original printing, Chapter 9 "The Dark Side of the Moon and Beyond" contains columns written between 1997 and 2003, many of which involve the UFO topic, e.g. "UFOs and the Internet" from July 8, 1997.

While an Episcopal priest, Thieme reports a fighter pilot confided in him regarding UFOs, confirming that in their fastest jets,

We chase them, and we can't catch them.

Historically Relevant: BBS Archives

TL;DR: I gave a nervous presentation on this topic to a MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) chapter.
You can find the slides here, and here is the unedited video of the talk. Presentation begins 20 minutes in. The information presented in this talk is not up-to-date with my latest research. I am working on a new presentation of the information.

Talk Errata: My old talk contains many errors. These include, but are not limited to: The Secret Service raid on Phrack Magazine began in 1989 (Wikipedia), and was not in response to Quentin's actions which were published later in 1992. In the Q&A session, someone asked how long Gary was in military & NASA systems. He was inside different networks for five to seven years (according to his The Guardian interview) before being arrested. He had been under observation for months, not days. He was charged for 13 months. Also, the network icon is in the lower-right system tray. (I initially got confused and said it was on the left.)