A RESPONSE FROM ARCHANGEL: Although these events happened almost 15 years ago, I still get people who ask what's up with that Archangel Debunked site? (As if it was something new) The truth of the matter is that there were MANY sites like this at the time, both for and against me. It seemed in those days that you had to either love or hate Archangel, neutrality was out of the question. This was one of the the worse of the worse of those sites, and the only one I still get questions about. My responses are in yellow, the rest is Balif's most excellent html skills. So here are my responses, buried deep in the catacombs of my site, buried so deep that you prolly can only find it via some serious googling. Soon after Eternal September, Balif appeared on the scene as yet another total noob released from his AOL cage. I was particularly hard on him, something I prolly could have done better, especially since I found out he was only 11-12 at the time. He was simply acting his age. Oh well, we live and learn. Balif vowed to "bring me down", and years later, now in his teens, Balif created this webpage, and was an annoyance for a year or so, I'll grant him that.PLUS: I still get questions about this stupid webpage, because it still spews his drivel long after he has disappeared, so I'll give him that too. Enjoy!

Brief Updated History and Facts

1. Contest #1: Andrew Kerr (a known anti-archangel) offers to host a machine for a "hacking contest." After looking at it for five minutes I find a world writable smb share, but no holes in the Linux 5.2 out of the box system. Archangel refuses to look at the machine for several days, (actually I refused to participate in what was probably a rigged contest) after being asked multiple times in the news group. I ask Andrew for an account during a break at work, within literally 3 minutes of logging in I have root using this script kiddy exploit. This is where the original Deli quote comes from, contrary to the opinions of unnamed, thick headed rednecks. Archangel screams bloody murder, shouting "It's not hacking if you were given an account!" Andrew offers to reinstall the box and give out accounts, but Archangel refuses.
   After much cajoling I finally caved in and accepted the challenge. Balif went nuts. It became very clear that he didn't expect me to actually accept the challenge. I began to do my thing. Andrew Kerr broke the rules of the match by giving Balif an account on the box we were supposed to be hacking. Of course I had no such privelege, lol. Balif admitted using a skript kiddie exploit (Egg Drop) once he was given access by Andrew Kerr... They tried to hide it, but they altered the wrong part of the server logs and were busted almost immediately. Of course I declined Kerr's second offer. (really Arch, It will be fair this time)
2. Archangel finally finds my Electel page on Nacs, and proceeds to post numerous pages. He then begins to claims he hacked Nacs and altered pages, "taking trophies." No evidence of any such hacking was discovered.
   During his embarrassing and pathetic display erm,hacking,erm Andrew Kerr's box, the hackers of alt.2600 nearly drove him right out of the community, he made another challenge for me to hack his personal box if I could. Knowing that he was a gay male who often mentioned boys, my thinking was that if I could find some kiddie porn on his computer, I might be able to shut him up for good. I got into NACS within 2 hours and trashed his website there, no kiddie porn, but it was a shot. Balif tried to claim it never happened, but the owner of NACS (Balif's live-in lover) blew a gasket on alt.2600 in front of everybody. Fortunately Balif's challenge was a public one, and there wasn't much the guy could do. Besides, being so close to Balif, it was hard to believe he knew nothing about the contest.
3. Contest #2: Getting annoyed with Archangel's shouting, I contact a friend and set up his box to be "box #2." I contact a neutral third party who will have no clue how to use the shell I give him, and pretend to be the admin of some machine. The contest is setup, and Archangel proceeds to connect to every port by hand twenty or thirty times, especially in.timed. After is is obvious nothing is going to happen, I write up a shorty little ditty on how I supposidly got through. An obscure line in a log linked me to the server, and after bragging perhaps a little too much while enjoying myself at Dan's expense, I decided to leave the group.
   TRANSLATION: This is actually contest #3! He was intent on digging his hole deep enough to jump into. Balif contacts yet another freind for yet another rigged contest. He picked Desperado and Arkiver as referrees. What he didn't know is that they were both freinds of mine, and damn good hackers. We found the obscure line in the log and Balif was busted cheating...again...for the third time. This time the Alt.2600 community had enough of this script kiddie, and he was unceremoniously tossed out on his ass, never to return.
4. One month after Archangel claims to have broken into the Nacs server, even though no evidence of any intrusion was detected, a script kiddy on a New York ISDN line uses the then brand new bind overflow to gain root on Nacs and rm -rf'ed it. Since the machine logged over the network to another box, and the user made no attempt to hide his IP, he was quickly busted. My admin followed standard procedure and contacted the FBI, who sent a field agent in to review the case. My admin (Balif's live-in gay lover) was framiliar with Archangels story, and knew that Dan was clueless. He mentioned to the agent "This guy said he hacked my network a while ago." The agent then went through the procedures to contact 'Archangel', and then, wouldn't you know it, set up a meeting with one Daniel W. Garstecki of Santa Rosa CA.
   This is all complete fantasy. My real name is not Dan Garstecki, DG was a client of mine at one point. A U.S. Congressman. Balif is convinced that I'm a politician. Yes, I know it sounds completely goofy, but this shows how deluded Balif was/is.
   I have no idea what went on. But from what I've gathered, they decided to seize his only computer, a 486, for a period of several months. He must have gotten it back, because a while after his disappearance he reappeared. He spun all sorts of stories to make excuses for what happened.
   Again, complete fantasy. This doesn't even jive with his comment earlier about the script kiddie from New York. I've never been to New York. DG lives in California. This is what happens when you lose touch with reality.
5. [Probably a lot of stuff I'm missing] in the head.
6. Although I won't go into all of the personal details that I know from speaking to the parties involved, I can give a brief overview of what happened: What happened about WHAT? At this point Balif leaves reality completely, stops talking about hacking altogether, and launches ito a tirade about an old client of mine, and his messy divorce. (i'm not kidding, you can't MAKE this stuff up!
   
   Warning: what follows is a dangerous mix of actual events and fantasy that involves Balif's twisted conglomerate of three or possibly more people. I'm not going to attempt to sort this all out, but just bear in mind that DG and I are two different people. DG did have a messy divorce and custody battle. Being a politician, there was all sorts of news coverage about it. During a vacation in Mexico, his wife charged him with a number of custody violations but was cleared completely and basically suffered a ruined vacation. What does any of this have to do with ME? Nothing. I worked for the guy once thats all, and used his computers to post to USENET a few times. Balif assumes that anyone posting from DG's Computer must be DG, thus in his demented mind that's who I am.
   Dan Garstecki, aka Archangel, lived at home while his wife worked. He refused to get a job. After he got the boot via divorce, he ran off with his daughter in a custody dispute. He hid out at his mothers house in Las Vegas, and then skipped town and ran off to Mexico. I don't know what happened, but he didn't care for his daughter very well. His face was plastered over numerous web pages such as PollyKlaas. None of this was ever on the PollyKlass site, and this link goes nowhereSomeone in Mexico saw his face, called authorities, and they grabbed him. He initially refused to tell them where his daughter was, but after some, ahem, persuasion, he broke down. Dan sat in a Mexican jail for a while, then was deported to the US to stand trial. He sat in a CA jail for about 5 months, and changed his not guilty plea to no contest. His jail time was applied to his sentance, and he got off with probation. He tried to regain visitation rights, but the judge informed him that he could not get even supervised visits until he found psychiatric help for delusions of grandeur or something like that, and find a job.
   Again read the warning above. You'd think Balif was personally involved in all this by reading it. To my knowledge DG did no jail time at all, either in Mexico or stateside. I've certainly never been in a Mexican Jail, this is all fantasy Balif cooked up reading the tabloids. It never happened to me, and I doubt that any of it happened to Dan. I find it a bit difficult to believe that one day the guy is giving speeches on capitol hill and vacationing in Mexico, then the next day, living with his mother,lol.
7. Dan now lives with his mother in Las Vegas, and I believe uses her AOL account to continue to troll usenet. He has been harrassing his exwife, claiming she abused their daughter, although nothing has been found. (I live in Las Vegas, by myself I might add, and support my wife and two children with a radio show and online computer games I create, and DG has never lived here to my knowledge.) He now attacks everyone he meets, and has been sinking into the final depths of delusion. Well, Balif, YOU'RE THE EXPERT! Taking him on seriously was important when this site was created due to the large number of people who either believed or were uncertian that Dan/Archangel was clued. This site was just one of many bandwagon sites of the day- made by posers and full of drivel. Now that the truth is known, he shows that he no longer cares about maintaining an image and seeks only to spin obvious lies to continue the madness and keep people talking about him. He will continue to succeed with his tales of being a skilled long time hacker, because of the simple fact that alt.2600 readers cannot shut their mouthes. A proposal to ignore Dan was recently posted, like my old ignore campaign, but this was given even less thought than the firest attempt as posters wrote lengthy 'essays' on why they should continue responding to Dan. Thus he will always have something to talk about.
   Yes Balif, your *big comeback* to the hacker community didn't go very well did it... Your idiotic proposal was torpedoed immediately because you are the only one who believes I'm Dan Garstecki, and unlike you, I have a long standing reputation in the community that has stood the test of time. Posers like you come and go many times in the 30 years I've been on the computer, 20 years on USENET, and ten years since you created this crappy page. I'm still in the community and you are just another forgotten poser, lost among others, with only this webpage for anyone to remember you ever existed.
8. Archangel appeared on Art Bell, (and several other TV and Radio Shows) to talk about "What Hackers have planned for y2k." He babbled on for a while about random nonsense, such as backdoors being planted by y2k consultants, and something about some guy named Bin Laden conspiring with these consultants to bring down the United States. It sounded like a mess of random stories stolen from articles I've read on CNN in the past few months, with no real content. He is a very poor speaker, with plenty of "Umms" and "Ahhs." The host kept cutting Archangel off and asking for him to sumarize his point, but Dan continued to stutter on. Several callers ripped him to pieces. It was a total embarrassment. Of course he began to troll on usenet, and enormous threads began. Oh well. That's it for now.
   More Balif drivel. Blah Blah Blah,He later admitted that he didn't even hear the show. (A transcript is available elsewhere here on the.feds.arewatching.us) The bin Laden Comment referred to a proposed attack on Amtrak which I had a hand in preventing. Remember that this was written BEFORE 9/11. I was on the radio trying to warn everyone about Bin Laden long before anyone knew who he was. Bin Laden wasn't on CNN and certainly nobody knew of his plan to 'bring down the United States' (Not unless you were someone like me) The attack on the WTC was a complete surprise for most of us, even those at NORAD, but NOT for me. Balif in his ignorance of what was coming, acted like Bin Laden was no big deal, and used my comment to discredit me, and ridiculed me as did his cronies and other bandwagon jumpers. A lot of people over the years believed Balif...because people can act like sheep, and love nothing better than to attack the ones who actually get things done. After 911 all that changed. People began to believe what I say, but of course by then it was too late.
   
   
   
   

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   Balif (Because Archangel Leads, I Follow)