Grabbing the data packets took some time. I first had to set up connections to these systems. I couldn't connect directly, as that might cause some alarm at the sites. (Some of the sites were no longer under my maintenance contracts, but the back doors into the system were well-hidden, so I could probably still get into those systems.)
So I had to "bounce" into the systems. I dialed into one system, then used a dialout to get into another system. I did this a couple of times to hide my trail into the system where I wanted to get the data packets from. My connection from my system was "bouncing" through other systems before getting to the target system.
Bouncing and outdialing are pretty common ways to hide your trail. I was doing this from home, though, which is not usually a good idea. I knew that, but I was getting into systems that I maintained (or had maintained). And I wasn't after any password or user files, or account information. I had root access with my backdoor accounts, which didn't write to the log files.
All I was doing was emailing some of the packet sniffing files to one of my mail accounts. Since I always stored those files in a common location on each system, I was able to run a simple series of commands in a script file to compress the files and attach them to an email message and send the message on it's way.
I didn't send it to my regular email address, though. That would provide too much of a trail. (You might think I was getting a bit paranoid...perhaps I was. It was strange enough, and subtle enough, that I was thinking that it might be a good idea to keep a low profile.) I sent it to a remailer, which I had set up to forward it to a free mail account I set up on Yahoo. The remailer would stop any tracing of the mail message, and the Yahoo mail account was a one-time account that I was using just for this project.
I only got into about eleven systems, which was enough for my tests. It only took a couple-three hours to get the data, and download my messages from my email account.