Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontierDreyfus, Suelette
Science
Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier
Dreyfus, Suelette
Computer crimes -- Australia; Computer hackers -- Australia -- Biography; Computer security -- Australia
Undaunted, the hackers decided to keep the encrypted file just in case
they ever came across the passphrase somewhere--in an email letter,
for example--in one of the dozens of new computers they now hacked
regularly. Relabelling the encrypted Deszip file with a more innocuous
name, they stored the copy in a dark corner of another machine.
Thinking it wise to buy a little insurance as well, they gave a second
copy of the encrypted Deszip to Gandalf, who stored it on a machine in
the UK in case the Australians' copy disappeared unexpectedly.
In January 1990, Electron turned his attention to getting Zardoz.
After carefully reviewing an old copy of Zardoz, he had discovered a
system admin in Melbourne on the list. The subscriber could well have
the entire Zardoz archive on his machine, and that machine was so
close--less than half an hour's drive from Electron's home. All
Electron had to do was to break into the CSIRO.
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, or
CSIRO, is a government owned and operated research body with many
offices around Australia. Electron only wanted to get into one: the
Division of Information Technology at 55 Barry Street, Carlton, just
around the corner from the University of Melbourne.
Rummaging through a Melbourne University computer, Electron had
already found one copy of the Zardoz archive, belonging to a system
admin. He gathered it up and quietly began downloading it to his
computer, but as his machine slowly siphoned off the Zardoz copy, his
link to the university abruptly went dead. The admin had discovered
the hacker and quickly killed the connection. All of which left
Electron back at square one--until he found another copy of Zardoz on
the CSIRO machine.
It was nearly 3 a.m. on 1 February 1990, but Electron wasn't tired.
His head was buzzing. He had just successfully penetrated an account
called Worsley on the CSIRO computer called
DITMELA, using the sendmail bug. Electron assumed
DITMELA stood for Division of Information Technology, Melbourne,
computer `A'.
Electron began sifting through Andrew Worsley's directories that day.
He knew Zardoz was in there somewhere, since he had seen it before.
After probing the computer, experimenting with different security
holes hoping one would let him inside, Electron managed to slip in
unnoticed. It was mid-afternoon, a bad time to hack a computer since
someone at work would likely spot the intruder before long. So
Electron told himself this was just a reconnaissance mission. Find out
if Zardoz was on the machine, then get out of there fast and come back
later--preferably in the middle of the night--to pull Zardoz out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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