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
When he went out to the living room, he saw a policemen holding a
couple of shovels and he wanted to laugh again. Electron had also once
told Phoenix that all his sensitive hacking disks were buried in the
backyard. Now the police were going to dig it up in search of
something which had been destroyed a few days before. It was too
funny.
The police found little evidence of Electron's hacking at his house,
but that didn't really matter. They already had almost everything they
needed.
Later that morning, the police put the 20-year-old Electron into an
unmarked car and drove him to the AFP's imposing-looking headquarters
at 383 Latrobe Street for questioning.
In the afternoon, when Electron had a break from the endless
questions, he walked out to the hallway. The boyish-faced Phoenix,
aged eighteen, and fellow Realm member Nom, 21, were walking with
police at the other end of the hall. They were too far apart to talk,
but Electron smiled. Nom looked worried. Phoenix looked annoyed.
Electron was too intimidated to insist on having a lawyer. What was
the point in asking for one anyway? It was clear the police had
information they could only have obtained from
tapping his phone. They also showed him logs taken from Melbourne
University, which had been traced back to his phone. Electron figured
the game was up, so he might as well tell them the whole story--or at
least as much of it as he had told Phoenix on the phone.
Two officers conducted the interview. The lead interviewer was
Detective Constable Glenn Proebstl, which seemed to be pronounced
`probe stool'--an unfortunate name, Electron thought. Proebstl was
accompanied by Constable Natasha Elliott, who occasionally added a few
questions at the end of various interview topics but otherwise kept to
herself. Although he had decided to answer their questions truthfully,
Electron thought that neither of them knew much about computers and
found himself struggling to understand what they were trying to ask.
Electron had to begin with the basics. He explained what the FINGER
command was--how you could type `finger' followed by a username, and
then the computer would provide basic information about the user's
name and other details.
`So, what is the methodology behind it ... finger ... then, it's
normally ... what is the normal command after that to try and get the
password out?' Constable Elliott finally completed her convoluted
attempt at a question.
The only problem was that Electron had no idea what she was talking
about.
`Well, um, I mean there is none. I mean you don't use finger like that
...'
`Right. OK,' Constable Elliott got down to business. `Well, have you
ever used that system before?'
`Uhm, which system?' Electron had been explaining commands for so long
he had forgotten if they were still talking about how he hacked the
Lawrence Livermore computer or some other site.
`The finger ... The finger system?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive