error, not logged on Ah, thought Mendax. The command is `logon' not `login'. :logon The Telecom exchange answered: `username:' Now all Mendax had to do was figure out a username and password. He knew that Telecom used NorTel equipment. More than likely, NorTel staff were training Telecom workers and would need access themselves. If there were lots of NorTel employees working on many different phone switches, it would be difficult to pass on secure passwords to staff all the time. NorTel and Telecom people would probably pick something easy and universal. What password best fitted that description? username: nortel password: nortel It worked. Unfortunately, Mendax didn't know which commands to use once he got into the machine, and there was no on-line documentation to provide help. The telephone switch had its own language, unlike anything he had ever encountered before. After hours of painstaking research, Mendax constructed a list of commands which would work on the exchange's computer. The exchange appeared to control all the special six-digit phone numbers beginning with 13, such as those used for airline reservations or some pizza delivery services. It was Telecom's `Intelligent Network' which did many specific tasks, including routing calls to the nearest possible branch of the organisation being called. Mendax looked through the list of commands, found `RANGE', and recognised it as a command which would allow someone to select all the phone numbers in a certain range. He selected a thousand numbers, all with the prefix 634, which he believed to be in Telecom's Queen Street offices. Now, to test a command. Mendax wanted something innocuous, which wouldn't screw up the 1000 lines permanently. It was almost 7 a.m. and he needed to wrap things up before Telecom employees began coming into work. `RING' seemed harmless enough. It might ring one of the numbers in the range after another--a process he could stop. He typed the command in. Nothing happened. Then a few full stops began to slowly spread across his screen: . . . . . . . RUNG The system had just rung all 1000 numbers at the same time. One thousand phones ringing all at once. What if some buttoned-down Telecom engineer had driven to work early that morning to get some work done? What if he had just settled down at his standard-issue metal Telecom desk with a cup of bad instant coffee in a styrofoam cup when suddenly ... every telephone in the skyscraper had rung out simultaneously? How suspicious would that look? Mendax thought it was time to high-tail it out of there. On his way out, he disabled the logs for the modem line he came in on. That way, no-one would be able to see what he had been up to. In fact, he hoped no-one would know that anyone had even used the dial-up line at all.