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
It was as though he became possessed with a spirit not his own. He
yelled at his father, and put a fist into the wall. His father grabbed
a chair and thrust it forward to keep Anthrax at bay, then reached
back for the phone. Said he was calling the police. Anthrax ripped the
phone from the wall. He pursued his father through the house, smashing
furniture. Amid the crashing violence of the fight, Anthrax suddenly
felt a flash of fear for his mother's clock--a much loved, delicate
family heirloom. He gently picked it up and placed it out of harm's
way. Then he heaved the stereo into the air and threw it at his
father. The stereo cabinet followed in its wake. Wardrobes toppled
with a crash across the floor.
When his father fled the house, Anthrax got a hold of himself and
began to look around. The place was a disaster area. All those things
so tenderly gathered and carefully treasured by his mother, the things
she had used to build her life in a foreign land of white people
speaking an alien tongue, lay in fragments scattered around the house.
Anthrax felt wretched. His mother was distraught at the destruction
and he was badly shaken by how much it upset her. He promised to try
and control his temper from that moment on. It proved to be a constant
battle. Mostly he would win, but not always. The battle still simmered
below the surface.
Sometimes it boiled over.
Anthrax considered the possibilities of who else would be using his
login patch. It could be another hacker, perhaps someone who was
running another sniffer that logged Anthrax's previous login. But it
was more likely to be a security admin. Meaning he had been found out.
Meaning that he might be being traced even as he leap-frogged through
System X to the telecommunications company's computer.
Anthrax made his way to the system admin's mailboxes. If the game was
up, chances were something in the mailbox would give it away.
There it was. The evidence. They were onto him all right, and they
hadn't wasted any time. The admins had mailed CERT, the Computer
Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University, reporting a
security breach. CERT, the nemesis of every Internet hacker, was bound
to complicate matters. Law enforcement would no doubt be called in
now.
It was time to get out of this system, but not before leaving in a
blaze of glory. A prank left as a small present.
CERT had written back to the admins acknowledging the incident and
providing a case number. Posing as one of the admins, Anthrax drafted
a letter to CERT. To make the thing look official, he added the case
number `for reference'. The letter went something like this:
`In regard to incident no. XXXXX, reported on this date, we have since
carried out some additional investigations on the matter. We have
discovered the security incident was caused by a disgruntled employee
who was fired for alcoholism and decided to retaliate against the
company in this manner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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