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
`Is it something I can think over and discuss?' Anthrax asked.
`Yes. Do you want to have a pause and a talk with your father? The
constable and I can step out of the room, or offer you another room.
You may wish to have a break and think about it if you like. I think
it might be a good idea. I think we might have a ten-minute break and
put you in another room and let you two have a chat about it. There is
no pressure.'
Day and the Sexton stopped the interview and guided father and son
into another room. Once they were alone, Anthrax looked to his father
for support. This voice inside him still cried out to keep away from
his earlier hacking journeys. He needed someone to tell him the same
thing.
His father was definitely not that someone. He railed against Anthrax
with considerable vehemence. Stop holding back. You have to tell
everything. How could you be so stupid? You can't fool the police.
They know. Confess it all before it's too late. At the end of the
ten-minute tirade, Anthrax felt worse than he had at the beginning.
When the two returned to the interview room, Anthrax's father turned
to the police and said suddenly, `He has decided to confess'.
That was not true. Anthrax hadn't decided anything of the sort. His
father was full of surprises. It seemed every time he opened his
mouth, an ugly surprise came out.
Ken Day and Andrew Sexton warmed up a shaky Anthrax by showing him
various documents, pieces of paper with Anthrax's scribbles seized
during the raid, telephone taps. At one stage, Day pointed to some
handwritten notes which read `KDAY'. He looked at Anthrax.
`What's that? That's me.'
Anthrax smiled for the first time in a long while. It was something to
be happy about. The head of the AFP's Computer Crime Unit in Melbourne
sat there, so sure he was onto something big. There was his name, bold
as day, in the hacker's handwriting on a bit of paper seized in a
raid. Day seemed to be expecting something good.
Anthrax said, `If you ring that up you will find it is a radio
station.' An American radio station. Written on the same bit of paper
were the names of an American clothing store, another US-based radio
station, and a few records he wanted to order.
`There you go,' Day laughed at his own hasty conclusions. `I've got a
radio station named after me.'
Day asked Anthrax why he wrote down all sorts of things, directory
paths, codes, error messages.
`Just part of the record-keeping. I think I wrote this down when I had
first been given this dial-up and I was just feeling my way around,
taking notes of what different things did.'
`What were your intentions at the time with these computer networks?'
`At this stage, I was just having a look, just a matter of curiosity.'
`Was it a matter of curiosity--"Gee, this is interesting" or was it
more like "I would like to get into them" at this stage?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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