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
`I couldn't say what was going through my mind at the time. But
initially once I got into the first system--I'm sure you have heard
this a lot--but once you get into the first system, it's like you get
into the next one and the next one and the next one, after a while it
doesn't ...' Anthrax couldn't find the right words to finish the
explanation.
`Once you have tasted the forbidden fruit?'
`Exactly. It's a good analogy.'
Day pressed on with questions about Anthrax's hacking. He successfully
elicited admissions from the hacker. Anthrax gave Day more than the
police officer had before, but probably not as much as he would have
liked.
It was, however, enough. Enough to keep the police from charging
Anthrax's mother. And enough for them to charge him.
Anthrax didn't see his final list of charges until the day he appeared
in court on 28 August 1995. The whole case seemed to be a bit
disorganised. His Legal Aid lawyer had little knowledge of computers,
let alone computer crime. He told Anthrax he could ask for an
adjournment because he hadn't seen the final charges until so late,
but Anthrax wanted to get the thing over and done with. They had
agreed that Anthrax would plead guilty to the charges and hope for a
reasonable magistrate.
Anthrax looked through the hand-up brief provided by the prosecution,
which included a heavily edited transcript of his interview with the
police. It was labelled as a `summary', but it certainly didn't
summarise everything important in that interview. Either the
prosecution or the police had cut out all references to the fact that
the police had threatened to charge Anthrax's mother if he didn't
agree to be interviewed.
Anthrax pondered the matter. Wasn't everything relevant to his case
supposed to be covered in a hand-up brief? This seemed very relevant
to his case, yet there wasn't a mention of it anywhere in the
document. He began to wonder if the police had edited down the
transcript just so they could cut out that portion of the interview.
Perhaps the judge wouldn't be too happy about it. He thought that
maybe the police didn't want to be held accountable for how they had
dealt with his mother.
The rest of the hand-up brief wasn't much better. The only statement
by an actual `witness' to Anthrax's hacking was from his former
room-mate, who claimed that he had watched Anthrax break into a NASA
computer and access an `area of the computer system which showed the
latitude/longitude of ships'.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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