Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier — John Shaqi
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
Occasionally, Bowen arranged gatherings of other young PI and Zen
users. Usually, the group met in downtown Melbourne, sometimes at the
City Square. The group was mostly boys, but sometimes a few girls
would show up. Bowen's sister, who used the handle Syn, hung around a
bit. She went out with a few hackers from the BBS scene. And she
wasn't the only one. It was a tight group which interchanged
boyfriends and girlfriends with considerable regularity. The group
hung out in the City Square after watching a movie, usually a horror
film. Nightmare 2. House 3. Titles tended to be a noun followed by a
numeral. Once, for a bit of lively variation, they went bowling and
drove the other people at the alley nuts. After the early
entertainment, it was down to McDonald's for a cheap burger. They
joked and laughed and threw gherkins against the restaurant's wall.
This was followed by more hanging around on the stone steps of the
City Square before catching the last bus or train home.
The social sections of PI and Zen were more successful than the
technical ones, but the private hacking section was even more
successful than the others. The hacking section was hidden; would-be
members of the Melbourne underground knew there was something going
on, but they couldn't find out what is was.
Getting an invite to the private area required hacking skill or
information, and usually a recommendation to Bowen from someone who
was already inside. Within the Inner Sanctum, as the private hacking
area was called, people could comfortably share information such as
opinions of new computer products, techniques for hacking, details of
companies which had set up new sites to hack and the latest rumours on
what the law enforcement agencies were up to.
The Inner Sanctum was not, however, the only private room. Two hacking
groups, Elite and H.A.C.K., guarded entry to their yet more exclusive
back rooms. Even if you managed to get entry to the Inner Sanctum, you
might not even know that H.A.C.K. or Elite existed. You might know
there was a place even more selective than your area, but exactly how
many layers of the onion stood between you and the most exclusive
section was anyone's guess. Almost every hacker interviewed for this
book described a vague sense of being somehow outside the innermost
circle. They knew it was there, but wasn't sure just what it was.
Bowen fielded occasional phone calls on his voice line from wanna-be
hackers trying to pry open the door to the Inner Sanctum. `I want
access to your pirate system,' the voice would whine.
`What pirate system? Who told you my system was a pirate system?'
Bowen sussed out how much the caller knew, and who had told him. Then
he denied everything.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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