Mendax started reading all the information on the Minerva list obtained from Pacific Island, except for one thing. He changed the fax number slightly. It worked. The manager jumped right in. `Oh, no. That's wrong. Our fax number is definitely wrong,' he said and proceeded to give the correct number. Mendax tried to sound concerned. `Hmm,' he told the manager. `We may have bigger problems than we anticipated. Hmm.' He gave another pregnant pause. Working up the courage to ask the Big Question. It was hard to know who was sweating more, the fretting Perth manager, tormented by the idea of loud staff complaints from all over the company because the Minerva account was faulty, or the gangly kid trying his hand at social engineering for the first time. `Well,' Mendax began, trying to keep the sound of authority in his voice. `Let's see. We have your account number, but we had better check your password ... what was it?' An arrow shot from the bow. It hit the target. `Yes, it's L-U-R-C-H--full stop.' Lurch? Uhuh. An Addams Family fan. `Can you make sure everything is working? We don't want our service interrupted.' The Perth manager sounded quite anxious. Mendax tapped away on the keyboard randomly and then paused. `Well, it looks like everything is working just fine now,' he quickly reassured him. Just fine. `Oh, that's a relief!' the Perth manager exclaimed. `Thank you for that. Thank you. I just can't thank you enough for calling us!' More gratitude. Mendax had to extract himself. This was getting embarrassing. `Yes, well I'd better go now. More customers to call.' That should work. The Perth manager wanted a contact telephone number, as expected, if something went wrong--so Mendax gave him the one which was permanently busy. `Thank you again for your courteous service!' Uhuh. Anytime. Mendax hung up and tried the toll-free Minerva number. The password worked. He couldn't believe how easy it was to get in. He had a quick look around, following the pattern of most hackers breaking into a new machine. First thing to do was to check the electronic mail of the `borrowed' account. Email often contains valuable information. One company manager might send another information about other account names, password changes or even phone numbers to modems at the company itself. Then it was off to check the directories available for anyone to read on the main system--another good source of information. Final stop: Minerva's bulletin board of news. This included postings from the system operators about planned downtime or other service issues. He didn't stay long. The first visit was usually mostly a bit of reconnaissance work.