Electron and Phoenix talked on the phone, moodily contemplating their losses. It was a blow, but Electron reminded himself that getting Deszip was never going to be easy. At least they had the passphrase to unlock the encrypted Deszip taken from Dartmouth.
Soon, however, they discovered a problem. There had to be one, Electron thought. They couldn't just have something go off without a hitch for a change. That would be too easy. The problem this time was that when they went searching for their copy from Dartmouth, which had been stored several months before, it had vanished. The Dartmouth system admin must have deleted it.
It was maddening. The frustration was unbearable. Each time they had Deszip just within their grasp, it slipped away and disappeared. Yet each time they lost their grip, it only deepened their desire to capture the elusive prize. Deszip was fast becoming an all-consuming obsession for Phoenix and Electron.
Their one last hope was the second copy of the encrypted Dartmouth Deszip file they had given to Gandalf, but that hope did not burn brightly. After all, if the Australians' copy had been deleted, there was every likelihood that the Brit's copy had suffered the same fate. Gandalf's copy hadn't been stored on his own computer. He had put it on some dark corner of a machine in Britain.
Electron and Phoenix logged onto Altos and waited for Pad or Gandalf to show up.
Phoenix typed .s for a list of who was on-line. He saw that Pad was logged on:
No Chan User
0 Guest
1 Phoenix
2 Pad
Guest 0 was Electron. He usually logged on as Guest, partly because he was so paranoid about being busted and because he believed operators monitored his connections if they knew it was Electron logging in. They seemed to take great joy in sniffing the password to his own account on Altos. Then, when he had logged off, they logged in and changed his password so he couldn't get back under the name Electron. Nothing was more annoying. Phoenix typed, `Hey, Pad. How's it going?'
Pad wrote back, `Feeny! Heya.'
`Do you and Gand still have that encrypted copy of Deszip we gave you a few months ago?'
`Encrypted copy … hmm. Thinking.' Pad paused. He and Gandalf hacked dozens of computer systems regularly. Sometimes it was difficult to recall just where they had stored things.
`Yeah, I know what you mean. I don't know. It was on a system on JANET,' Pad said. Britain's Joint Academic Network was the equivalent of Australia's AARNET, an early Internet based largely on a backbone of universities and research centres.
`I can't remember which system it was on,' Pad continued.
If the Brits couldn't recall the institution, let alone the machine where they had hidden Deszip, it was time to give up all hope. JANET comprised hundreds, maybe thousands, of machines. It was far too big a place to randomly hunt around for a file which Gandalf would no doubt have tried to disguise in the first place.
`But the file was encrypted, and you didn't have the password,' Pad wrote. `How come you want it?'
`Because we found the password.
`Gr8!' Pad answered.
That was Pad and Gandalf's on-line style. The number eight was the British hackers' hallmark, since their group was called 8lgm, and they used it instead of letters. Words like `great', `mate' and `later' became `gr8', `m8' and `l8r'.
When people logged into Altos they could name a `place' of origin for others to see. Of course, if you were logging from a country which had laws against hacking, you wouldn't give your real country. You'd just pick a place at random. Some people logged in from places like Argentina, or Israel. Pad and Gandalf logged in from 8lgm.
`I'll try to find Gandalf and ask him if he knows where we stashed the copy,' Pad wrote to Phoenix.
`Good. Thanks.'
While Phoenix and Electron waited on-line for Pad to return, Par showed up on-line and joined their conversation. Par didn't know who Guest 0 was, but Guest certainly knew who Par was. Time hadn't healed Electron's old wounds when it came to Par. Electron didn't really admit to himself the bad blood was still there over Theorem. He told himself that he couldn't be bothered with Par, that Par was just a phreaker, not a real hacker, that Par was lame.
Phoenix typed, `Hey, Par. How's it going?'
`Feenster!' Par replied. `What's happening?'
`Lots and lots.'
Par turned his attention to the mystery Guest 0. He didn't want to discuss private things with someone who might be a security guy hanging around the chat channel like a bad smell.
`Guest, do you have a name?' Par asked.
`Yeah. It's "Guest—#0".'
`You got any other names?'
There was a long pause.
Electron typed, `I guess not.'
`Any other names besides dickhead that is?'
Electron sent a `whisper'—a private message—to Phoenix telling him not to tell Par his identity.
`OK. Sure,' Phoenix whispered back. To show he would play along with whatever Electron had in mind, Phoenix added a sideways smiley face at the end: `:-)'.
Par didn't know Electron and Phoenix were whispering to each other. He was still waiting to find out the identity of Guest. `Well, speak up, Guest. Figured out who you are yet?'
Electron knew Par was on the run at the time. Indeed, Par had been on the run from the US Secret Service for more than six months by the beginning of 1990. He also knew Par was highly paranoid.
Electron took aim and fired.
`Hey, Par. You should eat more. You're looking underFED these days.'
Par was suddenly silent. Electron sat at his computer, quietly laughing to himself, halfway across the world from Par. Well, he thought, that ought to freak out Par a bit. Nothing like a subtle hint at law enforcement to drive him nuts.
`Did you see THAT?' Par whispered to Phoenix. `UnderFED. What did he mean?'
`I dunno,' Phoenix whispered back. Then he forwarded a copy of Par's private message on to Electron. He knew it would make him laugh.
Par was clearly worried. `Who the fuck are you?' he whispered toElectron but Guest 0 didn't answer.
With growing anxiety, Par whispered to Phoenix, `Who IS this guy? Do you know him?'
Phoenix didn't answer.
`Because, well, it's weird. Didn't you see? FED was in caps. What the fuck does that mean? Is he a fed? Is he trying to give me a message from the feds?'
Sitting at his terminal, on the other side of Melbourne from Electron,Phoenix was also laughing. He liked Par, but the American was an easytarget. Par had become so paranoid since he went on the run across theUS, and Electron knew just the right buttons to push.
`I don't know,' Phoenix whispered to Par. `I'm sure he's not really a fed.'
`Well, I am wondering about that comment,' Par whispered back. `UnderFED. Hmm. Maybe he knows something. Maybe it's some kind of warning. Shit, maybe the Secret Service knows where I am.'
`You think?' Phoenix whispered to Par. `It might be a warning of some kind?' It was too funny.
`Can you check his originating NUA?' Par wanted to know what network address the mystery guest was coming from. It might give him a clue as to the stranger's identity.
Phoenix could barely contain himself. He kept forwarding the private messages on to Electron. Par was clearly becoming more agitated.
`I wish he would just tell me WHO he was,' Par whispered. `Shit. It is very fucking weird. UnderFED. It's spinning me out.'
Then Par logged off.
Electron typed, `I guess Par had to go.
If Pad and Gandalf hadn't kept their copy of Deszip, the Australians would be back to square one, beginning with a hunt for a system which even had Deszip. It was a daunting task and by the time Pad and Gandalf finally logged back into Altos, Phoenix and Electron had become quite anxious.
`How did you go?' Phoenix asked. `Do you still have Deszip?'
`Well, at first I thought I had forgotten which system I left it on …'
Electron jumped in, `And then?'
`Then I remembered.'
`Good news?' Phoenix exclaimed.
`Well, no. Not exactly,' Gandalf said. `The account is dead.'
Electron felt like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on him.`Dead? Dead how?' he asked.
`Dead like someone changed the password. Not sure why. I'll have to re-hack the system to get to the file.'
`Fuck, this Deszip is frustrating,' Electron wrote.
`This is getting ridiculous,' Phoenix added.
`I don't even know if the copy is still in there,' Gandalf replied. `I hid it, but who knows? Been a few months. Admins might have deleted it.'
`You want some help hacking the system again, Gand?' Phoenix asked.
`Nah, It'll be easy. It's a Sequent. Just have to hang around until the ops go home.'
If an op was logged on and saw Gandalf hunting around, he or she might kick Gandalf off and investigate the file which so interested the hacker. Then they would lose Deszip all over again.
`I hope we get it,' Pad chipped in. `Would be gr8!'
`Gr8 indeed. Feen, you've got the key to the encryption?' Gandalf asked.
`Yeah.'
`How many characters is it?' It was Gandalf's subtle way of asking for the key itself.
Phoenix wasn't sure what to do. He wanted to give the British hackers the key, but he was torn. He needed Pad and Gandalf's help to get the copy of Deszip, if it was still around. But he knew Electron was watching the conversation, and Electron was always so paranoid. He disliked giving out any information, let alone giving it over Altos, where the conversations were possibly logged by security people.
`Should I give him the key?' Phoenix whispered to Electron.
Gandalf was waiting. To fend him off, Phoenix said, `It's 9 chars.' Chars was short for characters. On Altos the rule was to abbreviate where ever possible.
`What is the first char?'
`Yeah. Tell him,' Electron whispered to Phoenix.
`Well, the key is …'
`You're going to spew when you find out, Gand,' Electron interrupted.
`Yes … go on,' Gandalf said. `I am listening.'
`You won't believe it.
`WHAT???? WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' Gandalf exclaimed.`No!!! IT's NOT TRUE! Bollox! You are KIDDING?'
The British hacker was thumping himself on the head. The name of the frigging university! What a stupid password!
Phoenix gave an on-line chuckle. `Hehe. Yeah. So hard to guess. We could have had Deszip for all these months …'
`Jesus. I hope it's still on that JANET system,' Gandalf said. Now that he actually had the password, finding the file became even more urgent.
`Pray. Pray. Pray,' Phoenix said. `Yeah, you should have seen the licence text on Deszip—it was by NASA.'
`You've seen it? You saw Deszip's source code?'
`No,' Phoenix answered. `When I went back to the BEAR machine to check if Deszip was still there, the program was gone. But the licence agreement and other stuff was there. Should have read the licence … truly amazing. It basically went on and on about how the people who wrote it didn't want people like us to get a hold of it. Hehe.'
Electron was growing impatient. `Yeah. So, Gand, when you gonna go check that JANET system?'
`Now. Fingers crossed, m8! See ya l8r …' Then he was gone.
The waiting was driving Electron nuts. He kept thinking about Deszip, about how he could have had it months and months ago. That program was such a prize. He was salivating at the thought of getting it after all this time pursuing it around the globe, chasing its trail from system to system, never quite getting close enough to grab it.
When Gandalf showed up again, Pad, Phoenix and Electron were all over him in an instant.
`WE FUCKING GOT IT GUYS!!!!!' Gandalf exclaimed.
`Good job m8!' Pad said.
`YES!' Electron added. `Have you decrypted it yet?'
`Not yet. Crypt isn't on that machine. We can either copy Crypt onto that machine or copy the file onto another computer which already has Crypt on it,' Gandalf said.
`Let's move it. Quick … quick … this damn thing has a habit of disappearing,' Electron said.
`Yeah, this is the last copy … the only one I got.'
`OK. Think … think … where can we copy it to?' Electron said.
`Texas!' Gandalf wanted to copy it to a computer at the University ofTexas at Austin, home of the LOD hacker Erik Bloodaxe.
Irrepressible, Gandalf came on like a steam roller if he liked you—and cut you down in a flash if he didn't. His rough-and-tumble working-class humour particularly appealed to Electron. Gandalf seemed able to zero in on the things which worried you most—something so deep or serious it was often unsaid. Then he would blurt it out in such crass, blunt terms you couldn't help laughing. It was his way of being in your face in the friendliest possible manner.
`Yeah! Blame everything on Erik!' Phoenix joked. `No, seriously. That place is crawling with security now, all after Erik. They are into everything.'
Phoenix had heard all about the security purge at the university from Erik. The Australian called Erik all the time, mostly by charging the calls to stolen AT&T cards. Erik hadn't been raided by the Secret Service yet, but he had been tipped off and was expecting a visit any day.
`It probably won't decrypt anyway,' Electron said.
`Oh, phuck off!' Gandalf shot back. `Come on! I need a site NOW!'
`Thinking …' Phoenix said. `Gotta be some place with room—how big is it?'
`It's 900 k compressed—probably 3 meg when we uncompress it. Come on, hurry up! How about a university?'
`Princeton, Yale could do either of those.' Electron suggested. `What about MIT—you hacked an account there recently, Gand?'
`No.'
All four hackers racked their minds for a safe haven. The world was their oyster, as British and Australian hackers held a real-time conversation in Germany about whether to hide their treasure in Austin, Texas; Princeton, New Jersey; Boston, Massachusetts; or New Haven, Connecticut.
`We only need somewhere to stash it for a little while, until we can download it,' Gandalf said. `Got to be some machine where we've got root. And it's got to have anon FTP.'
Anon FTP, or anonymous file transfer protocol, on a host machine would allow Gandalf to shoot the file from his JANET machine across the Internet into the host. Most importantly, Gandalf could do so without an account on the target machine. He could simply login as `anonymous', a method of access which had more limitations than simply logging in with a normal account. He would, however, still be able to upload the file.
`OK. OK, I have an idea,' Phoenix said. `Lemme go check it out.'
Phoenix dropped out of Altos and connected to the University of Texas. The physical location of a site didn't matter. His head was spinning and it was the only place he could think of. But he didn't try to connect to Happy, the machine he often used which Erik had told him about. He headed to one of the other university computers, called Walt.
The network was overloaded. Phoenix was left dangling, waiting to connect for minutes on end. The lines were congested. He logged back into Altos and told Pad and Electron. Gandalf was nowhere to be seen.
`Damn,' Electron said. Then, `OK, I might have an idea.'
`No, wait!' Phoenix cut in. `I just thought of a site! And I have root too! But it's on NASA …'
`Oh that's OK. I'm sure they won't mind a bit.
`I'll go make sure it's still OK. Back in a bit,' Phoenix typed.
Phoenix jumped out of Altos and headed toward NASA. He telnetted into a NASA computer called CSAB at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. He had been in and out of NASA quite a few times and had recently made himself a root account on CSAB. First, he had to check the account was still alive, then he had to make sure the system administrator wasn't logged in.
Whizzing past the official warning sign about unauthorised access in US government computers on the login screen, Phoenix typed in his user name and password.
It worked. He was in. And he had root privileges.
He quickly looked around on the system. The administrator was on-line.Damn.
Phoenix fled the NASA computer and sprinted back into Altos. Gandalf was there, along with the other two, waiting for him.
`Well?' Electron asked.
`OK. All right. The NASA machine will work. It has anon FTP. And I still have root. We'll use that.'
Gandalf jumped in. `Hang on—does it have Crypt?'
`Argh! Forget to check. I think it must.'
`Better check it, m8!'
`Yeah, OK.'
Phoenix felt exasperated, rushing around trying to find sites that worked. He logged out of Altos and coursed his way back into the NASA machine. The admin was still logged on, but Phoenix was running out of time. He had to find out if the computer had Crypt on it. It did.
Phoenix rushed back to Altos. `Back again. We're in business.'
`Yes!' Electron said, but he quickly jumped in with a word of warning. `Don't say the exact machine at NASA or the account out loud. Whisper it to Gandalf. I think the ops are listening in on my connection.'
`Well,' Phoenix typed slowly, `there's only one problem. The admin is logged on.'
`Arghhh!' Electron shouted.
`Just do it,' Pad said. `No time to worry.'
Phoenix whispered the Internet IP address of the NASA machine toGandalf.
`OK, m8, I'll anon FTP it to NASA. I'll come back here and tell you the new filename. Then you go in and decrypt it and uncompress the file. W8 for me here.'
Ten minutes later, Gandalf returned. `Mission accomplished. The file is there!'
`Now, go go Pheeny!' Electron said.
`Gand, whisper the filename to me,' Phoenix said.
`The file's called "d" and it's in the pub directory,' Gandalf whispered.
`OK, folks. Here we go!' Phoenix said as he logged off.
Phoenix dashed to the NASA computer, logged in and looked for the file named `d'. He couldn't find it. He couldn't even find the pub directory. He began hunting around the rest of the file system. Where was the damn thing?
Uh oh. Phoenix noticed the system administrator, Sharon Beskenis, was still logged in. She was connected from Phoebe, another NASA machine. There was only one other user besides himself logged into the CSAB machine, someone called Carrie. As if that wasn't bad enough, Phoenix realised his username stood out a like a sore thumb. If the admin looked at who was on-line she would see herself, Carrie and a user called `friend', an account he had created for himself. How many legitimate accounts on NASA computers had that name?
Worse, Phoenix noticed that he had forgotten to cover his login trail. `Friend' was telnetting into the NASA computer from the University of Texas. No, no, he thought, that would definitely have to go. He disconnected from NASA, bounced back to the university and then logged in to NASA again. Good grief. Now the damn NASA machine showed two people logged in as `friend'. The computer hadn't properly killed his previous login. Stress.
Phoenix tried frantically to clear out his first login by killing its process number. The NASA computer responded that there was no such process number. Increasingly nervous, Phoenix figured he must have typed in the wrong number. Unhinged, he grabbed one of the other process numbers and killed that.
Christ! That was the admin's process number. Phoenix had just disconnected Sharon from her own machine. Things were not going well.
Now he was under serious pressure. He didn't dare logout, because Sharon would no doubt find his `friend' account, kill it and close up the security hole he had originally used to get in. Even if she didn't find Deszip on her own machine, he might not be able to get back in again to retrieve it.
After another frenzied minute hunting around the machine, Phoenix finally unearthed Gandalf's copy of Deszip. Now, the moment of truth.
He tried the passphrase. It worked! All he had to do was uncompress Deszip and get it out of there. He typed, `uncompress deszip.tar.z', but he didn't like how the NASA computer answered his command:
corrupt input
Something was wrong, terribly wrong. The file appeared to be partially destroyed. It was too painful a possibility to contemplate. Even if only a small part of the main Deszip program had been damaged, none of it would be useable.
Rubbing sweat from his palms, Phoenix hoped that maybe the file had just been damaged as he attempted to uncompress it. He had kept the original, so he went back to that and tried decrypting and uncompressing it again. The NASA computer gave him the same ugly response. Urgently, he tried yet again, but this time attempted to uncompress the file in a different way. Same problem.
Phoenix was at his wits' end. This was too much. The most he could hope was that the file had somehow become corrupted in the transfer from Gandalf's JANET machine. He logged out of NASA and returned to Altos. The other three were waiting impatiently for him.
Electron, still logged in as the mystery Guest, leaped in. `Did it work?'
`No. Decrypted OK, but the file was corrupted when I tried to decompress it.'
`Arghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!' Gandalf exclaimed.
`Fuckfuckfuck,' Electron wrote. `Doomed to fail.'
`Sigh Sigh Sigh,' Pad typed.
Gandalf and Electron quizzed Phoenix in detail about each command he had used, but in the end there seemed only one hope. Move a copy of the decryption program to the JANET computer in the UK and try decrypting and uncompressing Deszip there.
Phoenix gave Gandalf a copy of Crypt and the British hacker went to work on the JANET computer. A little later he rendezvoused on Altos again.
Phoenix was beside himself by this stage. `Gand! Work???'
`Well, I decrypted it using the program you gave me …'
`And And And???' Electron was practically jumping out of his seat at his computer.
`Tried to uncompress it. It was taking a LONG time. Kept going—expanded to 8 megabytes.'
`Oh NO. Bad Bad Bad,' Phoenix moaned. `Should only be 3 meg. If it's making a million files, it's fucked.'
`Christ,' Pad typed. `Too painful.'
`I got the makefile—licensing agreement text etc., but the Deszip program itself was corrupted,' Gandalf concluded.
`I don't understand what is wrong with it.
`AgonyAgonyAgony,' Electron groaned. `It'll never never never work.'
`Can we get a copy anywhere else?' Gandalf asked.
`That FTP bug has been fixed at Purdue,' Pad answered. `Can't use that to get in again.'
Disappointment permeated the atmosphere on Altos.
There were, of course, other possible repositories for Deszip. Phoenix and Electron had already penetrated a computer at Lawrence Livermore National Labs in California. They had procured root on the gamm5 machine and planned to use it as a launchpad for penetrating security expert Russell Brand's computer at LLNL, called Wuthel. They were sure Brand had Deszip on his computer.
It would require a good deal of effort, and possibly another roller-coaster ride of desire, expectation and possible disappointment. For now, the four hackers resolved to sign off, licking their wounds at their defeat in the quest for Deszip.
`Well, I'm off. See you l8r,' Pad said.
`Yeah, me too,' Electron added.
`Yeah, OK. L8r, m8s!' Gandalf said.
Then, just for fun, he added in typical Gandalf style, `See you in jail!'
Read about it; Just another incredible scene; There's no doubt about it.
— from `Read About It', 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Pad had an important warning for the Australian hackers: the computer security community was closing in on them. It was the end of February 1990, not long after Phoenix and Electron had captured Zardoz and just missed out on Deszip. Pad didn't scream or shout the warning, that wasn't his style. But Electron took in the import of the warning loud and clear.
`Feen, they know you did over Spaf's machine,' Pad told Phoenix. `They know it's been you in other systems also. They've got your handle.'
Eugene Spafford was the kind of computer security expert who loses a lot of face when a hacker gets into his machine, and a wounded bull is a dangerous enemy.
The security people had been able to connect and link up a series of break-ins with the hacker who called himself Phoenix because his style was so distinctive. For example, whenever he was creating a root shell—root access—for himself, he would always save it in the same filename and in the same location on the computer. In some instances, he even created accounts called `Phoenix' for himself. It was this consistency of style which had made things so much easier for admins to trace his movements.
In his typical understated fashion, Pad suggested a change of style. And maybe, he added, it wasn't such a bad idea for the Australians to tone down their activities a bit. The undercurrent of the message was serious.
`They said that some security people had contacted Australian law enforcement, who were supposed to be "dealing with it",' Pad said.
`Do they know my real name?' Phoenix asked, worried. Electron was also watching this conversation with some concern.
`Don't know. Got it from Shatter. He's not always reliable, but …'
Pad was trying to soften the news by playing down Shatter's importance as a source. He didn't trust his fellow British hacker but Shatter had some good, if mysterious, connections. An enigmatic figure who seemed to keep one foot in the computer underworld and the other in the upright computer security industry, Shatter leaked information to Pad and Gandalf, and occasionally to the Australians.
While the two British hackers sometimes discounted Shatter's advice, they also took the time to talk to him. Once, Electron had intercepted email showing Pengo had turned to Shatter for advice about his situation after the raid in Germany. With some spare time prior to his trial, Pengo asked Shatter whether it was safe to travel to the US on a summer holiday in 1989. Shatter asked for Pengo's birthdate and other details. Then he returned with an unequivocal answer: Under no circumstances was Pengo to travel to the US.
Subsequently, it was reported that officials in the US JusticeDepartment had been examining ways to secretly coax Pengo ontoAmerican soil, where they could seize him. They would then force himto face trial in their own courts.
Had Shatter known this? Or had he just told Pengo not to go to the US because it was good commonsense? No-one was quite sure, but people took note of what Shatter told them.
`Shatter definitely got the info right about Spaf's machine. 100% right,' Pad continued. `He knew exactly how you hacked it. I couldn't believe it. Be careful if you're still hacking m8, especially on the Inet.' The `Inet' was shorthand for the Internet.
The Altos hackers went quiet.
`It's not just you,' Pad tried to reassure the Australians. `Two security people from the US are coming to the UK to try and find out something about someone named Gandalf. Oh, and Gand's mate, who might be called Patrick.'
Pad had indeed based his handle on the name Patrick, or Paddy, but that wasn't his real name. No intelligent hacker would use his real name for his handle. Paddy was the name of one of his favourite university lecturers, an Irishman who laughed a good deal. Like Par's name, Pad's handle had coincidentally echoed a second meaning when the British hacker moved into exploring X.25 networks. An X.25 PAD is a packet assembler disassembler, the interface between the X.25 network and a modem or terminal server. Similarly, Gandalf, while being first and foremost the wizard from The Lord of The Rings, also happened to be a terminal server brand name.
Despite the gravity of the news that the security community was closing the net around them, none of the hackers lost their wicked sense of humour.
`You know,' Pad went on, `Spaf was out of the country when his machine got hacked.'
`Was he? Where?' asked Gandalf, who had just joined the conversation.
`In Europe.'
Electron couldn't resist. `Where was Spaf, Gandalf asks as he hears a knock on his door …'
`Haha,' Gandalf laughed.
`
`Oh! Hello there, Mr Spafford,' Gandalf typed, playing along.
`Hello, I'm Gene and I'm mean!'
Alone in their separate homes on different corners of the globe, the four hackers chuckled to themselves.
`Hello, and is this the man called Patrick?' Pad jumped in.
`Well, Mr Spafford, it seems you're a right fucking idiot for not patching your FTP!' Gandalf proclaimed.
`Not to mention the CHFN bug—saved by a Sequent! Or you'd be very fucking embarrassed,' Phoenix added.
Phoenix was laughing too, but he was a little nervous about Pad's warning and he turned the conversation back to a serious note.
`So, Pad, what else did Shatter tell you?' Phoenix asked anxiously.
`Not much. Except that some of the security investigations might be partly because of UCB.'
UCB was the University of California at Berkeley. Phoenix had been visiting machines at both Berkeley and LLNL so much recently that the admins seemed to have not only noticed him, but they had pinpointed his handle. One day he had telnetted into dewey.soe.berkeley.edu—the Dewey machine as it was known—and had been startled to find the following message of the day staring him in the face:
Phoenix,
Get out of Dewey NOW!
Also, do not use any of the `soe' machines.
Thank you,
Daniel Berger
Phoenix did a double take when he saw this public warning. Having been in and out of the system so many times, he just zoomed past the words on the login screen. Then, in a delayed reaction, he realised the login message was addressed to him.
Ignoring the warning, he proceeded to get root on the Berkeley machine and look through Berger's files. Then he sat back, thinking about the best way to deal with the problem. Finally, he decided to send the admin a note saying he was leaving the system for good.
Within days, Phoenix was back in the Dewey machine, weaving in and out of it as if nothing had happened. After all, he had broken into the system, and managed to get root through his own wit. He had earned the right to be in the computer. He might send the admin a note to put him at ease, but Phoenix wasn't going to give up accessing Berkeley's computers just because it upset Daniel Berger.
`See,' Pad continued, `I think the UCB people kept stuff on their systems that wasn't supposed to be there. Secret things.'
Classified military material wasn't supposed to be stored on non-classified network computers. However, Pad guessed that sometimes researchers broke rules and took short cuts because they were busy thinking about their research and not the security implications.
`Some of the stuff might have been illegal,' Pad told his captive audience. `And then they find out some of you guys have been in there …'
`Shit,' Phoenix said.
`So, well, if it APPEARED like someone was inside trying to get at those secrets …' Pad paused. `Then you can guess what happened. It seems they really want to get whoever was inside their machines.'
There was momentary silence while the other hackers digested all that Pad had told them. As a personality on Altos, Pad remained ever so slightly withdrawn from the other hackers, even the Australians whom he considered mates. This reserved quality gave his warning a certain sobriety, which seeped into the very fabric of Altos that day.
Eventually, Electron responded to Pad's warning by typing a comment directed at Phoenix: `I told you talking to security guys is nothing but trouble.'
It irritated Electron more and more that Phoenix felt compelled to talk to white hats in the security industry. In Electron's view, drawing attention to yourself was just a bad idea all around and he was increasingly annoyed at watching Phoenix feed his ego. He had made veiled references to Phoenix's bragging on Altos many times, saying things like `I wish people wouldn't talk to security guys'.
Phoenix responded to Electron on-line somewhat piously. `Well, I will never talk to security guys seriously again.'
Electron had heard it all before. It was like listening to an alcoholic swear he would never touch another drink. Bidding the others goodbye, Electron logged off. He didn't care to listen to Phoenix any more.
Others did, however. Hundreds of kilometres away, in a special room secreted away inside a bland building in Canberra, Sergeant Michael Costello and Constable William Apro had been methodically capturing each and every electronic boast as it poured from Phoenix's phone. The two officers recorded the data transmissions passing in and out of his computer. They then played this recording into their own modem and computer and created a text file they could save and use as evidence in court.
Both police officers had travelled north from Melbourne, where they worked with the AFP's Computer Crime Unit. Settling into their temporary desks with their PC and laptop, the officers began their secret eavesdropping work on 1 February 1990.
It was the first time the AFP had done a datatap. They were happy to bide their time, to methodically record Phoenix hacking into Berkeley, into Texas, into NASA, into a dozen computers around the world. The phone tap warrant was good for 60 days, which was more than enough time to secrete away a mountain of damning evidence against the egotistical Realm hacker. Time was on their side.
The officers worked the Operation Dabble job in shifts. Constable Apro arrived at the Telecommunications Intelligence Branch of the AFP at 8 p.m. Precisely ten hours later, at 6 the next morning, Sergeant Costello relieved Apro, who knocked off for a good sleep. Apro returned again at 8 p.m. to begin the night shift.
They were there all the time. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Waiting and listening.
It was too funny. Erik Bloodaxe in Austin, Texas, couldn't stop laughing. In Melbourne, Phoenix's side hurt from laughing so much.
Phoenix loved to talk on the phone. He often called Erik, sometimes every day, and they spoke for ages. Phoenix didn't worry about cost; he wasn't paying for it. The call would appear on some poor sod's bill and he could sort it out with the phone company.
Sometimes Erik worried a little about whether Phoenix wasn't going to get himself in a jam making all these international calls. Not that he didn't like talking to the Australian; it was a hoot. Still, the concern sat there, unsettled, in the back of his mind. A few times he asked Phoenix about it.
`No prob. Hey, AT&T isn't an Australian company,' Phoenix would say.`They can't do anything to me.' And Erik had let it rest at that.
For his part, Erik didn't dare call Phoenix, especially not since his little visit from the US Secret Service. On 1 March 1990, they burst into his home, with guns drawn, in a dawn raid. The agents searched everywhere, tearing the student house apart, but they didn't find anything incriminating. They did take Erik's $59 keyboard terminal with its chintzy little 300 baud modem, but they didn't get his main computer, because Erik knew they were coming.
The Secret Service had subpoenaed his academic records, and Erik had heard about it before the raid. So when the Secret Service arrived, Erik's stuff just wasn't there. It hadn't been there for a few weeks, but for Erik, they had been hard weeks. The hacker found himself suffering withdrawal symptoms, so he bought the cheapest home computer and modem he could find to tide him over.
That equipment was the only computer gear the Secret Service discovered, and they were not happy special agents. But without evidence, their hands were tied. No charges were laid.
Still, Erik thought he was probably being watched. The last thing he wanted was for Phoenix's number to appear on his home phone bill. So he let Phoenix call him, which the Australian did all the time. They often talked for hours when Erik was working nights. It was a slack job, just changing the back-up tapes on various computers and making sure they didn't jam. Perfect for a student. It left Erik hours of free time.
Erik frequently reminded Phoenix that his phone was probably tapped, but Phoenix just laughed. `Yeah, well don't worry about it, mate. What are they going to do? Come and get me?'
After Erik put a hold on his own hacking activities, he lived vicariously, listening to Phoenix's exploits. The Australian called him with a technical problem or an interesting system, and then they discussed various strategies for getting into the machine. However, unlike Electron's talks with Phoenix, conversations with Erik weren't only about hacking. They chatted about life, about what Australia was like, about girls, about what was in the newspaper that day. It was easy to talk to Erik. He had a big ego, like most hackers, but it was inoffensive, largely couched in his self-effacing humour.
Phoenix often made Erik laugh. Like the time he got Clifford Stoll, an astronomer, who wrote The Cuckoo's Egg. The book described his pursuit of a German hacker who had broken into the computer system Stoll managed at Lawrence Berkeley Labs near San Francisco. The hacker had been part of the same hacking ring as Pengo. Stoll took a hard line on hacking, a position which did not win him popularity in the underground. Both Phoenix and Erik had read Stoll's book, and one day they were sitting around chatting about it.
`You know, it's really stupid that Cliffy put his email address in his book,' Phoenix said. `Hmm, why don't I go check?'
Sure enough, Phoenix called Erik back about a day later. `Well, I got root on Cliffy's machine,' he began slowly, then he burst out laughing. `And I changed the message of the day. Now it reads, "It looks like the Cuckoo's got egg on his face"!'
It was uproariously funny. Stoll, the most famous hacker-catcher in the world, had been japed! It was the funniest thing Erik had heard in weeks.
But it was not nearly so amusing as what Erik told Phoenix later about the New York Times. The paper had published an article on 19 March suggesting a hacker had written some sort of virus or worm which was breaking into dozens of computers.
`Listen to this,' Erik had said, reading Phoenix the lead paragraph, `"A computer intruder has written a program that has entered dozens of computers in a nationwide network in recent weeks, automatically stealing electronic documents containing users' passwords and erasing files to help conceal itself."'
Phoenix was falling off his chair he was laughing so hard. A program? Which was automatically doing this? No. It wasn't an automated program, it was the Australians! It was the Realm hackers! God, this was funny.
`Wait—there's more! It says, "Another rogue program shows a widespread vulnerability". I laughed my ass off,' Erik said, struggling to get the words out.
`A rogue program! Who wrote the article?'
`A John Markoff,' Erik answered, wiping his eyes. `I called him up.'
`You did? What did you say?' Phoenix tried to gather himself together.
`"John," I said, "You know that article you wrote on page 12 of theTimes? It's wrong! There's no rogue program attacking the Internet."He goes, "What is it then?" "It's not a virus or a worm," I said."It's PEOPLE."'
Erik started laughing uncontrollably again.
`Then Markoff sounds really stunned, and he goes, "People?" And I said, "Yeah, people." Then he said, "How do you know?" And I said, "Because, John, I KNOW."'
Phoenix erupted in laughter again. The Times reporter obviously had worms on his mind, since the author of the famous Internet worm, Robert T. Morris Jr, had just been tried and convicted in the US. He was due to be sentenced in May.
US investigators had tracked the hacker's connections, looping through site after site in a burrowing manner which they assumed belonged to a worm. The idea of penetrating so many sites all in such a short time clearly baffled the investigators, who concluded it must be a program rather than human beings launching the attacks.
`Yeah,' Erik continued, `And then Markoff said, "Can you get me to talk to them?" And I said I'd see what I could do.'
`Yeah,' Phoenix said. `Go tell him, yes. Yeah, I gotta talk to this idiot. I'll set him straight.'
Page one, the New York Times, 21 March 1990: `Caller Says he BrokeComputers' Barriers to Taunt the Experts', by John Markoff.
True, the article was below the crease—on the bottom half of the page—but at least it was in column 1, the place a reader turns to first.
Phoenix was chuffed. He'd made the front page of the New York Times.
`The man identified himself only as an Australian named Dave,' the article said. Phoenix chuckled softly. Dave Lissek was the pseudonym he'd used. Of course, he wasn't the only one using the name Dave. When Erik first met the Australians on Altos, he marvelled at how they all called themselves Dave. I'm Dave, he's Dave, we're all Dave, they told him. It was just easier that way, they said.
The article revealed that `Dave' had attacked Spaf's and Stoll's machines, and that the Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory at Harvard University—where Stoll now worked—had pulled its computers off the Internet as a result of the break in. Markoff had even included the `egg on his face' story Phoenix had described to him.
Phoenix laughed at how well he had thumbed his nose at Cliffy Stoll. This article would show him up all right. It felt so good, seeing himself in print that way. He did that. That was him there in black in white, for all the world to see. He had outsmarted the world's best known hacker-catcher, and he had smeared the insult across the front page of the most prestigious newspaper in America.
And Markoff reported that he had been in Spaf's system too! Phoenix glowed happily. Better still, Markoff had quoted `Dave' on the subject: `The caller said … "It used to be the security guys chasing the hackers. Now it's the hackers chasing the security people."'
The article went on: `Among the institutions believed to have been penetrated by the intruder are the Los Alamos National Laboratories, Harvard, Digital Equipment Corporation, Boston University and the University of Texas.' Yes, that list sounded about right. Well, for the Australians as a group anyway. Even if Phoenix hadn't masterminded or even penetrated some of those himself, he was happy to take the credit in the Times.
This was a red-letter day for Phoenix.
Electron, however, was furious. How could Phoenix be so stupid? He knew that Phoenix had an ego, that he talked too much, and that his tendency to brag had grown worse over time, fed by the skyrocketing success of the Australian hackers. Electron knew all of that, but he still couldn't quite believe that Phoenix had gone so far as to strut and preen like a show pony for the New York Times.
To think that he had associated with Phoenix. Electron was disgusted. He had never trusted Phoenix—a caution now proved wise. But he had spent hours with him on the phone, with most of the information flowing in one direction. But not only did Phoenix show no discretion at all in dealing with the paper, he bragged about doing things that Electron had done! If Phoenix had to talk—and clearly he should have kept his mouth shut—he should have at least been honest about the systems for which he could claim credit.
Electron had tried with Phoenix. Electron had suggested that he stop talking to the security guys. He had continually urged caution and discretion. He had even subtly withdrawn each time Phoenix suggested one of his hair-brained schemes to show off to a security bigwig. Electron had done this in the hope that Phoenix might get the hint. Maybe, if Phoenix couldn't hear someone shouting advice at him, he might at least listen to someone whispering it. But no. Phoenix was far too thick for that.
The Internet—indeed, all hacking—was out of bounds for weeks, if not months. There was no chance the Australian authorities would let a front-page story in the Times go by un-heeded. The Americans would be all over them. In one selfish act of hubris, Phoenix had ruined the party for everyone else.
Electron unplugged his modem and took it to his father. During exams, he had often asked his father to hide it. He didn't have the self-discipline needed to stay away on his own and there was no other way Electron could keep himself from jacking in—plugging his modem into the wall. His father had become an expert at hiding the device, but Electron usually still managed to find it after a few days, tearing the house apart until he emerged, triumphant, with the modem held high above his head. Even when his father began hiding the modem outside the family home it would only postpone the inevitable.
This time, however, Electron vowed he would stop hacking until the fallout had cleared—he had to. So he handed the modem to his father, with strict instructions, and then tried to distract himself by cleaning up his hard drive and disks. His hacking files had to go too. So much damning evidence of his activities. He deleted some files and took others on disks to store at a friend's house. Deleting files caused Electron considerable pain, but there was no other way. Phoenix had backed him into a corner.
Brimming with excitement, Phoenix rang Electron on a sunny March afternoon.
`Guess what?' Phoenix was jumping around like an eager puppy at the other end of the line. `We made the nightly news right across the US!'
`Uhuh,' Electron responded, unimpressed.
`This is not a joke!' We were on cable news all day too. I called Erik and he told me.'
`Mmm,' Electron said.
`You know, we did a lot of things right. Like Harvard. We got into every system at Harvard. It was a good move. Harvard gave us the fame we needed.'
Electron couldn't believe what he was hearing. He didn't need any fame—and he certainly didn't need to be busted. The conversation—like Phoenix himself—was really beginning to annoy him.
`Hey, and they know your name,' Phoenix said coyly.
That got a reaction. Electron gulped his anger.
`Haha! Just joshing!' Phoenix practically shouted. `Don't worry! They didn't really mention anyone's name.'
`Good,' Electron answered curtly. His irritation stewed quietly.
`So, do you reckon we'll make the cover of Time or Newsweek?'
Good grief! Didn't Phoenix ever give up? As if it wasn't enough to appear on the 6 o'clock national news in a country crawling with over-zealous law enforcement agencies. Or to make the New York Times. He had to have the weeklies too.
Phoenix was revelling in his own publicity. He felt like he was on top of the world, and he wanted to shout about it. Electron had felt the same wave of excitement from hacking many high-profile targets and matching wits with the best, but he was happy to stand on the peak by himself, or with people like Pad and Gandalf, and enjoy the view quietly. He was happy to know he had been the best on the frontier of a computer underground which was fresh, experimental and, most of all, international. He didn't need to call up newspaper reporters or gloat about it in Clifford Stoll's face.
`Well, what do you reckon?' Phoenix asked impatiently.
`No,' Electron answered.
`No? You don't think we will?' Phoenix sounded disappointed.
`No.'
`Well, I'll demand it!' Phoenix said laughing, `Fuck it, we want the cover of Newsweek, nothing less.' Then, more seriously, `I'm trying to work out what really big target would clinch it for us.'
`Yeah, OK, whatever,' Electron replied, distancing himself again.
But Electron was thinking, Phoenix, you are a fool. Didn't he see the warning signs? Pad's warning, all the busts in the US, reports that the Americans were hunting down the Brits. As a result of these news reports of which Phoenix was so proud, bosses across the world would be calling their computer managers into their offices and breathing down their necks about their own computer security.
The brazen hackers had deeply offended the computer security industry, spurring it into action. In the process, some in the industry had also seen an opportunity to raise its own public profile. The security experts had talked to the law enforcement agencies, who were now clearly sharing information across national borders and closing in fast. The conspirators in the global electronic village were at the point of maximum overreach.
`We could hack Spaf again,' Phoenix volunteered.
`The general public couldn't give a fuck about Eugene Spafford,' Electron said, trying to dampen Phoenix's bizarre enthusiasm. He was all for thumbing one's nose at authority, but this was not the way to do it.
`It'd be so funny in court, though. The lawyer would call Spaf and say, "So, Mr Spafford, is it true that you are a world-renowned computer security expert?" When he said, "Yes" I'd jump up and go, "I object, your honour, this guy doesn't know jackshit, 'cause I hacked his machine and it was a breeze!"'
`Mmm.'
`Hey, if we don't get busted in the next two weeks, it will be a miracle,' Phoenix continued happily.
`I hope not.'
`This is a lot of fun!' Phoenix shouted sarcastically. `We're gonna get busted! We're gonna get busted!'
Electron's jaw fell to the ground. Phoenix was mad. Only a lunatic would behave this way. Mumbling something about how tired he was, Electron said goodbye and hung up.
At 5.50 a.m. on 2 April 1990, Electron dragged himself out of bed and made his way to the bathroom. Part way through his visit, the light suddenly went out.
How strange. Electron opened his eyes wide in the early morning dimness. He returned to his bedroom and began putting on some jeans before going to investigate the problem.
Suddenly, two men in street clothes yanked his window open and jumped through into the room shouting, `GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR!'
Who were these people? Half-naked, Electron stood in the middle of his room, stunned and immobile. He had suspected the police might pay him a visit, but didn't they normally wear uniforms? Didn't they announce themselves?
The two men grabbed Electron, threw him face down onto the floor and pulled his arms behind his back. They jammed handcuffs on his wrists—hard—cutting his skin. Then someone kicked him in the stomach.
`Are there any firearms in the house?' one of the men asked.
Electron couldn't answer because he couldn't breathe. The kick had winded him. He felt someone pull him up from the floor and prop him in a chair. Lights went on everywhere and he could see six or seven people moving around in the hallway. They must have come into the house another way. The ones in the hallway were all wearing bibs with three large letters emblazoned across the front: AFP.
As Electron slowly gathered his wits, he realised why the cops had asked about firearms. He had once joked to Phoenix on the phone about how he was practising with his dad's .22 for when the feds came around. Obviously the feds had been tapping his phone.
While his father talked with one of the officers in the other room and read the warrant, Electron saw the police pack up his computer gear—worth some $3000—and carry it out of the house. The only thing they didn't discover was the modem. His father had become so expert at hiding it that not even the Australian Federal Police could find it.
Several other officers began searching Electron's bedroom, which was no small feat, given the state it was in. The floor was covered in a thick layer of junk. Half crumpled music band posters, lots of scribbled notes with passwords and NUAs, pens, T-shirts both clean and dirty, jeans, sneakers, accounting books, cassettes, magazines, the occasional dirty cup. By the time the police had sifted through it all the room was tidier than when they started.
As they moved into another room at the end of the raid, Electron bent down to pick up one of his posters which had fallen onto the floor. It was a Police Drug Identification Chart—a gift from a friend's father—and there, smack dab in the middle, was a genuine AFP footprint. Now it was a collector's item. Electron smiled to himself and carefully tucked the poster away.
When he went out to the living room, he saw a policemen holding a couple of shovels and he wanted to laugh again. Electron had also once told Phoenix that all his sensitive hacking disks were buried in the backyard. Now the police were going to dig it up in search of something which had been destroyed a few days before. It was too funny.
The police found little evidence of Electron's hacking at his house, but that didn't really matter. They already had almost everything they needed.
Later that morning, the police put the 20-year-old Electron into an unmarked car and drove him to the AFP's imposing-looking headquarters at 383 Latrobe Street for questioning.
In the afternoon, when Electron had a break from the endless questions, he walked out to the hallway. The boyish-faced Phoenix, aged eighteen, and fellow Realm member Nom, 21, were walking with police at the other end of the hall. They were too far apart to talk, but Electron smiled. Nom looked worried. Phoenix looked annoyed.
Electron was too intimidated to insist on having a lawyer. What was the point in asking for one anyway? It was clear the police had information they could only have obtained from tapping his phone. They also showed him logs taken from Melbourne University, which had been traced back to his phone. Electron figured the game was up, so he might as well tell them the whole story—or at least as much of it as he had told Phoenix on the phone.
Two officers conducted the interview. The lead interviewer was Detective Constable Glenn Proebstl, which seemed to be pronounced `probe stool'—an unfortunate name, Electron thought. Proebstl was accompanied by Constable Natasha Elliott, who occasionally added a few questions at the end of various interview topics but otherwise kept to herself. Although he had decided to answer their questions truthfully, Electron thought that neither of them knew much about computers and found himself struggling to understand what they were trying to ask.
Electron had to begin with the basics. He explained what the FINGER command was—how you could type `finger' followed by a username, and then the computer would provide basic information about the user's name and other details.
`So, what is the methodology behind it … finger … then, it's normally … what is the normal command after that to try and get the password out?' Constable Elliott finally completed her convoluted attempt at a question.
The only problem was that Electron had no idea what she was talking about.
`Well, um, I mean there is none. I mean you don't use finger like that …'
`Right. OK,' Constable Elliott got down to business. `Well, have you ever used that system before?'
`Uhm, which system?' Electron had been explaining commands for so long he had forgotten if they were still talking about how he hacked the Lawrence Livermore computer or some other site.
`The finger … The finger system?'
Huh? Electron wasn't quite sure how to answer that question. There was no such thing. Finger was a command, not a computer.
`Uh, yes,' he said.
The interview went the same way, jolting awkwardly through computertechnology which he understood far better than either officer.Finally, at the end of a long day, Detective Constable Proebstl askedElectron:
`In your own words, tell me what fascination you find with accessing computers overseas?'
`Well, basically, it's not for any kind of personal gain or anything,' Electron said slowly. It was a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Not because he didn't know the answer, but because it was a difficult answer to describe to someone who had never hacked a computer. `It's just the kick of getting in to a system. I mean, once you are in, you very often get bored and even though you can still access the system, you may never call back.
`Because once you've gotten in, it's a challenge over and you don't really care much about it,' Electron continued, struggling. `It's a hot challenge thing, trying to do things that other people are also trying to do but can't.
`So, I mean, I guess it is a sort of ego thing. It's knowing that you can do stuff that other people cannot, and well, it is the challenge and the ego boost you get from doing something well … where other people try and fail.'
A few more questions and the day-long interview finally finished. The police then took Electron to the Fitzroy police station. He guessed it was the nearest location with a JP they could find willing to process a bail application at that hour.
In front of the ugly brick building, Electron noticed a small group of people gathered on the footpath in the dusky light. As the police car pulled up, the group swung into a frenzy of activity, fidgeting in over-the-shoulder briefcases, pulling out notebooks and pens, scooping up big microphones with fuzzy shag covers, turning on TV camera lights.
Oh NO! Electron wasn't prepared for this at all.
Flanked by police, Electron stepped out of the police car and blinked in the glare of photographers' camera flashes and TV camera searchlights. The hacker tried to ignore them, walking as briskly as his captors would allow. Sound recordists and reporters tagged beside him, keeping pace, while the TV cameramen and photographers weaved in front of him. Finally he escaped into the safety of the watchhouse.
First there was paperwork, followed by the visit to the JP. While shuffling through his papers, the JP gave Electron a big speech about how defendants often claimed to have been beaten by the police. Sitting in the dingy meeting room, Electron felt somewhat confused by the purpose of this tangential commentary. However, the JP's next question cleared things up: `Have you had any problems with your treatment by the police which you would like to record at this time?'
Electron thought about the brutal kick he had suffered while lying on his bedroom floor, then he looked up and found Detective Constable Proebstl staring him in the eye. A slight smile passed across the detective's face.
`No,' Electron answered.
The JP proceeded to launch into another speech which Electron found even stranger. There was another defendant in the lock-up at the moment, a dangerous criminal who had a disease the JP knew about, and the JP could decide to lock Electron up with that criminal instead of granting him bail.
Was this meant to be helpful warning, or just the gratification of some kind of sadistic tendency? Electron was baffled but he didn't have to consider the situation for long. The JP granted bail. Electron's father came to the watchhouse, collected his son and signed the papers for a $1000 surety—to be paid if Electron skipped town. That night Electron watched as his name appeared on the late night news.
At home over the next few weeks, Electron struggled to come to terms with the fact that he would have to give up hacking forever. He still had his modem, but no computer. Even if he had a machine, he realised it was far too dangerous to even contemplate hacking again.
So he took up drugs instead.
Electron's father waited until the very last days of his illness, in March 1991, before he went into hospital. He knew that once he went in, he would not be coming out again.
There was so much to do before that trip, so many things to organise. The house, the life insurance paperwork, the will, the funeral, the instructions for the family friend who promised to watch over both children when he was gone. And, of course, the children themselves.
He looked at his two children and worried. Despite their ages of 21 and 19, they were in many ways still very sheltered. He realised that Electron's anti-establishment attitude and his sister's emotional remoteness would remain unresolved difficulties at the time of his death. As the cancer progressed, Electron's father tried to tell both children how much he cared for them. He might have been somewhat emotionally remote himself in the past, but with so little time left, he wanted to set the record straight.
On the issue of Electron's problems with the police, however, Electron's father maintained a hands-off approach. Electron had only talked to his father about his hacking exploits occasionally, usually when he had achieved what he considered to be a very noteworthy hack. His father's view was always the same. Hacking is illegal, he told his son, and the police will probably eventually catch you. Then you will have to deal with the problem yourself. He didn't lecture his son, or forbid Electron from hacking. On this issue he considered his son old enough to make his own choices and live with the consequences.
True to his word, Electron's father had shown little sympathy for his son's legal predicament after the police raid. He remained neutral on the subject, saying only, `I told you something like this would happen and now it is your responsibility'.