A Geek Tragedy

[Fishman Dan]

From the Sydney Morning Herald today (13/7).

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technolog...934245512.html

If you have any interest in hacker-type stories, this is a great article. It's fairly long, but it's a good read.

It reminds me of a book i read called The Cuckoo's Egg. A true story, in which a uni professor stumbles across an elaborate hacking network in the most bizarre fashion. Considering that the book was written in 1985 or something, it's amazing to think what is possible if you have the know-how. This has real similarities, except the hacker is nothing more than a bored adrenalin junkie geek.

If you don't want to register for SMH, let me know and i'll post it here. Either way, computer-buff's might want to look into The Cuckoo's Egg.

[Bruce]

It looks like just another hacker story until the space alien stuff starts up. We has apparently smoking a lot of weed at the time.

Cuckoo's Egg is OK but a little dated. Clifford Stohl lost the plot completely with his follow up Silicon Snake Oil. He complains that he doesn't like computers any more becasue he can't *hear* them when they break like he can with a car or a blender. WTF?

[Fishman Dan]

Bruce - never knew he tried a sequel of sorts. I can sort of understand the breakdown theory, they are so much more intricate than the Mac Plus he used in The Cuckoo's Egg

There's another hacker mystery book - Takedown by ... name eludes me right now. Didn't like it that much, seemed to be a lot about the 'hero' driving around in flashy cars, while his off-sider did much of his work.

[Bruce]

I hate that book so much I am prepared to donate it to you if you like.

I got it off a remainder table for $2 and felt ripped off in the end.
At the same time I got MicroSerfs by Douglas Copeland for $5 and got lots of value out of that one.

[Aussielongdriver]

The movie War Games he talkes about in the article is based on a true story about a guy who up until recently worked for Richard Pratt the owner of Visyboard.
My wife knows him personally and he is a little on the strange side, never had a girlfriend, 12 computters in his home and sits at them 20hours a day, a real geek but they say he is amazing at programming and can hack into anything.

[Fishman Dan]

The movie War Games he talkes about in the article is based on a true story about a guy who up until recently worked for Richard Pratt the owner of Visyboard.
My wife knows him personally and he is a little on the strange side, never had a girlfriend, 12 computters in his home and sits at them 20hours a day, a real geek but they say he is amazing at programming and can hack into anything.

The entire issue of "hacking" military sites and other installations running default setups of particular operating systems (Unix-based) is largely due to ownership. From the outset, the default password for the 'su' account - or SuperUser (a.k.a. God) account, was 'password', or left blank. The first hackers, and i think the bloke in this particular case, knew that, and by knocking on the door and trying these defaults, access was granted.

The Cuckoo's Egg was only slightly different, because the offender(s?) would use a particular security vulnerability to plant an 'egg' in the remote system, and when it 'hatched' it granted a particular account 'God' access. Hence the name - a cuckoo bird plants it's eggs in anothers nest, is first to hatch and boots out the rightful owners.

I used to work for a guy who was much the same. There wasn't a system on the internet that he couldn't gain access to. He brought himself undone once, and he received regular visits from neatly attired gentlement in the office. He started one of the first commercial ISP's in Australia, which is where i ended up working for him. The motivation of the first hackers were to highlight security loopholes in systems, moreso than to steal anything. Of course, no one should trust a Computer Nerd in a position of power...