News from Nowhere: Reality Hackers

46 COLUMNS global detective story - which, in fact, at the Smithsonian Institute for it is. Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mas Tuesday, June 23,1988: West Ger sachusetts. His computer was under man police seize computer equip attack too! ment, discs and printouts from an Stoll represents another version of apartment and a company office in the hacker figure. The hacker as a Hanover. Shortly afterwards, legitimate user and manager of com Markus Hess is picked up by police puter systems who solves problems, for breaking into American military who keeps the system not only run computer networks to collect ning but innovating. Stoll had a passwords and other information, reputation for coming up with ways kaos was allegedly selling the infor to foil the other kinds of hacker, the mation to KGB agents in exchange Landreth and Hess-style crackers. So for large amounts of cash and he was a logical person for Gene cocaine. Hess was using an elaborate Miya to call. Stoll made some calls series of computer networks, exploit and discovered other networked NEWS ing a few simple bugs in system computers were being attacked by a programs. He was even able to con virus. He tried to log onto a computer FROM sume a large amount of free com at the Lawrence Berkeley puter and network time using the Laboratory, California, where he accounts of a large American defence used to work as a system manager contractor. Ironically, Hess was and where his anti-hacker hacking NOWHERE detected when Stoll found a 75c error career began. Stoll typed in a com in a billing system for computer time. mand he picked up from watching his Kaos hacker foes at Berkeley, and Reality Hackers Bill Landreth is also a hacker, but found that the Berkeley computer of a slightly different kind. In his was infected. This gave him his first book Tne Cracker he presents an clue to the nature of the virus: the Last month a West German by the image of the cracker-style hacker as computer was interfacing wildly in name of Markus Hess was given the loner, the outsider, prowling the all directions, trying to talk to every an 18-month suspended sentence frontiers of the computer networks. other computer it could reach. With Like a figure from a Hollywood after being found guilty of a the computer trying to connect to western, the hacker knows a tech bizarre series of international every other computer, the flow of nologically dynamic landscape with computer hacking offences. Ironi information was becoming a cally, he and his associates in the few laws or customs. A new world cacophony of noise, making the flow without a history, where everything Kaos Komputer Klub had been of information impossible, slowing has to be invented on the moment, if selling information on American the computer's processing down to a not exactly on the spot. (There is no crawl. military-base computers to mem spot exactly. The hacker moves in a bers of Eastern European security logical space which is only inciden Every time Stoll tried to shut down organisations who have, by now, tally a movement in geographical the connections, new ones would radically altered their strategic space. They move in an information spring up. Like a biological virus, outlook, been thrown in jail, or landscape, sometimes called this one entered a system, replicated been elected to parliament • take cyberspace.) The hacker is a tester of itself, and sent off copies to other your pick. limits, an uninvited guest in the sys computers. Many computers are tem . The system is a host to be linked together through networks While the Cold War which pushed to the limit but not such as Arpanet, which connects generated this particular incidence of destroyed. Landreth is very clear on eighty thousand computers. hacking might have changed, the the ethics of this kind of hacking: Computers have security systems issue of who gets access to the vast never destroy other people's data. to prevent noise of this sort getting in and powerful computer networks The hacker appears within the sys and ruining the system, but this virus which non around the globe is here to tem to look and learn, and to prompt infected some six thousand before stay. Perhaps a new geography of the host organism, the computer sys being brought under control. The information politics might take the tem and its system managers to react. virus had been designed to exploit a place in part, at least, of the old Cold Not all hackers are qui te so ethical, security loophole in the electronic War territories. however. Some leave behind logic mailing system. Over the next couple Clifford Stoll, the man who track bombs'. Clifford Stoll recounts an in of days, 'white hat* hackers battled ed down Markus Hess, has structive story in this regard in his this lone-gun 'black hat' across the Eioneered experimental study of book The Cuckoo's Nest. It starts United States. Some began unwind acking as a phenomenon and is one with a phone call at 2.25 am from ing the machine code discovering of the first to attempt to articulate Gene Miya at NASA Ames how it worked and what exactly it these issues for a wider audience in Laboratory: "Help! Our computers did. Others wrote 'patches' to cover his book The Cuckoo's Egg. (A are under attack". Stoll put the phone up the loopholes in the operating sys potted version also appeared on the down and it rang again. This time, tems the virus exploited. All this in popular ABC science snow Quantum when he picked it up, it just beeped. formation was exchanged across the in July.) It reads like a high power Morse code from his own computer country on electronic bulletin ALR: AUGUST 1W0 COLUMNS 47 boards. In the space of a couple of America, but also base computers in old boundaries and territories that days, all that was left to be dis Japan and Alaska - meant that used to characterise social life. These covered was who wrote it. It turned security would subsequently be logic bombs are programmed into out to be a student at Cornell Univer tightened on scientific computer net the information networks as an ac sity, Robert Morris jr, the son of the works and information would flow cidental byproduct. They are a Chief Scientist at the National Com more slowly. Hence, one can say that byproduct of the complexities of puter Security Centre, the only there is a broader, more abstract kind power in an information intensive public part of the shadowy National of logic bomb at work here: no matter world. They are an unconscious form Security Agency. The mob who are how open a network is, no matter of negation. They are the unintended supposed to set the standards of how democratic, somebody is being effects of planned rationality and the computer security. What a Freudian excluded. inevitable byproducts of conflict nightmare! As philosopher Michel Serres in within the institutions which govern Scientific computer systems tend sists, one only produces the passage cyberspace. In a world where the net to be very open networks, without of information between two people works are run by bureaucracies, and elaborate security precautions. This by excluding a third: by excluding worse, where information about our allowed Hess and Landreth and the the noise of other parties who want credit ratings, sexual preferences, virus to slip through a loophole in the to be heard. Noise will stmggle to political affiliations, work absentee net and get into scientific, medical enter the system, and for any number records and health are not even and even military computers, al of motives. The Russians want infor handled by bureaucrats but though not highly classified ones. mation. The hackers might want processed by machine, hacking be Networks rely on trust, or mutual money or glory or a good supply of comes both a threat to individual , consensus between users about the coke, or some kind of oedipal rup privacy and a tactic for breaking correct use of the system. While they ture, who knows? In any event tne through the secrecy of government are relatively democratic systems for ever-present threat of noise is the data and the patent and copyright those with access to them, many logic bomb within the system. The restrictions of the big corporations. people are excluded. Hence hacking etnical question is whether noise is A little disorder in the networks raises complex ethical and political always necessarily a bad thing, or might be essential to preserving problems, many of whicn were whether it has creative uses. liberty, and also for advancing the recently discussed on an electronic The idea of a logic bomb is useful tools and technologies of informa bulletin board for Harper's as a suggestive metaphor for how tion systems. As St Just put it: the , Magazine (March). complex information networks func disorder of today is the order of The fact that Hess had been tion -and dysfunction. There appear tomorrow. Or as one of the hackers through literally hundreds of com to be logic bombs in all kinds of in in Harper's said: 'There's a hacker puters on the extensive American formation networks that were not bom every minute". scientific and military networks-and consciously programmed. They are not just American computers in activated when noise traverses the McKenzie Wark. JUDY HORACEK TAe i<Jt(| of evolution as progress towards increasing perfection A as lony been discounted by enlightened thinkers. Now read on..

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