This hacker takes pride in popping in and out of systems the way a surfer raves about ducking the whitewater and gliding through the tube. But, just as a surfer might compete for cash, prizes, or beer endorsements, many young hackers who begin with Cyberia in their hearts are quickly tempted by employers who can profit from their skill. The most dangerous authoritarian response to young cyberian hackers may not be from the law but from those hoping to exploit their talents.
With a hacker I'll call Pete, a seventeen-year-old engineering student at Columbia University, I set up a real-time computer conference call in which several other hackers from around the country could share some of their stories about a field called ''industrial hacking.'' Because most of the participants believe they have several taps on their telephone lines, they send their first responses through as a series of strange glyphs on the screen. After Pete establishes the cryptography protocol and deciphers the incoming messages, they look like this (the names are mine):
#1: The Purist
Industrial hacking is darkside hacking. Company A hires you to slow down, destroy, screw up, or steal from company B's R&D division [research and development]. For example, we could set up all their math wrong on their cadcams [computer aided design programs] so that when they look at it on the computer it seems fine, but when they try to put the thing together, it comes out all wrong. If all the parts of an airplane engine are machined 1mm off, it's just not going to work.
#2: The Prankster
There was a guy in Florida who worked on a cadcam system which used pirated software. He was smart, so he figured out how to use it without any manuals. He worked there for about a year and a half but was fired unfairly. He came to us get them shut down. We said ''Sure, no problem.'' Cadcam software companies send out lots of demos. We got ahold of some cadcam demos, and wrote a simple assembly program so that when the person puts the disk in and types the "install'' or ''demo'' command, it wipes out the whole hard disk. So we wrapped it up in its package, sent it out to a friend in Texas or wherever the software company was really from, and had him send it to the targeted company with a legit postmark and everything. Sure enough, someone put the demo in, and the company had to end up buying over $20,000 worth of software. They couldn't say anything because the software we wiped out was illegal anyway.
The Purist
That's nothing. That's a personal vendetta. Industrial hacking is big business. Most corporations have in-house computer consultants who do this sort of thing. But as a freelancer you can get hired as a regular consultant by one of these firms – say McDonnell Douglas – get into a vice president's office, and show them the specs of some Lockheed project, like a new advanced tactical fighter which he has not seen, and say, ''There's more where this came from.'' You can get thousands, even millions of dollars for this kind of thing.
#3: The Theorist
During the big corporate takeover craze, companies that were about to be taken over began to notice more and more things begin to go wrong. Then payroll would get screwed up, their electronic mail messages aren't going through, their phone system keeps dying every now and then in the middle of the day. This is part of the takeover effort.
Someone on the board of directors may have some buddy from college who works in the computer industry who he might hire to do an odd job now and again.
The Purist
I like industrial hacking for the idea of doing it. I started about a year or so ago. And William Gibson brought romance into it with Neuromancer. It's so doable.
#4: The Pro
We get hired by people moving up in the political systems, drug cartels, and of course corporations. We even work for foreign companies. If Toyota hired us to hit Ford, we'd hit Ford a little bit, but then turn around and knock the hell out of Toyota. We'd rather pick on them than us.
Most industrial hackers do two hacks at once. They get information on the company they're getting paid to hit, but they're also hacking into the company that's paying them, so that if they get betrayed or stabbed in the back they've got their butts covered. So it's a lot of work. The payoffs are substantial, but it's a ton of work.
In a real takeover, 50% of the hacking is physical. A bunch of you have to go and get jobs at the company. You need to get the information but you don't want to let them on to what you're doing. The wargames-style automatic dialer will get discovered scanning. They know what that is; they've had that happen to them many times before.
I remember a job that I did on a local TV station. I went in posing as a student working on a project for a communications class. I got a tour with an engineer, and I had a notebook and busily wrote down everything he said. The guy took me back where the computers were. Now in almost every computer department in the United States, written on a piece of masking tape on the phone jack or the modem itself is the phone number of that modem. It saves me the time and trouble of scanning 10,000 numbers. I'm already writing notes, so I just write in the number, go home, wait a week or so, and then call them up (you don't call them right away, stupid). Your local telephone company won't notice you and the company you're attacking won't notice you. You try to be like a stealth bomber. You sneak up on them slowly, then you knock the hell out of them. You take the military approach. You do signals intelligence, human intelligence; you've got your special ops soldier who takes a tour or gets a job there. Then he can even take a tour as an employee – then he's trusted for some reason – just because he works there, which is the biggest crock of shit.
DISCONNECT
Someone got paranoid then, or someone's line voltage changed enough to suggest a tap, and our conversation had been automatically terminated.
Pete stores the exchange on disk, then escorts me out onto the fire escape of his apartment for a toke and a talk. He can see I'm a little shaken up.
''That's not really hacking,'' he says, handing me the joint. I thank him with a nod but opt for a Camel Light. "That's cracking. Hacking is surfing. You don't do it for a reason. You just do it.'' We watch a bum below us on the street rip a piece of cardboard off an empty refrigerator box and drag it away – presumably it will be his home for tonight.
''That guy is hacking in a way,'' I offer. "Social hacking.''
''That's bullshit. He's doing it for a reason. He stole that cardboard because he needs shelter. There's nothing wrong with that, but he's not having such a good time, either.''
''So what's real hacking? What's it about?''
Pete takes a deep toke off his joint and smiles. ''It's tapping in to the global brain. Information becomes a texture ... almost an experience. You don't do it to get knowledge. You just ride the data. It's surfing, and they're all trying to get you out of the water. But it's like being a environmental camper at the same time: You leave everything just like you found it. Not a trace of your presence. It's like you were never there.''