CONTENTS

About this project
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Postscript, March 1997
Postscript, January 2000

I cringe a bit when I read some of the things I wrote for this story. There were concepts that didn't yet make sense, and questions now obvious I failed to ask. But that is the nature with hindsight with a story like this one.

But one thing this story did do was get me on the road to learning about the hacker subculture, which no reporter can expect to do in the course of only one reporting assignment.

Far too often, I run across stories about hackers and their craft that are so full of simple inaccuracies, confusion and hysterical drum-beating that I really feel emabarrassed for my profession. It takes a reporter willing to specialize in information technology to follow the goings on within the culture with any degree of understanding. And just when it starts to make a little sense, something big will happen to turn the world upside down. Someone will suddenly drop off the face of the Earth. A trusted source will suddenly turn out to be neither trustworthy, nor truly knowledgeable.

All too often I see the word hacker used as a synonym for criminal, and as anyone who has followed the hacker scene will tell you, that is the exception to the rule. True, some people who call themselves hackers have committed crimes, and true many people have served jail time for crimes committed via the computer or telephone.

But it's also true that many hackers walk a fine line both legally and ethically. If I know exactly how to break into a the safe at my local bank because someone carelessly left a blueprint and the combination on a park bench, does that make me a criminal?

For many skilled hackers, the knowledge and ability to deface a Web site is as common knowledge as a recipe for chocolate chip cookies. So-called "script kiddies" regularly trade ready-made programs that exploit security holes in the software used to operate these Web sites. These holes, or "exploits" are usually well-documented as they are discovered, yet as countless sites continue to fall prey to these weaknesses, site administrators are usually taken off-guard, and subjected to the taunts of the hacker who did the deed.

It's been more than three years since I first met the group of hackers I used as sources for this story. Here's what's new about them since: