Nick had originally wanted to be a computer programmer or to work in technical support. But without a university degree his chances of becoming a programmer were limited: he would need to go back to college to get the qualifications. So instead he became an operator, or "tape monkey," employed to ensure that there was enough computer tape in the drive and enough paper in the printer to keep the machinery running. Though he had been offered a promotion to senior operator, he had turned it down against a vague promise of a job in technical support sometime in the future.
Then nineteen years old, Nick lived with his parents in their home in Enfield in north London. He was affable, intelligent, and articulate, was generally casually dressed--sweatshirt, jeans, sneakers--and had nicotine-stained fingers.
Nick's life became consumed by his passion for the ICL. He was fascinated by its operating system and by the language--called SCL (System Control Language used to write its programs. Of course he had to admit that his ambition to buy an ICL 3980 was pretty unrealistic. Even if he had enough money to buy one, he would certainly have no use for a computer that was designed for large businesses. But then he would begin to worry about what would happen if he lost his job or had to leave the company. Where would he go to work on an ICL then? In his bedroom in his parents' house Nick had a personal computer, a Commodore Amiga 1000, equipped with a modem. He had intended to use the modem to dial in to electronic bulletin boards--specialist data and information services, like Prestel but generally run by private individuals. It was never his intention to start hacking, he says; he thought it would be boring. Nonetheless, he started reading a guide called The Hacker's Handbook. The Handbook had been written by a British hacker known as "Hugo Cornwall" and achieved instant notoriety when it was first published in March 1985. Guided by the Handbook, he began dialing into more bulletin boards. (He found that about 20 percent of them had hacker sections.) With the information he obtained from the Handbook and the bulletin boards he learned how to find the access phone numbers for other computers, and how to deal with IDs and passwords. The Handbook was especially useful: it contained a list of phone numbers that gave access to JANET.
JANET is the earnestly friendly acronym for the Joint Academic Network, a system that links computers in eighty to ninety universities, polytechnics, and research centers throughout the United Kingdom. Because it is designed to be used by students and researchers. the network needs to be relatively open, and tries to present a friendly face to users: hence the feminine acronym and the useful tutorial and guide provided by the system when a user types HELP- The network's various data banks also contain a wealth of inforrnation on subjects as dissimilar as military research and theoretical physics. For Nick, however, the chief appeal of JANET was that it linked a number of ICLs on different sites around the country. By accessing JANET he could play around on his favorite computers from his home, just by using his little Commodore.
Nick attempted his first hack in January 1988. He first dialed up a number for the computer center at Queen Mary College, where he knew there was an ICL 2988.
Because Queen Mary is not far from Nick's home, the telephone charges would be lower; also, most colleges are easy targets because they generally have weak security. He got the dial-up from The Hacker's Handbook--but that, as he knew, would only get him to the front door. Access to the QMC computer would be like gaining entry to the Prestel system. To get inside, Nick would need both a user-name--a log-in or ID--and a password. The user-name at QMC is an individual seven-character ID; the password is a one-way encrypted code. (One way means the code can only be encrypted once and is entirely random; if the user forgets the password, a new one needs to be created.) That was the theory, anyway. But Nick knew that some software supplied by ICL includes a standard, or default, "low-security" user-name, one that doesn't require a password. Nick had barned the default user-name from his job and his constant reading of ICL promotional material, manuals, and security informa- tion. And because Queen Mary College had never changed its default user-name, it had left its back door wide open, making it easy for Nick to walk right in to the college's mainframe ICL on his first try.
