NOW MARLYN IS PROBABLY THINKING, !~£?$ (SH*T) HOW THE HELL DID HE GET IN THIS TIME? . . . I BETTER HAVE A LOOK AT WHERE I KEEP HIS JOURNALS. OH SHIT, SHE SAYS, THEY ARE NOT THERE ANYMORE. !~£?$ NOW, MARLYN, IT'S GETTING PRETTY BORING HAVING TO KEEP ON TEACHING YOU MANNERS.
I'D RATHER BE AT MY
OTHER SYSMAN HACK SITES. SO I HOPE YOU HAVE LEARNED (EXCEPT HOW I DID IT) FROM THIS, MARLYN, AND REPLY TO MY MESSAGES; OTHERWISE YOU WILL MAKE ME VERY VERY ANGRY, AND ROGER WILL TELL YOU ONE THING, YOU WON'T LIKE IT WHEN l'M ANGRY.
The reference was to the Mad Hacker's successful lockout of Roger MacKenzie from his own system. The message continued:
STILL, DON T GET TOO DESPONDENT MARLYN, I MEAN WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? IF I CAN HACK ROGER S PLACE TWICE, THEN ANYTHING ELSE IS JUST A PIECE OF CAKE, AND I MEAN YOU'RE NO GURU, MARLYN. ROGER IS THE GURU, HE WRITES PROGRAMS, HE DOESN T PHONE UP SAYING, OH, ROGER, HELP ME, ROGER.
HAVE I WOUND YOU UP ENOUGH, MARLYN? YOU WON'T BELIEVE HOW I GOT IN, MARLYN HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAA YOURS HACKINGLY, ALAN DOLBY . . . THE MAD HACKER!!! THE MAD HACKER THE MAD HACKER ALAN DOLBY ALAN DOLBY . . .
Though the Mad Hacker had destroyed the journal when he hacked in to QMC that night, he didn't destroy the evidence. Like most computer users, QMC keeps backup copies of files, so the record of the Mad Hacker's intrusions still existed. But it was becoming evident that eventually real damage to the system could be caused if the hacking continued. It had already become very frustrating to Jones, who was spending more and more time cleaning up after the Mad Hacker and less time doing his real work. But even worse, Scotland Yard had become concerned about hints that were contained in some of his computer messages, that Alan Dolby was hacking into the Ministry of Defense computer, also an ICL. The break-ins might still be a game to the Mad Hacker, but it was becoming deadly serious to everyone else.
They decided to go for a bust that very evening.
An arrest for computer hacking is not a straightforward affair. To make the charge stick, the police would have to arrest the Mad Hacker while he was actually in the middle of a hack, with the unauthorized dial-up on his computer screen and his fingers on the keyboard. Evidence that the hacking had been committed from his phone number was not sufficient: it could, after all, have been done by his mother.
The team assembled for the bust was enormous. There were four policemen from the Computer Crime Unit, two technical support specialists, two experts from ICL, a police photographer, two British Telecom engineers, and a phalanx of uniformed policemen. In addition Jones had to monitor the QMC computer to alert the team when the Mad Hacker broke in. He was joined in his vigil by the managers at other ICL sites on the JANET network, as well as by internal British Telecom staff to monitor the phone lines. In total the team numbered forty people.
As luck would have it, however, on that evening nothing happened; the Mad Hacker simply went to bed early. But the next night, he decided to dial in to QMC once more to see if anyone had replied to his message. According to the computer record, he logged on at 7:48 P.M.
Just a few minutes before 8:00 P.M. the Whiteley family heard a knock on the door. The police later described it as a gentle tap; to Nick, upstairs in his bedroom, it sounded like loud banging. He thought it odd: why didn't they use the doorbell? Then he walked to his window and saw four men approaching the door. He said later that he could tell from their appearance that they weren't Jehovah's Witnesses, and for one awful second he thought they might be Mafia.
Downstairs Nick's father was at the door bewilderedly reading a warrant presented to him by the policemen. Nick sat down on his bed. He thought that perhaps they were after a spy or a murderer. They couldn't be after him: he was nineteen years old and liked to play games with computers, that was all.
The police moved upstairs to arrest Nick. By this time, there were twelve members of the team in the tiny house, communicating by portable phone to their colleagues outside. John Austen from the CCU told Nick he was being arrested for "criminal damage." Nick looked at him incredulously, then burst out laughing. He thought it must be a mistake.
Though hacking wasn't illegal at that time, the case against Whiteley had been put together around the concept of criminal damage, which boiled down to loss of data and denial of computer service as a result of his hacks. QMC alone had valued the downtime to fix its computers at $48,000.
