A handle with high-tech allusions (Fiber Cables, Apple Maniac, Byte Ripper) or suggesting personal instability (Perfect Asshole, the Prisoner, Right Wing Fool) is considered perfectly acceptable. Some hackers opt for fiercer handles (Knight Stalker, Scorpion) or just co-opt the names of celebrities (there are hackers called Pink Floyd and Robin Williams). Behind these sometimes demonic handles often lurks a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy who is hooked on technology and spends hours alone in his bedroom, hacking into remote computers. Armchair psychology suggests that the fiercer the handle, the meeker the kid behind it. There is a huge element of role-playing in hacking, a need to be accepted among the community, not as the person one really is but as the person suggested by the handle. Hacking brings out the Mr. Hyde in all the little technological Dr. Jekylls.
Adopting a handle is essential for a novice to be accepted on pirate hacker boards, where he can access information about his hobby and pass on messages to other hackers. The computer underground is amorphous; any structure it does have is provided through communication within the community via the boards and a variety of other technical modes electronic and voice mailboxes, conference bridges, and even loop-around-pairs, the old phreaker technology. A handle is a hacker's badge of belonging, his calling card; the pirate boards serve as electronic meeting places, the high-tech equivalent of hanging out at the mall.
Boards are simply computers loaded with some specialist software and linked to a modem. They are generally owned and operated by a single person, who becomes the system operator and controls access. There may be hundreds in existence-- the majority are in North America--and they come and go, as does their status within the hacker community. At any given time there may be only two or three "hot boards" that attract the top hackers. Getting access to one of these boards is a sign of having arrived in the computer underground, a mark of respect. Belonging to a particular board means belonging to the group that uses the board: it means becoming part of what one U.S. attorney called a high-tech street gang.
Hacker boards are never publicized. Obtaining the dial-up number is itself a sign that a potential member has some credibility within the community, but that alone is not enough; no selfrespecting pirate systems operator wants his board cluttered up with "lamers," kids who pretend to be hackers but don't really have what it takes.
The registration procedure on pirate boards is a careful process. First-time callers are met with a request for their user-name and their phone number. Lamers who enter their real name and real phone number have already blown it. The correct procedure is to enter a handle and a fake phone number--a healthy dose of paranoia is a good sign that a caller is a real hacker. The next step is to provide personal references, which will determine the level of access to the pirate board. Hacker boards often have several grades of users, and only the most trusted callers are able to access the "good stuff." The reference query is designed to elicit the names of other pirate boards the caller has access to, his level of access on those boards, and the handles of any other trusted hackers he may know. If the references prove satisfactory, the caller will be granted leave to use the board.
Some boards go a step farther: they ask the caller to write a short statement explaining his reasons for wanting access, or to complete a questionnaire, to test his technical expertise. Some operators, particularly on "cracker" boards (those used by software pirates to swap "cracked"--illegally copied--programs) demand that a caller prove himself by supplying what is called warez--for wares, or pirated software.
Complementing the boards is a sporadically functioning electronic underground press--newsletters, most distributed electronically, that contain articles about busts, tips on hacking and phreaking, and technical descriptions of computer operating systems. The oldest is PHRACK Inc. (the name is an amalgamation of phreak and hack), which was available off and on from 1985 until 1990. Others that have appeared from time to time include the Legion of Doom: Hackers Technical Journal, Phreakers/ Hackers Underground Network, and the Activist Times. A traditional, printed, publication, 2600 The Hacker Quarterly, has been published since 1987, and is available on some news stands.
The 2600 in its title is a bow to the infamous frequency tone used by phreakers to make toll-free long-distance calls.
