Four years previously Karl Koch had been the first hacker in Germany recruited by agents working for the KGB. At the time he was living in Hannover, a dropout from society and school who had recently squandered the small inheritance he had received following the death of his parents. A small-time drug habit helped him through his bereavement, and beyond, but his life was going nowhere.
Apart from drugs, Koch's only interest was hacking. His handle was Hagbard, an alias taken from the Illuminati trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.
According to the books, the Illuminati is a secret cult that has been in existence since the beginning of time and has orchestrated every major crime, misfortune and calamity. Only one man had ever emerged who could fight the cult: the hero, Hagbard Celine. Koch was drawn by the conspiracy theories nurtured in the books; he believed there were parallels in real life.
That year Koch met an older man named Peter Kahl. Kahl was then in his mid-thirties, a small-time fixer who was looking for a big break. He worked nights as a croupier in a Hannover casino and during the day was occupied with putting together his latest scheme.
Kahl's idea was simple: he planned to recruit a gang of hackers who could break into West European and American computer systems, particularly those on military or defense-industry sites. Then he would sell the data and information they had gathered to the KGB.
Kahl first encountered Koch at a hacker's meeting in Hannover. The young man seemed an ideal recruit: malleable, drifting, amoral. Later, when Kahl explained his scheme to Koch, the hacker appeared receptive. Two weeks later Koch agreed to become a member of the Soviet hacker gang.
In 1985 the computer underworld was a growing force in Germany. Hacking had become prevalent at the beginning of the decade, as low-cost personal computers became increasingly available. It had grown in popularity with the release of War Games--the 1983 film in which Matthew Broderick nearly unleashes the next world war by hacking into NORAD which proved peculiarly influential in Germany.
By the mid-1980s the Germans were second only to the Americans in the number of hackers and their audacity. The national computer networks had all been compromised; German hackers would later turn up on systems all over the world.
The growth of the computer underworld was nurtured by sustained media coverage and the quasi-institutionalization of hacking. Nearly everything in Germany is organized, even anarchy. So, in a parody of Teutonic orderliness, hackers assembled into clubs: there was the BHP (the Bayrische Hackerpost) in Munich, Foebud-Bi in Bielefeld, Suecrates-S in Stuttgart, and HICop-CE (the Headquarters of the Independent Computer-Freaks) in Celle. Of course the most famous and best-organized of all was the Chaos Computer Club in Hamburg. Since its inception in 1981, it had spawned affiliates in other towns and cities, even a branch in France, and in 1984 hosted the first of its annual confer- ences, an event that served to keep the Chaos name in the press. In between the annual congresses, Chaos also held smaller hacker meets at the various computer conventions held around Germany. Whatever the event, the venue for the hacker meet was always next to the stand occupied by the Bundespost, the German Post Office, and the time was always four P.M. on the first Tuesday of the exhibition.
Chaos was never a huge organization--even now it only has about 150 registered members--but it is very accomplished at self-promotion and zealous in disseminating information on hacking. It publishes a bimonthly magazine, Die Datenschleuder (literally, "the Distribution of Data by Centrifuge") with sixteen to twenty pages an issue. It also promotes Die Hackerbibel ("The Hacker Bible"), a two-part set of reference books detailing hacker techniques.
Chaos first came to the notice of the general public in 1984, Then it hacked into the German computer information system, ,tx (Bildschirmtext).' Like all telephone and data services in Jermany, the system is run by the Bundespost, an unloved, lureaucratic institution that is obsessive in its attempts to control all national telecommunications links. The company added to its popularity with hackers when it began licensing telephone anwering machines and regulating the use of modems.
