The Holy Grail

of hacking activity, Force and Phoenix spoke on the phone almost every day.

Phoenix’s new-found acceptance contrasted with the position of Electron, who visited The Realm regularly for a few months in 1988. As Phoenix basked in the warmth of Force’s approval, the eighteen-year-old Electron felt the chill of his increasing scorn.

Force eventually turfed Electron and his friend, Powerspike, out of his exclusive Melbourne club of hackers. Well, that was how Force told it. He told the other members of The Realm that Electron had committed two major sins. The first was that he had been wasting resources by using accounts on OTC’s Minerva system to connect to Altos, which meant the accounts would be immediately tracked and killed.

Minerva admins such as Michael Rosenberg – sworn enemy of The Realm – recognised the Altos NUA. Rosenberg was OTC’s best defence against hackers. He had spent so much time trying to weed them out of Minerva that he knew their habits by heart: hack, then zoom over to Altos for a chat with fellow hackers, then hack some more.

Most accounts on Minerva were held by corporations. How many legitimate users from ANZ Bank would visit Altos? None. So when Rosenberg saw an account connecting to Altos, he silently observed what the hacker was doing – in case he bragged on the German chat board – then changed the password and notified the client, in an effort to lock the hacker out for good.

Electron’s second sin, according to Force, was that he had been withholding hacking information from the rest of the group. Force’s stated view – though it didn’t seem to apply to him personally – was one in, all in.

It was a very public expulsion. Powerspike and Electron told each other they didn’t really care. As they saw it, they might have visited The Realm BBS now and then but they certainly weren’t members of The Realm. Electron joked with Powerspike, ‘Who would want to be a member of a no-talent