UNDERGROUND
In late 1989, Detective Superintendent Ken Hunt of the AFP headed an investigation into the Melbourne hackers. It was believed to be the first major investigation of computer crime since the introduction of Australia's first federal anti-hacking laws. Like most law enforcement agencies around the world, the AFP were new players in the field of computer crime. Few officers had expertise in computers, let alone computer crime, so this case would prove to be an important proving ground.5
When Gavin broke the news, Force acted immediately. He called Phoenix on the phone, insisting on meeting him in person as soon as possible. As their friendship had progressed, they had moved from talking on-line to telephone conversa- tions and finally to spending time together in person. Force sat Phoenix down alone and gave him a stern warning. He didn't tell him how he got his information, but he made it clear the source was reliable.
The word was that the police felt they had to bust someone. It had come to the point where an American law enforcement officer had reportedly told his Australian counterpart, ‘If you don't do something about it soon, we'll do something about it ourselves'. The American hadn't bothered to elaborate on just how they might do something about it, but it didn't matter.
Phoenix looked suddenly pale. He had certainly been very noisy, and was breaking into systems virtually all the time now. Many of those systems were in the US.
He certainly didn't want to end up like the West German hacker Hagbard, whose petrol-doused, charred remains had been discovered in a German forest in June 1989.
An associate of Pengo's, Hagbard had been involved in a ring of German hackers who sold the information they found in American computers to a KGB agent in East Germany from 1986 to 1988.
In March 1989, German police raided the homes and offices of the German hacking group and began arresting people. Like Pengo, Hagbard had secretly turned himself into the German authorities months before and given full details of