UNDERGROUND

It turned out to be a hollow victory. That copy of Deszip had been encrypted with Crypt, a program based on the German Enigma machine used in World War II. Without the passphrase – the key to unlock the encryption – it was impos- sible to read Deszip. All they could do was stare, frustrated, at the file name Deszip labelling a treasure just out of reach.

Undaunted, the hackers decided to keep the encrypted file just in case they ever came across the passphrase some- where – in an email letter, for example – in one of the dozens of new computers they now hacked regularly. Relabelling the encrypted Deszip file with a more innocuous name, they stored the copy in a dark corner of another machine. Thinking it wise to buy a little insurance as well, they gave a second copy of the encrypted Deszip to Gandalf, who stored it on a machine in the UK in case the Australians' copy disappeared unexpectedly.

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In January 1990, Electron turned his attention to getting Zardoz. After carefully reviewing an old copy of Zardoz, he had discov- ered a system admin in Melbourne on the list. The subscriber could well have the entire Zardoz archive on his machine, and that machine was so close – less than half an hour's drive from Electron's home. All Electron had to do was to break into the CSIRO.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, or CSIRO, is a government owned and operated research body with many offices around Australia. Electron only wanted to get into one: the Division of Information Tech- nology at 55 Barry Street, Carlton, just around the corner from the University of Melbourne.

Rummaging through a Melbourne University computer, Electron had already found one copy of the Zardoz archive, belonging to a system admin. He gathered it up and quietly began downloading it to his computer, but as his machine