UNDERGROUND
Still, Erik thought he was probably being watched. The last thing he wanted was for Phoenix’s number to appear on his home phone bill. So he let Phoenix call him, which the Austra- lian did all the time. They often talked for hours when Erik was working nights. It was a slack job, just changing the back-up tapes on various computers and making sure they didn’t jam. Perfect for a student. It left Erik hours of free time.
Erik frequently reminded Phoenix that his phone was probably tapped, but Phoenix just laughed. ‘Yeah, well don’t worry about it, mate. What are they going to do? Come and get me?’
After Erik put a hold on his own hacking activities, he lived vicariously, listening to Phoenix’s exploits. The Australian called him with a technical problem or an interesting system, and then they discussed various strategies for getting into the machine. However, unlike Electron’s talks with Phoenix, con- versations with Erik weren’t only about hacking. They chatted about life, about what Australia was like, about girls, about what was in the newspaper that day. It was easy to talk to Erik. He had a big ego, like most hackers, but it was inoffensive, largely couched in his self-effacing humour.
Phoenix often made Erik laugh. Like the time he got Clifford Stoll, an astronomer, who wrote *The Cuckoo’s Egg*. The book described his pursuit of a German hacker who had broken into the computer system Stoll managed at Lawrence Berkeley Labs near San Francisco. The hacker had been part of the same hacking ring as Pengo. Stoll took a hard line on hacking, a position which did not win him popularity in the underground. Both Phoenix and Erik had read Stoll’s book, and one day they were sitting around chatting about it.
‘You know, it’s really stupid that Cliffy put his email address in his book,’ Phoenix said. ‘Hmm, why don’t I go check?’
Sure enough, Phoenix called Erik back about a day later. ‘Well, I got root on Cliffy’s machine,’ he began slowly, then he burst out laughing. ‘And I changed the message of the day. Now it reads, “It looks like the Cuckoo’s got egg on his face”!’