UNDERGROUND

US investigators had tracked the hacker’s connections, looping through site after site in a burrowing manner which they assumed belonged to a worm. The idea of penetrating so many sites all in such a short time clearly baffled the investiga- tors, who concluded it must be a program rather than human beings launching the attacks.

‘Yeah,’ Erik continued, ‘And then Markoff said, “Can you get me to talk to them?” And I said I’d see what I could do.’

‘Yeah,’ Phoenix said. ‘Go tell him, yes. Yeah, I gotta talk to this idiot. I’ll set him straight.’

Page one, the *New York Times*, 21 March 1990: ‘Caller Says he Broke Computers’ Barriers to Taunt the Experts’, by John Markoff.

True, the article was below the crease - on the bottom half of the page - but at least it was in column 1, the place a reader turns to first.

Phoenix was chuffed. He’d made the front page of the *New York Times*.

‘The man identified himself only as an Australian named Dave,’ the article said. Phoenix chuckled softly. Dave Lissek was the pseudonym he’d used. Of course, he wasn’t the only one using the name Dave. When Erik first met the Australians on Altos, he marvelled at how they all called themselves Dave. I’m Dave, he’s Dave, we’re all Dave, they told him. It was just easier that way, they said.

The article revealed that ‘Dave’ had attacked Spaf’s and Stoll’s machines, and that the Smithsonian Astronomical Obser- vatory at Harvard University - where Stoll now worked - had pulled its computers off the Internet as a result of the break-in. Markoff had even included the ‘egg on his face’ story Phoenix had described to him.

Phoenix laughed at how well he had thumbed his nose at Cliffy Stoll. This article would show him up all right. It felt so good, seeing himself in print that way. He did that. That was him there in black in white, for all the world to see. He had outsmarted the world’s best known hacker-catcher, and