The Corner Pub

operating system used on Prime computers. He wrote his own programs - potent hacking tools which provided current user- names and passwords - and made the systems fashionable in the computer underground.

Prime computers were big and expensive and no hacker could afford one, so being able to access the speed and compu- tational grunt of a system like Minerva was valuable for running a hacker’s own programs. For example, a network scanner, a program which gathered the addresses of computers on the X.25 network which would be targets for future hacking adven- tures, ate up computing resources. But a huge machine like Minerva could handle that sort of program with ease. Minerva also allowed users to connect to other computer systems on the X.25 network around the world. Better still, Minerva had a BASIC interpreter on it. This allowed people to write programs in the BASIC programming language - by far the most popular language at the time - and make them run on Minerva. You didn’t have to be a Primos fanatic, like Force, to write and execute a program on the OTC computer. Minerva suited Mendax very well.

The OTC system had other benefits. Most major Australian corporations had accounts on the system. Breaking into an account requires a username and password; find the username and you have solved half the equation. Minerva account names were easy picking. Each one was composed of three letters followed by three numbers, a system which could have been difficult to crack except for the choice of those letters and numbers. The first three letters were almost always obvious acronyms for the company. For example, the ANZ Bank had accounts named ANZ001, ANZ002 and ANZ003. The numbers followed the same pattern for most companies. BHP001. CRA001. NAB001. Even OTC007. Anyone with the IQ of a desk lamp could guess at least a few account names on Minerva. Passwords were a bit tougher to come by, but Mendax had some ideas for that. He was going to have a crack at social engineering. Social engineering means smooth-talking