Word: hackers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...forces of law and order have already made a powerful point. Time was when virus writers were able to act with impunity and bask in the glow of hacker fame. Now the same technology that allowed their work to spread so freely is being used to catch them. The irony was not lost on Spanska, creator of the Happy99 virus. "The perfect virus writer should not communicate with nobody," he wrote last week. He plans to disconnect his e-mail for a while and "think a little." The Melissa case should give him and his pals plenty of food...
Clever lads that they are, they offer us a world in which most of the population consists of dronelike clones created and managed, without their knowing it, by superintelligent humanoid machines (men in black, of course). Even more cleverly, they posit, in Reeves' character, a modern Everyman--a computer hacker, naturally--who may be the Messiah whom the remnants of authentic humanity have long awaited. These resisters, called Zionists, live near the earth's core and are represented up top by the very brainy Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and a small band of rebel fighters, living by their wits and their...
...such as, "5 a.m.: I've been at this all night, and I still can't find the problem. I'm disgusted and I'm going to bed!"--a sentiment any computer programmer will recognize. Von Neumann didn't just design the stored-program computer; he was the first hacker...
...problem is this in the real world? "Rarely is there a moment when a hacker isn't trying to get into our networks," says a senior Microsoft executive. "People go looking for that weak link." Recently hackers found a backdoor through a user in Europe--an administrator, no less--with a blank password. This allowed the hacker root access--the ability to change everyone else's password, jump onto other systems and mess up the payroll file...
...school hackers scoff at the notion that businesses can stop them. "Corporations can't teach hacking," says Emmanuel Goldstein, editor of the hacker quarterly 2600. "It has to be in you." Perhaps. But if a few more firms learn to avoid becoming toast, that's no bad thing...