Word: phiber
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Technology: Phiber Optik is out of the slammer...
...jinks: looking up the unlisted numbers of celebrities, pestering people they disliked (such as white supremacist Tom Metzgar and former Klansman David Duke) and calling the homes of people they admired (Richard Gere, Julia Roberts). But gradually, they began to trespass on more than just the telephone lines. With Phiber's help, the crew infiltrated the computer networks of TRW, Martin Marietta, the Bank of America, the National Security Agency and Chiquita Banana. At one point, two MOD members can be heard in a Secret Service wiretap hatching a scheme to create their own bogus credit bureau that would...
...Phiber says he had no interest in anything so venal. He adheres to a self- styled "hacker ethic," which justifies any computer intrusion as long as the motive is pure. In his mind, he was studying the phone system as an architecture student would the floor plan for a cathedral: as a thing of beauty. Still, when Secret Service agents began investigating telephone- company complaints, they found his digital footprints everywhere. During one six-month period, according to Secret Service logs, he broke into AT&T computers in Chicago and Portland, Maine, 69 times...
...summer of 1992 Phiber and four MOD members were indicted for their computer trespasses. Phiber was the last to plead guilty, insisting to the end that he had done nothing wrong. The judge gave Phiber the longest sentence of the bunch -- a year in federal prison -- to send a message to other hackers that computer crime doesn...
...does it? Phiber is now a bigger star than ever. Most of the major TV networks and national press turned up last week to witness his triumphant return. After 10 months in a minimum-security prison -- and away from his computers -- he looks relatively healthy and relaxed. He's now employed as a computer technician at ECHO, a New York-based online salon. It hardly ever crashes...