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.** Page 35University facilitiesIn complete contrast to computers that are used to store andpresent data are those where the value is to deliver processing powerto the outside world.Paramount among these are those installed inuniversities and research institutes.Although hackers frequently acquire phone numbers to enter suchmachines, what you can do once you are there varies enormously.Thereare usually tiers and banks of passwords, each allowing only limitedaccess to the range of services.It takes considerable knowledge ofthe machine's operating system to break through from one to anotherand indeed, in some cases, the operating system is so thoroughlyembedded in the mainframe's hardware architecture that thesubstantial modifications necessary to permit a hacker to roam freecan only be done from a few designated terminals, or by havingphysical access to the machine.However, the hobbyist bulletin boardsystem quite often provides passwords giving access to games and theability to write and run programs in exotic languages--my own firsthands--on experience of Unix came in exactly this way.There arebulletin boards on mainframes and even, in some cases, boards forhackers!Given the nature of hacking, it is not surprising that some of theearliest japes occurred on computers owned by universities.Way backin the 1970s, MIT was the location of the famous 'Cookie Monster',inspired by a character in the then-popular Rowan & Martin Laugh-intelevision show.As someone worked away at their terminal, the word'cookie' would appear across their screen, at first slowly wiping outthe user's work.Unless the user moved quickly, things started tospeed up and the machine would flash urgently: "Cookie, cookie, givefile:///E|/Books/Hackers Handbook.htm (35 of 133) [11/28/2000 5:58:48 AM] Hacker's Handbookme a cookie".The whole screen would pulse with this message until,after a while, the hacking program relented and the 'Monster' wouldclear the screen, leaving the message: "I didn't want a cookieanyway." It would then disappear into the computer until it snaredanother unsuspecting user.You could save yourself from the Monsterby typing the word "Cookie", to which it replied "Thank you" and thenvanished.In another US case, this time in 1980, two kids in Chicago,calling themselves System Cruncher and Vladimir, entered the computerat DePaul University and caused a system crash which cost $22,000 tofix.They were prosecuted, given probation and were then made a movieoffer.** Page 36In the UK, many important university and research institutioncomputers have been linked together on a special data network calledSERCNET.SERC is the Science and Engineering Research Council.Although most of the computers are individually accessible via PSS,SERCNET makes it possible to enter one computer and pass through toothers.During early 1984, SERCNET was the target of much hackerattention; a fuller account appears in chapter 7, but to anticipate alittle, a local entry node was discovered via one of the LondonUniversity college computers with a demonstration facility which, ifasked nicely, disgorged an operating manual and list of 'addresses'.One of the minor joys of this list was an entry labelled "Gateway tothe Universe", pure Hitch-hiker material, concealing an extensivelong-term multi-function communications project.Eventually somehackers based at a home counties university managed to discover waysof roaming free around the network.BankingProminent among public fantasies about hackers is the one wherebanks are entered electronically, accounts examined and some moneymoved from one to another.The fantasies, bolstered byunder-researched low-budget movies and tv features, arise fromconfusing the details of several actual happenings.Most 'remote stealing' from banks or illicit obtaining of accountdetails touch computers only incidentally and involve straight-forward fraud, conning or bribery of bank employees
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