"Bruce Sterling - Gurps' Labour Lost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

specialized security trade journals and private sector trade
groups, they all know one another.



PLAYER THREE: The Computer Hackers.



The American "hacker" elite consists of about a hundred people,
who all know one another. These are the people who know enough
about computer intrusion to baffle corporate security and alarm
police (and who, furthermore, are willing to put their intrusion
skills into actual practice). The somewhat older
subculture of "phone-phreaking," once native only to the phone
system, has blended into hackerdom as phones have become digital
and computers have been netted-together by telephones. "Phone
phreaks," always tarred with the stigma of rip-off artists, are
nowadays increasingly hacking PBX systems and cellular phones.
These practices, unlike computer-intrusion, offer direct and
easy profit to fraudsters.

There are legions of minor "hackers," such as the "kodez kidz,"
who purloin telephone access codes to make free (i.e., stolen)
phone calls. Code theft can be done with home computers, and
almost looks like real "hacking," though "kodez kidz" are
regarded with lordly contempt by the elite. "Warez d00dz," who
copy and pirate computer games and software, are a thriving
subspecies of "hacker," but they played no real role in the
crackdown of 1990 or the Jackson case. As for the dire minority
who create computer viruses, the less said the better.

The princes of hackerdom skate the phone-lines, and computer
networks, as a lifestyle. They hang out in loose,
modem-connected gangs like the "Legion of Doom" and the "Masters
of Destruction." The craft of hacking is taught through
"bulletin board systems," personal computers that carry
electronic mail and can be accessed by phone. Hacker bulletin
boards generally sport grim, scary, sci-fi heavy metal names
like BLACK ICE -- PRIVATE or SPEED DEMON ELITE. Hackers
themselves often adopt romantic and highly suspicious tough-guy
monickers like "Necron 99," "Prime Suspect," "Erik Bloodaxe,"
"Malefactor" and "Phase Jitter." This can be seen as a kind of
cyberpunk folk-poetry -- after all, baseball players also have
colorful nicknames. But so do the Mafia and the Medellin
Cartel.



PLAYER FOUR: The Simulation Gamers.