"Hugo Cornwall "The Hacker's handbook"" - читать интересную книгу автора

called Control Risks, which reputedly has strong link to the Special
Air Service. As so often happens when hacker think they are about to
uncover secret knowledge, the actual data files seemed relatively
trivial, the sort of judgements that could be made by a bright sixth
former who read posh newspapers and thoughtful weekly magazines.

University facilities

In complete contrast to computers that are used to store and
present data are those where the value is to deliver processing power
to the outside world. Paramount among these are those installed in
universities and research institutes.
Although hackers frequently acquire phone numbers to enter such
machines, what you can do once you are there varies enormously. There
are usually tiers and banks of passwords, each allowing only limited
access to the range of services. It takes considerable knowledge of
the machine's operating system to break through from one to another
and indeed, in some cases, the operating system is so thoroughly
embedded in the mainframe's hardware architecture that the
substantial modifications necessary to permit a hacker to roam free
can only be done from a few designated terminals, or by having
physical access to the machine. However, the hobbyist bulletin board
system quite often provides passwords giving access to games and the
ability to write and run programs in exotic languages--my own first
hands--on experience of Unix came in exactly this way. There are
bulletin boards on mainframes and even, in some cases, boards for
hackers!
Given the nature of hacking, it is not surprising that some of the
earliest japes occurred on computers owned by universities. Way back
in the 1970s, MIT was the location of the famous 'Cookie Monster',
inspired by a character in the then-popular Rowan & Martin Laugh-in
television show. As someone worked away at their terminal, the word
'cookie' would appear across their screen, at first slowly wiping out
the user's work. Unless the user moved quickly, things started to
speed up and the machine would flash urgently: "Cookie, cookie, give
me a cookie". The whole screen would pulse with this message until,
after a while, the hacking program relented and the 'Monster' would
clear the screen, leaving the message: "I didn't want a cookie
anyway." It would then disappear into the computer until it snared
another unsuspecting user. You could save yourself from the Monster
by typing the word "Cookie", to which it replied "Thank you" and then
vanished.
In another US case, this time in 1980, two kids in Chicago,
calling themselves System Cruncher and Vladimir, entered the computer
at DePaul University and caused a system crash which cost $22,000 to
fix. They were prosecuted, given probation and were then made a movie
offer.
In the UK, many important university and research institution
computers have been linked together on a special data network called
SERCNET. SERC is the Science and Engineering Research Council.