Bruce Sterling

CyberView 1991

They called it "CyberView '91." Actually, it was another "SummerCon" -- the traditional summer gathering of the American hacker underground. The organizer, 21 year old "Knight Lightning," had recently beaten a Computer Fraud and Abuse rap that might have put him in jail for thirty years. A little discretion seemed in order.

The convention hotel, a seedy but accommodating motor-inn outside the airport in St Louis, had hosted SummerCons before. Changing the name had been a good idea. If the staff were alert, and actually recognized that these were the same kids back again, things might get hairy.

The SummerCon '88 hotel was definitely out of bounds. The US Secret Service had set up shop in an informant's room that year, and videotaped the drunken antics of the now globally notorious "Legion of Doom" through a one-way mirror. The running of SummerCon '88 had constituted a major count of criminal conspiracy against young Knight Lightning, during his 1990 federal trial.

That hotel inspired sour memories. Besides, people already got plenty nervous playing "hunt the fed" at SummerCon gigs. SummerCons generally featured at least one active federal informant. Hackers and phone phreaks like to talk a lot. They talk about phones and computers -- and about each other.

For insiders, the world of computer hacking is a lot like Mexico. There's no middle class. There's a million little kids screwing around with their modems, trying to snitch long-distance phone-codes, trying to swipe pirated software -- the "kodez kidz" and "warez doodz." They're peons, "rodents." Then there's a few earnest wannabes, up-and-comers, pupils. Not many. Less of 'em every year, lately.

And then there's the heavy dudes. The players. The Legion of Doom are definitely heavy. Germany's Chaos Computer Club are very heavy, and already back out on parole after their dire flirtation with the KGB. The Masters of Destruction in New York are a pain in the ass to their rivals in the underground, but ya gotta admit they are heavy. MoD's "Phiber Optik" has almost completed his public-service sentence, too... "Phoenix" and his crowd down in Australia used to be heavy, but nobody's heard much out of "Nom" and "Electron" since the Australian heat came down on them.

The people in Holland are very active, but somehow the Dutch hackers don't quite qualify as "heavy." Probably because computer-hacking is legal in Holland, and therefore nobody ever gets busted for it. The Dutch lack the proper bad attitude, somehow.

America 's answer to the Dutch menace began arriving in a steady confusion of airport shuttle buses and college-kid decaying junkers. A software pirate, one of the more prosperous attendees, flaunted a radar-detecting black muscle-car. In some dim era before the jet age, this section of St Louis had been a mellow, fertile Samuel Clemens landscape. Waist-high summer weeds still flourished beside the four-lane highway and the airport feeder roads.

The graceless CyberView hotel had been slammed down onto this landscape as if dropped from a B-52. A small office-tower loomed in one corner beside a large parking garage. The rest was a rambling mess of long, narrow, dimly lit corridors, with a small swimming pool, a glass-fronted souvenir shop and a cheerless dining room. The hotel was clean enough, and the staff, despite provocation, proved adept at minding their own business. For their part, the hackers seemed quite fond of the place.

The term "hacker" has had a spotted history. Real "hackers," traditional "hackers," like to write software programs. They like to "grind code," plunging into its densest abstractions until the world outside the computer terminal bleaches away. Hackers tend to be portly white techies with thick fuzzy beards who talk entirely in jargon, stare into space a lot, and laugh briefly for no apparent reason. The CyberView crowd, though they call themselves "hackers," are better identified as computer intruders. They don't look, talk or act like 60s M.I.T.-style hackers.

Computer intruders of the 90s aren't stone pocket-protector techies. They're young white suburban males, and look harmless enough, but sneaky. They're much the kind of kid you might find skinny-dipping at 2AM in a backyard suburban swimming pool. The kind of kid who would freeze in the glare of the homeowner's flashlight, then frantically grab his pants and leap over the fence, leaving behind a half-empty bottle of tequila, a Metallica T-shirt, and, probably, his wallet.

One might wonder why, in the second decade of the personal-computer revolution, most computer intruders are still suburban teenage white whiz-kids. Hacking-as-computer-intrusion has been around long enough to have bred an entire generation of serious, heavy-duty adult computer-criminals. Basically, this simply hasn't occurred. Almost all computer intruders simply quit after age 22. They get bored with it, frankly. Sneaking around in other people's swimming pools simply loses its appeal. They get out of school. They get married. They buy their own swimming pools. They have to find some replica of a real life.

The Legion of Doom -- or rather, the Texas wing of LoD -- had hit Saint Louis in high style, this weekend of June 22. The Legion of Doom has been characterized as "a high-tech street gang" by the Secret Service, but this is surely one of the leakiest, goofiest and best-publicized criminal conspiracies in American history.

Not much has been heard from Legion founder "Lex Luthor" in recent years. The Legion's Atlanta wing, "Prophet," "Leftist," and "Urvile," are just now getting out of various prisons and into Georgia halfway-houses. "Mentor" got married and writes science fiction games for a living.

But "Erik Bloodaxe," "Doc Holiday," and "Malefactor" were here -- in person, and in the current issues of TIME and NEWSWEEK. CyberView offered a swell opportunity for the Texan Doomsters to announce the formation of their latest high-tech, uhm, organization, "Comsec Data Security Corporation."

Comsec boasts a corporate office in Houston, and a marketing analyst, and a full-scale corporate computer-auditing program. The Legion boys are now digital guns for hire. If you're a well-heeled company, and you can cough up per diem and air-fare, the most notorious computer-hackers in America will show right up on your doorstep and put your digital house in order -- guaranteed.

Bloodaxe, a limber, strikingly handsome young Texan with shoulder-length blond hair, mirrored sunglasses, a tie, and a formidable gift of gab, did the talking. Before some thirty of his former peers, gathered upstairs over styrofoam coffee and canned Coke in the hotel's Mark Twain Suite, Bloodaxe sternly announced some home truths of modern computer security.

Most so-called "computer security experts" -- (Comsec's competitors) -- are overpriced con artists! They charge gullible corporations thousands of dollars a day, just to advise that management lock its doors at night and use paper shredders. Comsec Corp, on the other hand (with occasional consultant work from Messrs. "Pain Hertz" and "Prime Suspect") boasts America's most formidable pool of genuine expertise at actually breaking into computers.

Comsec, Bloodaxe continued smoothly, was not in the business of turning-in any former hacking compatriots. Just in case anybody here was, you know, worrying... On the other hand, any fool rash enough to challenge a Comsec-secured system had better be prepared for a serious hacker-to-hacker dust-up.

"Why would any company trust *you*?" someone asked languidly.

Malefactor, a muscular young Texan with close-cropped hair and the build of a linebacker, pointed out that, once hired, Comsec would be allowed inside the employer's computer system, and would have no reason at all to "break in." Besides, Comsec agents were to be licensed and bonded.