There were other active hacking communities outside Australia--in the
north of England, in Texas, in New York. But the Melbourne hackers
weren't just noisy--they were noisy inside American computers. It
wasn't just a case of American hackers breaking into American systems.
This was about foreign nationals penetrating American computers. And
there was something else which made the Australian hackers a target.
The US Secret Service knew an Australian named Phoenix had been inside
Citibank, one of the biggest financial institutions in the US.
Gavin didn't have many details to give Force. All he knew was that an
American law enforcement agency--probably the Secret Service--had been
putting enormous pressure on the Australian government to bust these
people.
What Gavin didn't know was that the Secret Service wasn't the only
source of pressure coming from the other side of the Pacific. The FBI
had also approached the Australian Federal Police about the mysterious
but noisy Australian hackers who kept breaking into American systems,5
and the AFP had acted on the information.
In late 1989, Detective Superintendent Ken Hunt of the AFP headed an
investigation into the Melbourne hackers.
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