At another uni, the
admins made a different guess at the meaning. In the morning, when
they came into work and saw that the hackers had been playing in their
system all night, they would sigh to each other, `Our eight little
green men are at it again'.
At the University of Lancaster, the hackers wrote a message to the
admins which said: `Don't do anything naughty. We have a good image
around the world, so please don't tarnish it or start making up
stories about us messing up systems. Don't hold your breath for us to
hack you, but keep us in mind.' Wherever they went, their message was
the same.
Nonetheless Pad visualised a scenario where Spaf whipped up the
computer security and law enforcement people into a frenzied panic and
tried to pin all sorts of things on the British hackers, none of which
they had done. The underground saw Spaf as being rabid in his attack
on hackers, based largely on his response to the RTM worm. And Gandalf
had hacked Spaf's machine.
The crackdown on the Australians, combined with the discovery of the
Spaf file, had a profound effect on Pad. Always cautious anyway, he
decided to give up hacking. It was a difficult decision, and weaning
himself from exploring systems night after night was no easy task.
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