Pad had rarely met such a fellow traveller in the real world,
let alone on-line. What others--particularly some American
hackers--viewed as prickliness, Pad saw as the perfect sense of
humour. To Pad, Gandalf was the best m8 a fellow could ever have.
During the time Pad avoided hacking, Gandalf had befriended another,
younger hacker named Wandii, also from the north of England. Wandii
never played much of a part in the international computer underground,
but he did spend a lot of time hacking European computers. Wandii and
Pad got along pleasantly but they were never close. They were
acquaintances, bound by ties to Gandalf in the underground.
By the middle of June 1991, Pad, Gandalf and Wandii were peaking. At
least one of them--and often more--had already broken into systems
belonging to the European Community in Luxembourg, The Financial Times
(owners of the FTSE 100 share index), the British Ministry of Defence,
the Foreign Office, NASA, the investment bank SG Warburg in London,
the American computer database software manufacturer Oracle, and more
machines on the JANET network than they could remember. Pad had also
penetrated a classified military network containing a NATO system.
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