What Anthrax really wanted was
for the admins to know he controlled their system, but for them not to
be able to do anything about it. He wanted them to be helpless.
Anthrax decided to keep undercover. But he contemplated the power of
having System X's list of telephone exchange dial-ups and their
username-password combinations. Normally, it would take days for a
single hacker with his lone modem to have much impact on the US
military's communications network. Sure, he could take down a few
exchanges before the military wised up and started protecting
themselves. It was like hacking a military computer. You could take
out a machine here, a system there. But the essence of the power of
System X was being able to use its own resources to orchestrate
widespread pandemonium quickly and quietly.
Anthrax defines power as the potential for real world impact. At that
moment of discovery and realisation, the real world impact of hacking
System X looked good. The telecommunications company computer seemed
like a good place to hang up a sniffer, so he plugged one into the
machine and decided to return in a little while. Then he logged out
and went to bed.
Pages:
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660