A blast from the past… I was cleaning up my computer room and I ran across my “stash” from when I was a teenage hacker kid. Which consisteded of 10 floppy disks, containing things like, The Nowhere Utilities, CyberPhreak, VCL, a bunch of old outdated warez serials, and a ton of text files! I never did anything other than tinker with CyberPhreak, the Nowhere utilities were just a cool pack of utilities, VCL.. hell, i dont have it in me to create a virus, and actually distribute it to anyone other than the kid down the street that cheated me in Doom, but the texts…. man, i used to spend hours reading all the text info I could find. Thats probably why I am who I am today, and probably why I chose the IT field as my profession. One of the most profound things I can recall reading back in those days was “The Mentor’s Last Words”, by, of course, The Mentor. It was (somewhat) featured in the movie “Hackers” though it was chopped up a bit. I’d read it long before Hollywood stumbled across it and put it in their movie.
When I was in Business School, for PC Networking, I had a public speaking class, and I used this piece as the subject of one of my speaches. I’d like to think that the class took something away from the whole presentation. Anyway, because things like this seem to be fading to the background in todays age of script kiddies, botnets, bullshit malicious viruses, and people who care more about the allmighty dollar than even a shred of knowledge… (ranting.. i know), I’ve decided to post this bit of computer history here, for everyone to (re)read…
Enjoy!
Mentor’s Last Words
“Mentor’s Last Words”
Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers. “Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank
Tampering”… Damn kids. They’re all alike. But did you, in your three-
piece psychology and 1950’s technobrain, ever take a look behind the
eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces
shaped him, what may have molded him? I am a hacker, enter my world…
Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most of the
other kids, this crap they teach us bores me… Damn underachiever.
They’re all alike. I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to
teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction.
I understand it. “No, Ms. Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in
my head…” Damn kid. Probably copied it. They’re all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I
screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me… Or feels threatened by
me.. Or thinks I’m a smart ass.. Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be
here… Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike. And then
it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through the phone line
like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is sent out,
a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is found.
“This is it… this is where I belong…” I know everyone here… even
if I’ve never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them
again… I know you all… Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again.
They’re all alike… You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been
spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak… the bits of
meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless.
We’ve been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few
that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are
like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without
paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering
gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us
criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We
exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias…
and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you
murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our
own good, yet we’re the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never
forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop
this individual,but you can’t stop us all… after all, we’re all alike.
+++The Mentor+++
Hope you’ve enjoyed the read…
-War