When Freddy was twelve, his mother enrolled him in a summer computer course at the local post-secondary. He had excelled in mathematics + his teacher suggested that he explore the wonderful world of computer programming ÷ Freddy’s parents were in the midst of separating and did not want him clouding the discussions × Freddy didn’t much mind because, to him, a computer translated to computer games = Freddy was twelve and liked games.
The course began in late June, two hours per day, three days a week. It was called, “Introduction to Basic”. A redundant title, Freddy thought.
Though Freddy regarded the computer as a novelty, there had at that time been recent developments in the American Northwest of a personal computer operating system called DOS. It had been bought, repackaged and resold by a young bull named Bill Gates, who would eventually become the richest man in the Western hemisphere, despite (or perhaps because of) his SNAFU mentality.
The campus computer was a Cyber supercomputer; at the time, the third largest in the world (this was back when bigger, not smaller, meant better). The mainframe was contained in three large rooms in the center of the main campus building. Cables ran along corridor ceilings connecting terminals all over the campus to the mainframe. A floppy disk was 5″ square and actually was floppy. There were even card-punching terminals, as if anyone should be required to communicate via holes in a piece of cardstock. Could you imagine what that would do to the science of electioneering?
It was ancient to today’s technology; but in 1982, it was top of the line. Or so they were told.
Freddy’s class only lasted one month but, in that time, Freddy made the acquaintance of a computer hacker named Ogilvie. Ogilvie was maybe nineteen, but his unshaven face, messy hair, unstylish clothes and inferiority complex made him seem twenty-five. He never revealed his real age.
About a week before Freddy’s course was to end, he was at a vending machine in a low-traffic hallway, trying to buy a pastry that had been waiting to be bought for almost two weeks. He inserted two quarters, made his selection, nothing happened. Another two quarters, another selection, more nothing.
Ogilvie happened to be passing by and noticed the kid’s dilemma – hunger v. poverty.
“Why do you even bother?” he asked Freddy.
“Cause I’m hungry,” Freddy snapped back in frustration. Ogilvie stopped and approached.
“Listen, kid, you don’t need to put any money in it. Lemme see your arm.”
“What?”
“Lemme see your arm,” the hacker repeated, grabbing Freddy’s wrist and pulling at it to view his forearm. “Yeah, see,” he explained, “your arm is thin enough to reach up the slot and pull out whatever you want.”
Ogilvie glanced around to see no one else glancing around. “Try it.”
Freddy shrugged, “Okay.”
Freddy knelt down in front of the machine, slid his forearm into the slot where his two pastries should have been. “Now reach up,” Ogilvie instructed him. Freddy guided his hand up into the vending womb. “Can you feel the packaging?”
“Yeah.”
“Grab it and pull it down.”
Freddy followed the instructions and a Ho-Ho treat slid down into the slot at the bottom. Free. Newborn.
“It worked, it worked,” Freddy exclaimed.
“Shhh, keep it down,” Ogilvie told him, looking around suspiciously.
“I’m gonna get another one.” And he did. Two Ho-Ho’s, twins, sitting in the receptacle. “Do you want anything?” Freddy asked his new best friend.
“Yeah sure, grab me a Snickers.” And there it was… Snickers, à la carte.
This was only the beginning.
Mentor that he was, Ogilvie taught Freddy how to break into other students’ user accounts within the college computer system.
“Y’see, every student has an account on the mainframe where they store all their files. You can’t access the mainframe with an account and you can’t have an account without being enrolled as a student. Now, to access an account, you need the student’s user name and password.”
“Yeah, I know, so how do we get someone’s user name and password?”
“Easy, kid, totally easy. You go to the main terminal room, y’know the one by the atrium?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“You dig through the garbage for hardcopies of a student’s terminal session. There’re ten terminals there that don’t have monitor screens; they can only display sessions in hardcopy, like typewriters. And some students are stupid. They enter their user name and password and it gets printed right on the paper and, when they’re done, they throw the paper they don’t need in the garbage, with their user name and password still printed on it for all the janitors to see. My dad was a janitor.”
Ogilvie took him to the main terminal room, dug through a large waste paper basket teeming with computer output and managed to find three such examples of user names and their corresponding passwords.
“See, I told ya.”
“What if someone finds out?”
“You don’t get found out if you know what you’re doing. The best place to hide is in Room L238 in the North Wing; there’re only eight terminals in that room and there’s hardly ever anyone in there… Trust me, kid, I haven’t been a student here for a year-and-a-half.”
And that’s how Freddy managed to continue using the computer after his summer student account had been deleted (purged was the word they used back then). July came and went, Freddy played computer games and ate free pastries while his parents worked out their separate ways, August, September. Then came October.
Freddy was on his fourth stolen student account; user name: Philip66. Philip66 had detected the presence of a hacker in his account and had notified the system administrator. His account was promptly shut down (purged) and he was given a new one. Freddy was locked out.
So he paid another visit to Ogilvie’s prized trash can. He hadn’t seen his hacking mentor in a few weeks but there he was, digging for more passwords. Freddy explained how he’d been shut down again by yet another purged account.
Ogilvie handed him a new user name and password from the bin and gave him some advice – inform the student user of your presence with a threat.
Freddy took it to heart and created a file called “readme” in his fifth stolen account. The “readme” file outlined how the student now had a hacker using his account for “peaceful purposes” and if he reported it to anybody, the hacker would “wipe out any existence of you at this shit-ass college.” Terrorism, for lack of a better word.
A few days later, in Room L238 in the North Wing of the campus, Ogilvie showed Freddy something he’d recently discovered. “Look at this,” he said, typing rapidly at a terminal, “I figured out how to break into the mainframe’s access control protocol. See this list?”
A list of numbers appeared on the screen – 02, 03, 07, 12, 13, 21, 29, 50, 52. “These are the terminals that are currently in use all over the campus. See, I’m 52; you’re 50.”
Freddy didn’t really understand what Ogilvie was talking about but whatever, “Yeah sure, I see.”
“Now watch this.” Ogilvie typed in “ENDSESSION/50” and hit the return key.
Suddenly, Freddy’s terminal shut down. Off, dead, powerless.
“Cool, huh?”
“Yeah, cool,” Freddy responded, turning his terminal back on and restarting the computer game he’d been playing.
About two hours later, around 8:30PM, Freddy was alone in L238. And he was curious. He tried to recall how Ogilvie had broken into the access control protocol (whatever that meant!). After several botched attempts, he was successful.
A list of number appeared on the screen – 02, 03, 07, 09, 13, 24, 50.
“Now how did he do it again?” Freddy asked himself. The dark green cursor blinked at him, as if to say, “The coast is clear.” BLINK – GO! BLINK – GO! BLINK – GO!
He typed in “ENDSESSION/02,03,07,09,13,24”. And without giving it a second thought, he lightly tapped the return key. The only number that remained on the screen was “50”. Him. 50.
“Cool,” he thought, unaware that with great power comes great responsibility. He returned to playing some game, bored, alone, and stupid for remaining at the scene of the cyber-crime. He was twelve, his only excuse.
Ten minutes later, a security guard entered the room, said, “Excuse me,” and typed something on Freddy’s terminal. A list of activities appeared on the screen – everything Freddy had done since Ogilvie had shut him down earlier in the day.
Freddy sat blank-faced as it dawned on him that he’d been caught. The guard escorted him to the Administrator’s office.
“This is him?” the Administrator asked the guard. “Are you sure?” He wore round glasses and tweed.
Outside the office were four professors pacing in anguish, sweating in frustration, cursing to themselves. The Administrator informed Freddy, “These professors outside my office were working on very important reports and when you shut them down, they lost all their work.”
“Maybe they should have saved their work at regular intervals,” Freddy retorted, thereby beginning the word on the street that one must save one’s work at regular intervals.
The Administrator had Freddy banned from the campus. “If we ever see you here again, you’ll be charged with trespassing. Good night.” He was the most polite Administrator ever.
The guard escorted Freddy to the nearest exit, across a campus lawn and down the path to the bus stop.
He never saw Ogilvie again.