Underground, Suelette Dreyfus [ebook reader online .txt] 📗

of the way. Legal Aid was footing the bill for their lawyers, because the hackers were either not working or were working in such lowly paid, short-term jobs they qualified for free legal support.

Wandii’s lawyers told the media that this showcase was tantamount to a state trial. It was the first major hacking case under the new legislation which didn’t involve disgruntled employees. While having no different legal status from a normal trial, the term state trial suggested a greater degree of official wrath—the kind usually reserved for cases of treason.

On 22 February 1993, within two months of Electron’s decision to turn Crown witness against Phoenix and Nom, the three 8lgm hackers stood in the dock at Southwark Crown Court in South London to enter pleas in their own case.

In the dim winter light, Southwark couldn’t look less appealing, but that didn’t deter the crowds. The courtroom was going to be packed, just as Bow Street had been. Scotland Yard detectives were turning out in force. The crowd shuffled toward Room 12.

The prosecution told the media they had about 800 computer disks full of evidence and court materials. If all the data had been printed out on A4 paper, the stack would tower more than 40 metres in the air, they said. Considering the massive amount of evidence being heaved, rolled and tugged through the building by teams of legal eagles, the choice of location—on the fifth floor—proved to be a challenge.

Standing in the dock next to Wandii, Pad and Gandalf pleaded guilty to two computer conspiracy charges: conspiring to dishonestly obtain telecommunications services, and conspiring to cause unauthorised modification to computer material. Pad also pleaded guilty to a third charge: causing damage to a computer. This last charge related to the almost a quarter of a million pounds worth of `damage’ to the Central London Polytechnic. Unlike the Australians’ case, none of the British hackers faced charges about specific sites such as NASA.

Pad and Gandalf pleaded guilty because they didn’t think they had much choice. Their lawyers told them that, in light of the evidence, denying their guilt was simply not a realistic option. Better to throw yourself on the mercy of the court, they advised. As if to underline the point, Gandalf’s lawyer had told him after a meeting at the end of 1992, `I’d like to wish you a happy Christmas, but I don’t think it’s going to be one’.

Wandii’s lawyers disagreed. Standing beside his fellow hackers, Wandii pleaded not guilty to three conspiracy charges: plotting to gain unauthorised access to computers, conspiring to make unauthorised modifications to computer material, and conspiring to obtain telecommunications services dishonestly. His defence team was going to argue that he was addicted to computer hacking and that, as a result of this addiction, he was not able to form the criminal intent necessary to be convicted.

Pad thought Wandii’s case was on shaky ground. Addiction didn’t seem a plausible defence to him, and he noticed Wandii looked very nervous in court just after his plea.

Pad and Gandalf left London after their court appearance, returning to the north to prepare for their sentencing hearings, and to watch the progress of Wandii’s case through the eyes of the media.

They weren’t disappointed. It was a star-studded show. The media revved itself up for a feeding frenzy and the prosecution team, headed by James Richardson, knew how to feed the pack. He zeroed in on Wandii, telling the court how the schoolboy `was tapping into offices at the EC in Luxembourg and even the experts were worried. He caused havoc at universities all around the world’.4 To do this, Wandii had used a simple BBC Micro computer, a Christmas present costing [sterling]200.

The hacking didn’t stop at European Community’s computer, Richardson told the eager crowd of journalists. Wandii had hacked Lloyd’s, The Financial Times and Leeds University. At The Financial Times machine, Wandii’s adventures had upset the smooth operations of the FTSE 100 share index, known in the City as `footsie’. The hacker installed a scanning program in the FT’s network, resulting in one outgoing call made every second. The upshot of Wandii’s intrusion: a [sterling]704 bill, the deletion of an important file and a management decision to shut down a key system. With the precision of a banker, FT computer boss Tony Johnson told the court that the whole incident had cost his organisation [sterling]24871.

But the FT hack paled next to the prosecution’s real trump card: The European Organisation for the Research and Treatment of Cancer in Brussels. They had been left with a [sterling]10000 phone bill as a result of a scanner Wandii left on its machine,5 the court was told. The scanner had left a trail of 50000 calls, all documented on a 980-page phone bill.

The scanner resulted in the system going down for a day, EORTC information systems project manager Vincent Piedboeuf, told the jury. He went on to explain that the centre needed its system to run 24 hours a day, so surgeons could register patients. The centre’s database was the focal point for pharmaceutical companies, doctors and research centres—all coordinating their efforts in fighting the disease.

For the media, the case was headline heaven. `Teenage computer hacker “caused worldwide chaos”’ the Daily Telegraph screamed across page one. On page three, the Daily Mail jumped in with `Teenage hacker “caused chaos for kicks”’. Even The Times waded into the fray. Smaller, regional newspapers pulled the story across the countryside to the far reaches of the British Isles. The Herald in Glasgow told its readers `Teenage hacker “ran up [sterling]10000 telephone bill”’. Across the Irish Sea, the Irish Times caused a splash with its headline, `Teenage hacker broke EC computer security’.

Also in the first week of the case, The Guardian announced Wandii had taken down the cancer centre database. By the time The Independent got hold of the story, Wandii hadn’t just shut down the database, he had been reading the patients’ most intimate medical details: `Teenager “hacked into cancer patient files”’. Not to be outdone, on day four of the trial, the Daily Mail had christened Wandii as a `computer genius’. By day five it labelled him as a `computer invader’ who `cost FT [sterling]25000’.

The list went on. Wandii, the press announced, had hacked the Tokyo Zoo and the White House. It was difficult to tell which was the more serious offence.

Wandii’s defence team had a few tricks of its own. Ian MacDonald, QC, junior counsel Alistair Kelman and solicitor Deborah Tripley put London University Professor James Griffith-Edwards, an authoritative spokesman on addictive and compulsive behaviours, on the stand as an expert witness. The chairman of the National Addiction Centre, the professor had been part of a team which wrote the World Health Organisation’s definition of addiction. No-one was going to question his qualifications.

The professor had examined Wandii and he announced his conclusion to the court: Wandii was obsessed by computers, he was unable to stop using them, and his infatuation made it impossible for him to choose freely. `He repeated 12 times in police interviews, “I’m just addicted. I wish I wasn’t”,’ Griffith-Edwards told the court. Wandii was highly intelligent, but was unable to escape from the urge to beat computers’ security systems at their own game. The hacker was obsessed by the intellectual challenge. `This is the core … of what attracts the compulsive gambler,’ the professor explained to the entranced jury of three women and nine men.

But Wandii, this obsessive, addicted, gifted young man, had never had a girlfriend, Griffith-Edwards continued. In fact, he shyly admitted to the professor that he wouldn’t even know how to ask a girl out. `He [Wandii] became profoundly embarrassed when asked to talk about his own feelings. He simply couldn’t cope when asked what sort of person he was.‘6

People in the jury edged forward in their seats, concentrating intently on the distinguished professor. And why wouldn’t they? This was amazing stuff. This erudite man had delved inside the mind of the young man of bizarre contrasts. A man so sophisticated that he could pry open computers belonging to some of Britain’s and Europe’s most prestigious institutions, and yet at the same time so simple that he had no idea how to ask a girl on a date. A man who was addicted not to booze, smack or speed, which the average person associates with addiction, but to a computer—a machine most people associated with kids’ games and word processing programs.

The defence proceeded to present vivid examples of Wandii’s addiction. Wandii’s mother, a single parent and lecturer in English, had terrible trouble trying to get her son away from his computer and modem. She tried hiding his modem. He found it. She tried again, hiding it at his grandmother’s house. He burgled granny’s home and retrieved it. His mother tried to get at his computer. He pushed her out of his attic room and down the stairs.

Then he ran up a [sterling]700 phone bill as a result of his hacking. His mother switched off the electricity at the mains. Her son reconnected it. She installed a security calling-code on the phone to stop him calling out. He broke it. She worried he wouldn’t go out and do normal teenage things. He continued to stay up all night—and sometimes all day—hacking. She returned from work to find him unconscious—sprawled across the living room floor and looking as though he was dead. But it wasn’t death, only sheer exhaustion. He hacked until he passed out, then he woke up and hacked some more.

The stories of Wandii’s self-confessed addiction overwhelmed, appalled and eventually engendered pity in the courtroom audience. The media began calling him `the hermit hacker’.

Wandii’s defence team couldn’t fight the prosecution’s evidence head-on, so they took the prosecution’s evidence and claimed it as their own. They showed the jury that Wandii hadn’t just hacked the institutions named by the prosecution; he had hacked far, far more than that. He didn’t just hack a lot—he hacked too much. Most of all, Wandii’s defence team gave the jury a reason to acquit the innocent-faced young man sitting before them.

During the trial, the media focused on Wandii, but didn’t completely ignore the other two hackers. Computer Weekly hunted down where Gandalf was working and laid it bare on the front page. A member of `the UK’s most notorious hacking gang’, the journal announced, had been working on software which would be used at Barclay’s Bank.7 The implication was clear. Gandalf was a terrible security risk and should never be allowed to do any work for a financial institution. The report irked the hackers, but they tried to concentrate on preparing for their sentencing hearing.

From the beginning of their case, the hackers had problems obtaining certain evidence. Pad and Gandalf believed some of the material seized in the police raids would substantially help their case—such as messages from admins thanking them for pointing out security holes on their systems. This material had not been included in the prosecution’s brief. When the defendants requested access to it, they were refused access on the grounds that there was classified data on the optical disk. They were told to go read the Attorney-General’s guidelines on disclosure of information. The evidence of the hackers’ forays into military and government systems was jumbled in with their intrusions into computers such as benign JANET systems, the defence team was told. It would take too much time to separate the two.

Eventually, after some wrangling, Pad and Gandalf were told they could inspect and copy material—provided it was done under the supervision of the police. The hackers travelled to London, to Holborn police station, to gather supporting evidence for their case. However, it soon became clear that this time-consuming exercise would be impossible to manage on an ongoing basis. Finally, the Crown Prosecution Service relented, agreeing to release the material on