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puters, to an international array of interconnected phone systems and data transmission links. It was an electronic highway network in the ether.

He learned how to dial into the nearest telephone exchange on his little Commodore and hack into the switch, the computer that controls all the phones in the area. He discovered that each phone is represented by a long code, the LEN (Line Equipment Number), which assigns functions and services to the phone, like the chosen long-distance carrier, call forwarding and so on. He knew how to manipulate the code to reroute calls, to reassign numbers, to change the long distance carrier. He manipulated the code so that all his calls were free.

After a while Indiana Bell began to seem tame. It was a convenient launching pad, but technologically speaking it was a wasteland. The southern city of Atlanta, home of BellSouth, was where the action was in new communications technology.

Fry Guy became so proficient at BellSouth that the other hackers recognized it as his SoI - his Sphere of Influence - just as a New York hacker called Phiber Optik had NYNEX (the New York-New England telephone system) as his SoI and another hacker called Control C had claimed the Michigan network. It didn't mean that BellSouth was his alone. It just meant he was recognized as knowing the most about it by the other guys in the computer underworld.

At fifteen he started getting into chemicals. It was a way of staying awake: he was working on his computer terminal up to twenty hours a day, sleeping only two or three hours a night and sometimes not at all. The chemicals - uppers, speed - kept him alert, punching away at his keyboard, exploring his new world.

But outside this private world things were getting confused, clouding over. Problems with school and family began to accumulate. That was when he decided to make some money.

In 1989 Fry Guy got all the elements together for his first hack of CSA. It wasn't just the unlisted number, the account and the password he needed. He had spent two years exploring computer systems and the phone company, and each new trick he learned added one more layer to his knowledge. He had become familiar with important

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