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The same back door was used and the same sort of program to collect legitimate user IDs and passwords.

At the instigation of the French, Germany's federal police raided the homes of a number of known Chaos Computer Club members in Hamburg on 27 and 28 September 1987, impounding their computer equipment. Ironically, the police overlooked the VAXbusters, who were not Chaos members. To a large extent, Chaos had become a victim of its own publicity: the police, not aware the VAXbusters were a separate group, had simply raided the homes of the most notorious hackers in Germany. It was a case of rounding up the usual suspects - one of whom was Steffen Wernery, who told them about his own role in the matter and of his involvement with the secret service. Within four months the police had completed its investigations. It concluded that Steffen was simply a 'switching centre' - a conduit for information - and nothing more. Neither he nor the other Chaos members were involved in hacking into the French computers.

The information was passed to the French - who didn't believe it. The methods used to hack into the French sites were too similar to the techniques employed by the VAXbusters to be mere coincidence. And even though the gang's list of all the VAX computers it had hacked did not include either Philips-France or SGS-Thomson, the French authorities remained convinced that the trail from the two companies led back to Hamburg.

At about the same time, the secret service contacted Hans Gliss about the incidents in France and asked if he could help. Gliss discussed the matter with Steffen. He suggested they both go to Paris for the forthcoming annual SECURICOM conference, in March 1988, and present a report on computer security - particularly VAX security. SECURICOM was the ideal forum: it attracted the top computer security specialists in the world. Steffen could tell the delegates about the back door on the Digital machines and how to fix it.

Steffen acquiesced; he had found the limelight agreeable, and the visit to SECURICOM would give him another chance to bask in its glow. He arranged to go to Paris with a colleague from Chaos. The two would travel separately and meet in the French capital. Gliss would drive to Paris from his holiday home in the south of France.

Steffen also contacted Philips-France, one of the companies hit by

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