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into a ‘hacker war’ with DPAC and MoD – a fight for control of Cyberspace. The battle was fought over phone lines and computer networks, with threatening messages left on bulletin boards or answering machines. In one case, an LoD member who worked (somewhat incongruously) for a telephone company’s security department found taunting messages on his computer terminal at work. On a more serious level, there were attempts to reprogram switches to land opponents with astronomical phone bills; there was one instance of breaking into a credit bureau to destroy a gang member’s credit rating.

Mostly it was phone calls – kids’ stuff. But while LoD and DPAC and MoD were squabbling among themselves, the biggest crackdown on hacking in the US was being mobilized.

The catalyst was an anonymous phone call to an unlisted residential number in Indianapolis at 8 p.m. on 29 June 1989.

As security manager for Indiana Bell, Robert S. was accustomed to anonymous calls: he was a prime target for hackers attempting to impress him with their ability to break into his system and find his home number. And the caller this night didn’t seem much different from the others. He sounded like a young man trying to seem older, his voice a mix of swagger and menace. The caller presented his credentials by repeating Robert’s credit history to him – which meant only that the anonymous hacker could also break into credit bureau computers.

‘Tell you something else, Bob – you don’t mind if I call you Bob, do you? I’ll tell you, somebody like me who really knows the phone systems could really fuck things up. I mean I could put your 5ESSs into an endless loop. You know what I mean? You know what that would do?’

The 5ESSs were a type of electronic switching system. There were hundreds in Indiana Bell, thousands around the country. An endless loop is caused by changing the coding of the switch so that it no longer puts forward calls. The calls instead just loop around the switch, like a record needle caught in the same groove. The result would be paralysis: no calls from the switch could get out.

‘It could cause a lot of problems. Is that what you’re threatening?’

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