Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace (32 page)

The LOD is just a memory, too. Comsec went out of business and Chris Goggans is working for a large computer maker in Austin, Texas, researching advanced wireless networks. He's also assembled thousands of messages from various elite bulletin boards in the 1980s and sells the collection through a company called LODCOM. At the last Ho-Ho Con, he was selling T-shirts, too. They said THE HACKER WAR across the chest and there was a map of the United States depicting Chris's version of major battle sites, mostly Houston and Austin and New York. On the back it said LOD 1, MOD

0. And there was a quote, attributed to Corrupt, that Chris said he got off MODNET:

"It's not just winning that counts but making sure that everyone else loses. "

Would anyone from MOD ever again come to the hackers' meetings at Citicorp?

Tonight, a crowd is pecking and jabbing at the phones, right where John used to stand when he sweet-talked the operators. Nearby, a dark-jacketed youth sought advice from another wearing a Mets cap backward: "You just go to the speakers and you move the phone jack. It's simple. " Kids wearing beepers on their belts and cellular phones in their pockets greet one another. They pull printouts from their knapsacks to pass around: they cluster around a copy of the new 2600 magazine. The latest issue features stories about the MOD boys' plights, and on the cover is a rag doll stabbed in the heart by a dagger. The shaft is labeled: BERMAN.

This is the next generation of hackers. MOD is the stuff of legends now, and the wide-open stretches of cyberspace that Mark and his friends had roamed have been fenced off by corporate owners. Still, the hackers flourish. Are any new conspiracies fomenting today?

Well, there's the fuss about the Internet. Supposedly, some new group of hackers who call themselves The Posse have been breaking in to the Internet, which has become by default the world's Information Superhighway. The number of Internet users is growing faster than the population of turn-of-the-century New York City. University networks. State networks. Private networks. Library networks. Twenty million people use the Internet every day, and at the present rate of increase, the entire population of the world will be on the Net by the year 2003.

The Net has virtually no security. It makes Tymnet look like a fortress. So it wasn't so hard for The Posse to capture thousands of users' passwords before system administrators noticed the break-ins. Nobody knows what this new generation of hackers has in mind, but it sounds ominous. Plus, the modus operandi sounds familiar, so familiar, that the FBI paid a visit to Allen recently. Of course, Allen wasn't charged with anything. Just an informational visit, you understand.

Tonight, there's a bunch of kids crowded around one of the little cafe tables in the indoor plaza, hunched over some inexplicable pile of wires rising like a crazy tornado from the tabletop, cords spilling over the edge, winding carelessly through the legs of a chair. The kids are intent on their work, whatever their work may be. One thing's noticeably different from 1989. Not all these kids are white. In fact, look around, and you'll see that half of the new hackers hail from Jamaica (the island, not the Queens neighborhood), from the projects, from Colombia. They're first-generation settlers, they're the children of immigrants, the kids who moved into the neighborhoods where the MOD boys grew up.

There's a nearly blind hacker, you can tell that his eyes don't focus because they aren't even the same size, aren't even open the same amount. He walks up to any dark shape he sees, and issues a greeting: "Are you new here? I don't remember you from last month. " Maniac, a supremely wan ponytailed hacker from Brooklyn who wears thick black wraparound lenses for privacy, skulks the perimeter, swathed in a long coat. Razor, an ebullient fourteen-year-old whose social skills are remarkable in this group simply because they exist, flits from hacker to hacker, shaking hands, introducing himself, beaming a jowly grin. The Twitching Hacker, the nervous one who used to have a whole list of questions for Mark on topics like why the tone skipped a click when you dialed a 9, looks a little forlorn. So does Eric Corley, who carries with him the memory of dropping off Mark at the prison gates. Eric, who is thinner than ever, is dressed all in black, T-shirt and open-necked shirt and jeans. He looks older now, and steadies his hand against his chin when he talks. He carries a scanner, and invites people to "hear a conversation in Russian. "

And into this fray, this wildly discombobulated massing of alienated adolescence, walks Barlow.

It's a quiet entrance, just a man in a black, belted leather jacket and throat scarf ambling into the center of the activity.

And stopping. Barlow stands there, hands in pockets, eyes all lit up at the wonder of this new experience.

John Perry Barlow lives in New York City now, where he's the ambassador from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Sometimes he goes on TV. Sometimes he writes articles. The foundation has become a power player in Washington, helping draft the blueprint for Vice President Al Gore's vision of cyberspace. Some people say the foundation has abandoned the little guy to embrace big ideas instead

Tonight, for the first time since he moved back east, for the first time since the December evening four years ago when he ran across two electronic explorers named Phiber Optik and Acid Phreak, Barlow has come to a 2600 meeting, but somehow Barlow arrived too late.

His presence does not go unnoticed. Some of the hackers recognize him right away. "Barlow that's a trip, " says Corley

and comes to greet him.

Razor, who is about to launch his own commercial Internet gateway, sees him, too, and hustles over to shake hands.

"Hey, I met you once, when you were with Bruce Sterling, " says Razor, wedging himself in next to Corley. Unaware of what all the fuss is about, Maniac wanders up, gets introduced, half-hears Barlow's name, wanders off. He doesn't know who he's met, not yet, but it will only be minutes before he realizes. Barlow. The news whizzes around the atrium at the speed of thought, as Mark would have said.

"Did I miss the meeting?" Barlow asks Corley, watching the milling clumps of boys. They are the picture of entropy, of disorganization, of isolated growing pains and undeveloped social skills.

"No, this is the meeting. "

Barlow's eyes sweep the indoor plaza, taking it all in. The Asian kid sitting cross-legged on the low wall, alone and reading 2600. The blind guy. The table covered with wires. Maniac's eyeglasses. Razor's grin. German tourists standing in line to use a pay phone, puzzled by the wait. If he notices the absence of the most famous of hackers, he does not comment on it. If he thinks about how he once offered support to them, he does not say so.

"This is the meeting, " Barlow says. "I get it. I get it. " And he laughs a huge, deep laugh. "Of course this is the meeting. "

This is the conspiracy.