66 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
66 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
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THE HACKER WHO VANISHED
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Suicide or clever hoax?
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Early one morning last September, a pair of California computer whizzes
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were doing what hackers like to do best: peering at a glowing terminal,
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hacking away at a programs and talking about the books and movies they might
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someday write about their electronic exploits. Tom Anderson, 16, paused to
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take a shower. "When I came out," recalls Anderson, who had left his friend,
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Bill Landreth, busily pounding away at the keyboard, "he was gone. And I
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haven't seen him since."
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Landreth's disappearance from Escondido, a suburb of San diego, is of
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concern to more than his family and friends. Three years ago, Landreth--
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whose IQ measured 163 and who was only 19 at the time--was convicted of wire
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fraud after he tapped into a GTE electronic-mail service whose clients
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included NASA and the Defense Department. Landreth passed the access code
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along to other hackers; soon computer users around the country were using the
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GTE lines for free. But since Landreth (known to other hackers as "THE
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CRACKER" from the book INNER CIRCLE) hadn't altered any message or stolen any
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money, the judge let him off with three years' probation. Landreth later
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capitalized on his notoriety by writing a book about breaking through computer
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security screens and by advising businesses on how to protect their system
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against the type of intrusion that got him in trouble. But by disappearing,
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Landreth broke his probation terms and is now being sought by U.S. marshals.
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The hacker's friends doubt that he is on the lam. "It's not unusual for
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him to disappear," says Jenny Perkes, a former girlfriend. Indeed Anderson
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remembers that Landreth liked to cultivate an air of mystery and recently had
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taken off to Mexico and later Sweden without telling anyone, returning a week
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later as if he had just been to the corner store. But Landreth has never
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before been gone for such a long period; and this time he vanished without
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leaving money for rent--a discourtesy that friends say is totally out of
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character. "He was a gentleman, a very thoughtful person, very generous,"says
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Perkes.
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Landreth left something esle behind, however: a rambling eight-page letter
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that only added to the mystery. Landreth apparently wrote the letter, which
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was addressed to no one and left in his room, during a period last summer when
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friends say he appeared depressed. The rambling discourse touches on such
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topics as evolution, nuclear war, society's greed, computers becoming more
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important than man,the meaning of existence and, ulitmately, suicide. "The
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idea is that I will commit suicde sometime around my 22nd birthday <sic>,"
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the note said. "This will have given me 22 or so years with which to convince
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myself that life really isn't worth living." Landreth's 22nd birthday was
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Dec. 26. Anderson, for one expects never to hear from his friend again.
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Cryptic message: But Landreth's apparent suicide note had an escape
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clause. Some months after typing the suicide reference, he added the words:
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"Since writing the above, my plans have changed slightly. I am going to take
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this money I have left...and make a final attempt at making life worthy. It
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will be a short attempt, and I do suspect that if it works out that none of my
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friends will know me then. If it dosen't work out, the news of my death will
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probably get around (I won't try to hide it)."
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Does Landreth's note reflect a troubled youth contemplating suicide or an
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adventure-loving computer genius playing an elaborate real-life Dungeons &
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Dragons like game on his friends? So far, neither the police nor the federal
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marshals nor his friends have been able to crack the mystery of the hacker who
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one day disappeared leaving no trace than a computer deleted sentence.
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George Hackett with Hilliard Harper in San Diego
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