ally with the American social order. When corralled into
governments, universities, or large multinational companies, and forced
to follow rulebooks and wear suits and ties, they at least have some
conventional halters on their freedom of action. But when loosed
alone, or in small groups, and fired by imagination and the
entrepreneurial spirit, they can move mountains--causing landslides
that will likely crash directly into your office and living room.

These people, as a class, instinctively recognize that a public,
politicized attack on hackers will eventually spread to them--that the
term "hacker," once demonized, might be used to knock their hands off
the levers of power and choke them out of existence. There are hackers
today who fiercely and publicly resist any besmirching of the noble
title of hacker. Naturally and understandably, they deeply resent the
attack on their values implicit in using the word "hacker" as a synonym
for computer-criminal.

This book, sadly but in my opinion unavoidably, rather adds to the
degradation of the term. It concerns itself mostly with "hacking" in
its commonest latter-day definition, i.e., intruding into computer
systems by stealth and without permission. The term "hacking" is used
routinely today by almost all law enforcement officials with any
professional interest in computer fraud and abuse. American police
describe almost any crime committed with, by, through, or against a
computer as hacking.

Most importantly, "hacker" is what computer-intruders choose to call
THEMSELVES. Nobody who "hacks" into systems willingly describes
himself (rarely, herself) as a "computer intruder," "computer
trespasser," "cracker," "wormer," "darkside hacker" or "high tech
street gangster." Several other demeaning terms have been invented in
the hope that the press and public will leave the original sense of the
word alone. But few people actually use these terms. (I exempt the
term "cyberpunk," which a few hackers and law enforcement people
actually do use. The term "cyberpunk" is drawn from literary criticism
and has some odd and unlikely resonances, but, like hacker, cyberpunk
too has become a criminal pejorative today.)

In any case, breaking into computer systems was hardly alien to the
original hacker tradition. The first tottering systems of the 1960s
required fairly extensive internal surgery merely to function
day-by-day. Their users "invaded" the deepest, most arcan