The 414s
Six teenagers in Milwaukee, sixty systems, and the hearings that produced a law
A group of teenagers named after their telephone area code dialled into around sixty computer systems over several months, using default passwords and accounts that had never been changed. Their targets included Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where they altered records on a system used for radiation treatment planning.
The intrusions were not sophisticated. What made them significant was the response: congressional hearings in which one member of the group testified, extensive press coverage, and legislative momentum that fed directly into the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.
The moment the United States decided that unauthorised computer access needed its own criminal law rather than being handled by analogy to trespass and theft.
The Hacker Chronicles
Volume One — Origins
This page is the summary. The chapter — ‘414s’ — follows the case properly: what was known at the time, who decided what, and how it actually unfolded rather than how it was later retold.
Two more volumes this year.
Going Geopolitical in October, Going Strategic in December.
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