Think of them as the boys who used to commit the clever pranks. The skinny, bad boys who hot-wired cars, mixed chemicals in the garage to make stink bombs, committed the boyish acts that inspired awe as well as annoyance.
Today these boys are sitting alone in their rooms in front of computer terminals, using their intelligence and their boredom to bring down the websites of the US Justice Department and the CIA. They rewrite the New York Times, leaving its 150,000 Sunday web-site readers helpless. They make international telephone calls for free. And they threaten to do more. With names like Cult of the Dead Cow, they send covert programmes with names such as "Back Orifice" attached to innocent-looking e-mails - programmes that can delete programmes on computer hard drives or read stored credit card numbers.
There is nothing new about hackers. They have been around since the early 1980s. What is new is the way in which the world around them - the world of finance and banking and health and business and air travel and national security - is almost completely dependent on computer systems.
Can they be stopped? The answer by all accounts is no. So, unable to beat them, business and government is trying to hire them.
Consider the figures. In 1995, the US Defence Department suffered 250,000 break-ins to its computers. Some 7 per cent of the Fortune 500 - the list of the richest companies in the US - reported that their systems were hacked last year. Companies spent $6.3 billion last year on computer security, and are saying they will spend $13 billion next year.
But even such pallid, antisocial teenagers must cogitate somewhere beyond their homes. Each year, many of them gather at hacker conventions. One of the most popular is called Defcon. This is the place where the US government went to hire the hackers.
It is fitting that DefCon should convene, as it does every year, in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is itself a parallel reality, a placeless place. Organisers describe the two-day event as a ritualistic gathering of "hackers, freaks, cyperpunks, futurists, the criminally insane". This summer they were joined by seven fretting members of the FBI, only two of whom make themselves known. The other five were the target of a "Spot the Fed" contest. Everyone else seemed to fit into categories of corporate espionage and counter-intelligence experts, anarchists, militiamen wannabees, a few who looked like Friends of Ted Kaczinski (had Ted Kaczskni been the type to have friends), and the odd black-vinyl-clad blonde self-described cyberchick or two.
Normally, when they venture from their suburban rooms, these hackers cluster in small groups around the world on the first Friday of each month at 5 p.m. local time.
In Boston, they meet at the Terrace Food Court at Prudential Center Plaza. In Boise, Idaho at the university's student union building near the payphones. In Buenos Aires, at the San Jose OS bar. In Granadella, Spain, at the Pilar Del Toro pub.
But DefCon is the granddaddy meeting of them all. What it is really about depends on who's talking. The official line is that this is a convention of ethical computer hackers - upstanding, if pale young men (at least 80 per cent of the 300-plus crowd is male) who enjoy penetration as much as any red-blooded American guy, but whose objet desir is the firewall, the so-called security feature of a computer network that whistles "I hear you knockin', but you can't come in".
They get their kicks hacking into systems - banking, telecommunications, universities, government - and taking a look around. They believe that such "monitoring", or "door-knocking" as it is called, is not a criminal act, but is a right in a free society increasingly based on the exchange of information.
Breaking through computer firewall security to poke around like this bears no relation to its caravan park cousin, computer crime. Such jolly adventures are no more serious than the Oxford chap's illicit spin in a Morris Minor. And there is, to boot, perhaps a noble duty. The hackers here see their mission as one of alerting institutions to their very vulnerabilities . . . letting them know that if a bunch of 18-year-olds can break in, anyone can.
It is a provocative point of view, perhaps, but little more than a philosophical sonatina, as soon becomes obvious. In fact, discussion of whether hacking is good or bad misses the point. Because good or bad, predatory or voyeuristic, benign or malicious in intent, the fact is that these boys - and by extension their friends or paid clients - can break into any system they want, and pretty much do whatever they please once they get in.
The point could not have been made more flamboyantly than it was last year when a hacker entered the US justice department's home page, doctoring it with swastikas, obscene pictures
and a red-lettered banner that declared, in the best tradition of hacker humour: "This page is in violation of the Communications Decency Act." The remainder of the web site criticised the Act, signed in February, which makes transmission of sexually explicit material in ways that children might see it a felony.
The hacker did not go further than altering the justice department's web site. He didn't change the parole dates of federal prisoners - but let's face it; he was probably in a good mood that day.
BACK at DefCon, outside the main conference room, a series of banquet tables is set up. Laptops crowd the tables as the hackers share software tips, codes, gossip. Some look like clean-cut all-Americans. Others are pink-haired, pierced, biker types. Almost everyone has a portable radio scanner and a cellular phone hanging from his belt.
The boys here know that these conferences themselves are under adept government surveillance: it's part of the game. A nerdy-looking individual and his pal race over to one of the elder, most respected counter-intelligence attendees and a bearded man who has served time in jail and whose business card reads "Biker Scum". "Hey! We found the pinhole cameras in the ceiling!" the boy exclaims. Before they go off to a corner of the hotel conference room to check it out, the counter-intelligence guy turns to the veteran hacker and asks: "Got a laser?" The older man hands over a pen-size laser pointer. The two saunter over to the suspect camera. So what do you do when you find such a camera? All patience, the grey-haired hacker smiles and points the pen to the ceiling.
"The laser burns out the camera lens."
Andy Black and Mike Butler, formerly of the organised crime division and lately of the FBI's Computer Crimes section in San Francisco, have taken the stage. To their credit, they know their audience and they have clearly been handed a ridiculous task, but like good g-men they tackle this assignment without apparent regard for its futility. Black, who seems to take the jeers and laughter more in stride, says: "The amount of skill in this room is awesome. It's easy to injure, but it takes great effort to make a contribution."
The FBI men concede the near-total vulnerability of the nation's information infrastructure - they know better than to even tempt this crowd with a "betcha can't" speech - and say they want to ascertain the real danger to that infrastructure. Trying to seduce with a brew of patriotic bluster and the prospect of future financial prosperity, they call on the hackers to become part of the system of Protecting America. Black says he has brought with him job applications to the FBI's computer crimes division. When that comment is greeted by guffaws, he offers sheepishly, "Hey, this is the new, sensitive FBI."
A brief question-and-answer period follows, with most of the questions along the lines of "Is the FBI in the habit of defaming and harassing people? Is that a policy?" Finally, mercifully, Black and Butler bid adieu. Later, one veteran attendee tells me that the hackers have bugged the FBI's men's hotel rooms, just like they did at last year's Defcon. "You should hear their conversations," he laughs.
The US justice department will not confirm a report that US Attorney General Janet Reno has approved a $1 million programme to hire 16 hackers in a programme called "Operation Get Cracking". Nonetheless, one recruiter for a justice department contractor sat through the Defcon convention confirming that they were looking for "people outstanding in their field".
The editor of a San Francisco hacking magazine called Phrack is one of those people. Going by the pseudonym of "Route", he is 24 years old, has earrings in both ears, and a pierced tongue. He now works for a Fortune 500 company by day, ensuring their computer system security. His days of publishing break-in information are over. Recently, someone sent him technical specifications for breaking into most paging systems in the US. He decided not to publish it.
His response could have come from a diplomat such as Henry Kissinger. "I have no intention of running up against the law or upsetting the military," he said.
