THE HACKER'S HANDBOOK

Electronic Research Edition

(c) Hugo Cornwall, 1994

Copyright Notice:

This text is copyright, all rights are reserved. There is a limited

license for electronic distribution as follows:

1 The sole version that can be distributed exists as a single

ASCII file based on the Third Edition but excluding certain
illustrations and extracts and downloads. The file includes this
introduction and copyright notice

2 The text may not be held available for public download from
any site without the express permission in writing of the copyright
holder - contact details below.

3 Copies of the file, provided they are complete and unaltered

may be distributed privately between individuals at no cost but
not as part of any organised "public domain" type library,
whether for payment or otherwise nor included in advertisements
or catalogues by any organisation. Those who distribute should take
steps to ensure that any recipient fully understands the current
state of law on unauthorised access to computers, including incitement.

4 The file or any part thereof may not be included in any CD-
ROM or similar electronic publishing medium, whether for payment
or otherwise

5 The reproduction in print of the contents of the file or any

part thereof is expressly forbidden

Applications for individual variation of these terms should be

addressed to the copyright holder:

peter@pmsommer.com

Virtual City Associates

PO Box 6447
London N4 4RX
United Kingdom

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The text contains hidden identity markers

Legal Notice

At the time this book was written and published, computer

trespass, unauthorised access to computers unaccompanied by any
further harm was not illegal in the United Kingdom, the domicile
of the author and the place of first publication. Such activity
is now a breach of the Computer Misuse Act, 1990, s 1. Similar
legislation exists in many other countries.

As is made clear in the introduction to the electronic edition,

the purpose of releasing this version, with its main text written
in 1987, is to satisfy the needs of scholars and others who want
a source document on what personal computer communications and
"hacking" were like in the mid- to late-1980s. Some of the
systems and much of the equipment referred to is now, in 1994,
quite obsolete. Nothing in this text should be taken as a
recommendation or incitement to explore computers and computer
systems without the express authorisation of the owners.

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INTRODUCTION TO THE ELECTRONIC EDITION

The original Hacker's Handbook was written in 1984 and first

appeared in the UK in 1985. It was a much bigger success than
I had expected, helped along by a modest pre-publication
condemnation from Scotland Yard which was then hyped up by a Sunday
newspaper and by the arrest, a few days after publication, of two
alleged hackers who had apparently breached the security of Prince
Phillip's electronic mail-box.

While writing the book I was always aware that within me was an
editorial fight between prudence and the accusation of punch-
pulling. Most of the time prudence won and shortly before
publication I was afraid that most readers would regard it as
rather feeble. However the coincidence of the news-stories,
quite unco-ordinated by any professional hype-merchant, sent the
book off to a flying start. The publisher's first print run was
modest and the bookshops very quickly ran out. A reprint was
rapildly ordered but the temporary non-availability created the
myth that the book had been banned. A London evening newspaper
announced I had been arrested. That wasn't true either; I was
never at any stage even interviewed by the police and all my
meetings with the UK's specialist computer crime cops have been
quite cordial. But all the stories helped helped the book's
reputation. It remains one of the few computer titles ever to
appear in a main-stream best-seller list - the London Sunday Times,
for 7 weeks in a total of 8.

Four editions appeared in all, of which the last was written not
by me but by Steve Gold, one of the hackers accused of the Prince
Phillip stunt - he and his colleague were eventually acquitted in
a case which went all the way up to England's highest court, the
House of Lords.
By 1990, public alarm at the activities of some hackers lead to
the passing into law of the Computer Misuse Act which explicitly
criminalised any form unauthorised access to computers. To
continue publishing the Hacker's Handbook thereafter might have
constituted an incitement to commit an offence. I would like to
think that, should the occasion arise, I would be willing to
stand up against an overmighty government which trampled on free
speech, but I really didn't believe that the Hacker's Handbook
quite fell into that category. The Fourth Edition was allowed to
go quietly out-of-print and was not reprinted.

But the enquiries to get hold of copies continue to arrive and I

think the time has now come where one can justify this limited
form of publication. I see the main audience among historians
of technology and of crime.

This edition is based on Hacker's Handbook III, published by

Century in 1988. I have removed the appendices and some of the
illustrations of downloads. This is more a matter of convenience
than anything else. I know there are people out there who
believe that there have been special editions removed from
bookshop shelves in mysterious circumstances and I suppose I
should be grateful to have been involved in a small-scale "cult",
but, really, you are not missing anything of any importance.

The descriptions of computer communications technology will now

strike many readers as quaint - at one stage I talk about modems
offering speeds of 2400 bits/s as beginning to appear. No one is
much interested in videotex these days. Then the virus was an
idea not an everyday random threat. These were pre-Windows
times and almost pre-Mac, and before the arrival of sophisticated
high-speed error correcting, data compressing fax-modems. We had
bulletin boards but not the large international conferencing
systems. But you can read about some of the beginnings of what
is now called the Internet. By late 1993 anyone who wanted to
explore the Internet could get easy legal access and a legal identity
for about 10ukpds/month. In the very early 1980s, when I started
my explorations, you had no alternative but to be a benign
trespasser - a cross country rambler as I describe it later on in
the text.

So this is something of a time capsule; a period when the owners

of personal computers were just beginning to learn how to link
them to the outside world - and how some of them were so fired
and excited by the prospects that they rushed to explore what and
whereever they could.

Since the publication of edition III I have earned my living as a

computer security consultant. It is tempting but inaccurate to
say I am a poacher turned gamekeeper. Recreational intrusion
into computers by outsiders is a long way down the list of
substantive risks. The real person behind Hugo Cornwall, as
opposed to the slightly mythical figure that readers have wanted
to manufacture, is an Oxford-trained lawyer self-taught over the
last twenty years in computing. Most of the time I am tackling
fraud, industrial espionage and advising insurers and companies
of the precise ways in which a business can collapse as the
consequence of a fire, bomb, or other disaster. My writings
about hacking have given me a limited form of prominence and also
some insights, but many of the skills I need day-to-day have
come from elsewhere. Hacking is far less important than many
people think.

Hugo Cornwall

London, UK, August 1994

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