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Before anything else, I started grabbing all the passwords for the guys in the development team.

When I got together with Neal, I told him, “Getting into the Ark was a snap. I have every RSTS/E developer’s password.” He rolled his eyes with an expression that said, What’s this guy been smoking?

He dialed the modem number and got to the Ark’s log-in banner. Telling him to “move over,” I typed the log-on credentials and got the “Ready” prompt.

“Satisfied, Neal?” I asked.

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was like I had shown him a winning lottery ticket. After they had picked my brain for details of how I had gained access, Neal, Dave, and a few other friends went to a company called PSI near Culver City, where they had the newest, fastest modems, running at 1,200 baud—four times as fast as the 300-baud modems the rest of us had. The guys started downloading the RSTS/E source code.

The old adage says there’s no honor among thieves. Instead of taking me into their confidence and sharing information, they downloaded the source code for RSTS/E and kept it to themselves.

I learned later that these bastards actually called DEC and told them the Ark had been hacked, and gave my name as the hacker. Total betrayal. I had no suspicion these guys would dream of snitching on me, especially when they had reaped such rich rewards. It was the first time of many instances to come when the people I trusted would betray me.

At seventeen, I was still in high school but dedicated to working on what might be called a PhD in RSTS/E hacking. I would find targets by checking want ads for companies looking to hire a computer person experienced with RSTS/E. I’d call, claiming to be from DEC Field Support, and was usually able to talk a system administrator into revealing dial-up numbers and privileged account passwords.

In December 1980, I ran into a kid named Micah Hirschman, whose father happened to have an account with a company called Bloodstock Research, which used a RSTS/E system; I assume the company kept historical records on the bloodlines of racehorses for breeders and bettors. I used the Hirschman account to connect to Bloodstock Research so I could exploit a security flaw and gain access to a privileged account, then Micah and I played with the operating system to teach ourselves about it, basically for kicks.

The episode blew up in our faces. Micah logged in late one night without me, and Bloodstock spotted the break-in and alerted the FBI, telling them that the attack had been through the Hirschman account. The Feds paid Mr. Hirschman a visit. He denied knowing anything about the attack. When they pressured him, he fingered his son. Micah fingered me.

I was in my bedroom on the second floor of our condo, online, hacking into the Pacific Telephone switches over a dial-up modem. Hearing a knock at the front door, I opened my window and called down, “Who is it?” The answer was one that I would come to have nightmares about: “Robin Brown, FBI.”

My heart began pounding.

Mom called to me, “Who is it?”

“A man who says he’s from the FBI,” I called back.

Mom just laughed. She didn’t know who it was but she didn’t think it could possibly be the FBI.

I was in a panic, already hanging up the phone from the computer modem cradle and stashing under the bed the TI-700 computer terminal Lewis De Payne had lent me for a few weeks. Back then, before the days of the personal computer, all I had was a terminal and a modem that I was using to connect to a system at a company or university. No computer monitor: the responses to my commands would print out on a long roll of thermal paper.

I was flashing on the fact that I had a ton of that thermal paper under my bed, filled with data that would show I had been hacking for many hours a week into telephone company computers and switches, as well as a load of computers at private firms.

When I went downstairs, the agent offered me his hand, and I shook it. “I busted Stanley Rifkin,” he told me, understanding that I’d know whom he was talking about: the guy who had pulled off the