A few days ago in Mumbai, Richard Stallman, chiefly hailed as the saint of the Free Software Movement and sometimes called 'lord' by believers, held forth on all that's wrong in the world today, "like say Microsoft". Many people knew they were listening to a legendary mit hacker. He belonged to a generation of brilliant programmers who had a mysterious liking for Chinese food and doing-good. A master who loved "computers, music and butterflies", he could pick almost anybody's lock on the network gates but he never used their showers or raided the fridge, just told them that their security had flaws. He will go to heaven, by popular consensus, that's if Bill Gates too is not there. ("Free software and Microsoft don't mix.") He is at one end of the spectrum among a growing number of people who call themselves hackers. At the other end is Mumbai's 23-year-old Dr Neukar, or in more plebeian terms, Anand Khare, who sent 500 abusive e-mails through a readymade program called Spitfire, to deputy commissioner of Police Manoj Lohiya, the chief of the Cyber Crime Unit. The dcp didn't reply. A breach in courtesy possibly that made Dr Neukar 'hack into' the unit's site a few weeks ago and paste a message that conveyed, through a lot of abuses, that he was smarter than the cops. He wasn't, because he was caught.
A hacker, traditionally, is someone who uses his skills and knowledge to find flaws in a system, and gain control over a computer or a network of computers. But over the years, brilliant hackers have left tools for lesser people to just download and experience the thrills of doing wrong. Dr Neukar too had merely used a program to scan user names of those who have legally logged into the site. Prince, a 22-year-old hacker, calls him "a lamer". A lamer is a novice who uses hacking tools created by cerebral recluses, to deface sites. Lamer and his friends will be called Lamerz, Prince tells you.
He is a scrawny fellow who after school "did what was equivalent to dropping out—a BCom". He now runs a webhosting company. "Turnover this year is Rs 2.6 crore," he says. Before all this, three years ago, youthindia.com had a bike racing game that had "a cool bike worth a lakh as the prize for winning". When he and his friends once tried to better a former winner's record of three minutes and 20 seconds, they realised it was beyond them. But they had another faculty. They broke into the site and pasted three minutes and 10 seconds as the time they took to complete the race. They were declared winners but the bad news was, "the site guys asked me to come over, play and show them. Obviously they suspected foul play. So we didn't get the bike."
During the days when vsnl said they were not hackable, there was a bunch of students stealing passwords using programs like John the Ripper that find them through millions of permutations and combinations. And these boys would freely distribute the passwords, all for a good cause.
"There is a bit of communism in all of us when we are young," says Darthvader, a 32-year-old veteran. "We want to be Robinhoods. Take from the rich and give it to the poor. Those days vsnl charged
Rs 15,000 for 500 hours, which was very expensive." So he and his friends stole passwords from the rich—"like corporate accounts"—and distributed them to the poor—"like students". Most of the good hackers mean no harm. "Only kids do things like deface sites," says 20-year-old Ray-14 who was initiated six years ago. When he was impressionable, he says, he got into the computer of a famous actor when he was online. "A friend of mine snitched and I got into trouble." He reformed but his obsession with computers only got stronger. He survived school as much as the school survived him. Now in the third year of his superfluous college education, he is waiting for the interference to get over. "I can spend days before the computer whether food is or not brought to my table. I do have a social life, though." At 20, the word social often merges with the word girls. Frail and standing at 5-feet, 5-inches, he may prompt one to say that he has to get used to disappointments in the women's department early in his life. But he says, "Girls may not know what I do but they get excited when I send them stuff that makes their screen go blank or open and close their CD-drives." One of Ray-14's many findings on girls is, "there is no such creature called a female hacker." Good hacking is about logic, he says. "Maybe that rules out most women."
Among those teenaged boys who have grown up and moved from computers to "other desirables" is Alzabo. Now in his early 20s, he is bored with hacking. He says that he is more keen on breaking into the defence system of a network he calls "girlz, females, womans". A slightly more difficult exercise he confesses, for among the skills that he doesn't possess today for "this hack", is the ability to find a job. "The job scene is very bad."
Following a spate of defacements by Pakistani hackers of Indian sites, Alzabo shed his own principles and defaced islaam.com with the message that he had nothing against Islam but Pakistani hackers are lowly beings. Normally Indian hackers are highly indifferent to Pakistanis. As L-20 says, "We have better things to do, moreover we don't have fanatical hacker communities that go on a destruction spree using readymade programs. Any fool can do it." He says that he may have "hacked into 25-30 sites but never damaged any".
L-20 is a 22-year-old who runs his own company and a part of his job is "to protect my computers from people like me". He occasionally breaks into his competitor's system "to take down their customer list, just in case they try to act funny with me". He says that if only vsnl was very secure when he was at school, he wouldn't have learnt so much. Part of the first invaders of vsnl was 22-year-old Vishal Doshi who is now based in the UK. He confirms a general perception that good hackers are cocky people. "Even now, I tend to piss people off the first time I meet them." Recently, on a trip to Italy he wounded the fragile sentiments of "a huge guy". But fortunately for Vishal, "he was a Cambridge student, as opposed to a soldier in the British army—hence civilised."
L-20 too exhibits a certain rudeness. He says loudly as his programmers are working with grave expressions, "these people can never hack, because they do programming as a job. They don't love what they do. So they'd never learn enough." But he adds that not all brilliant programmers are prospective hackers. "Intent," he says, is crucial. "Some people will crush skulls because they can. Some people won't."
Among those who can but won't is Namit Merchant. The 16-year-old recently quit Shahrukh Khan's srkworld.com as the systems administrator. He assembled his first computer when he was in Class 6. He provides web security consultancy for companies and deals everyday with "men who are taller".He is on the other side of the fence. "I can hack but I have never been even tempted." A few days ago he discovered a vulnerability in Windows 2000. He has been curious about a particular area of Windows 2000. "I wondered how a Microsoft product doesn't have any flaws. At 4:30 in the morning I found it and I screamed." He plans to send a mail to Microsoft and ask them to please fix it.
So as the story of life goes, some brilliant people will walk along with Richard Stallman, to heaven. Others will, as some original mit hackers may tell you, go where Bill Gates will.