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KINGPIN

into corporate, government, and academic systems and took their first tentative steps into the ARPANET, the Internet's forerunner.

When those first young intruders began getting busted in 1983, the national press cast about for a word to describe them and settled on the one the kids had given themselves: "hackers." Like the previous generation of hackers, they were pushing the limits of technology, outwitting the establishment, and doing things that were supposed to be impossible. But for them, that involved breaching corporate computers, taking over telephone switches, and slipping into government systems, universities, and defense contractor networks. The older generation winced at the comparison, but from that point on, the word "hacker" would have two meanings: a talented programmer who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, and a recreational computer intruder. Adding to the confusion, many hackers were both.

Now, in the mid-1990s, the hacking community was dividing again. The FBI and the Secret Service had staged arrests of high-profile intruders like Kevin Mitnick and Mark "Phiber Optik" Abene, a New York phone phreak, and the prospect of prison stigmatized recreational intrusion while raising the risk far beyond the rewards of ego and adventure. The impetus for cracking computers was fading as well: The Internet was open to anyone now, and personal computers had grown powerful enough to run the same operating systems and programming languages that fueled the big machines denied to amateurs. Most of all, there was real money to be made defending computers and none attacking them.

Cracking systems was becoming uncool. Those possessed of a hacker's mind-set were increasingly rejecting intrusion and going right into legitimate security work. And the intruders started hanging up their black hats to join them. They became the "white-hat hackers"—referencing the square-jawed heroes in old cowboy films—applying their computer skills on the side of truth and justice.

Max thought of himself as one of the white hats. Watching for new types of attacks and emerging vulnerabilities was now in his job descrip-