📸 Photo

KINGPIN

Kimi transferred from De Anza, a community college, to UC Berkeley, and the couple moved across the bay to live just off campus. The move proved fortuitous for Max. In the spring of 2000, a Berkeley company named Hiverworld offered him a long-awaited shot at the dot-com success that had already graced other Hungry Programmers. The company's plan was to create a new antihacking system that would detect intrusions, like Snort, but also actively scan the user's network for vulnerabilities, allowing it to ignore malicious volleys that had no chance of success. Snort author Marty Roesch was employee number 11. Now the company wanted Max Vision as number 21.

Max's first day was set for March 21. It was an early position at a promising technology start-up. The American dream, circa 2000.

On the morning of March 21, 2000, the FBI knocked on Max's door.

At first he thought it was a Hiverworld hazing, a practical joke. It wasn't. "Just don't answer it!" he said to Kimi. He grabbed a phone and found a hiding place, in case the agents peered through the windows. He dialed Granick and told her what was happening. The indictment must have finally come down. The FBI was there to take him to jail. What should he do?

The agents left—their arrest warrant didn't authorize them to crash into Max's home, so he'd temporarily thwarted them by the simple act of not answering the door. On her end, Granick called the prosecutor to try to arrange for a civilized self-surrender at the FBI field office in Oakland. Max contacted Hiverworld's CTO, his new boss, to report that he wouldn't be showing up for his first day at work. He'd be in touch in a day or two to explain everything, he said.

The evening news beat him to the punch: Alleged computer hacker Max Butler had just turned himself in on a fifteen-count indictment charging illegal interception of communications, computer intrusion, and possession of stolen passwords.