1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
|
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>CDNE Chapter 14 - Female Hackers?</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#c9e1fc" BACKGROUND="background.gif" LINK="#666666" ALINK="#ff0000" VLINK="#999999" LEFTMARGIN=24 TOPMARGIN=18>
<P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT COLOR=BLUE><B><font size=2 face="Times New Roman"><a href="ch13web.htm"><img src="arrowleft.gif" width="45" height="54" align="absmiddle" name="ch1web.htm" border="0"></a><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+1" color="#999999">
<a href="mainindex.htm">INDEX</a> </font><a href="ch15web.htm"><img src="arrowright.gif" width="45" height="54" align="absmiddle" border="0"></a></font></b></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman"><B><font size="+2">Chapter
14<br>
FEMALE HACKERS?</font></B></FONT></P>
<table width="620" border="0" align="center">
<tr>
<td>
<p><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Within computer culture</b>, and especially
hacker culture, women are rare. Among the phreakers, there were (and perhaps
still are) a few women, maybe because telephony is normally considered
a female profession. (most switchboard operators and such are women).
Rave culture is a little more equal, with about a third of the audience
being female. Among the hobby hackers and the criminal hackers, there's
only the occasional female enthusiast. Fortunately (I think), more and
more women, especially at the universities, have discovered computers
through the Internet. Often, someone starts out using the computer as
a typewriter, then she hears of online discussion groups and forums for
her major, and once she's tried communication over the Net, she's bitten.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">The most famous female hacker went under
the pseudonym <b>Susan Thunder</b>. (Allow me to jump back and forth a
bit between the themes of the book). Susan was a textbook example of a
maladjusted girl. She'd been mistreated as a kid, but was of the survivor
kind. She became a prostitute as early as her teens, and earned her living
working LA brothels. On her time off, she was a groupie, fraternizing
with various rock bands. She discovered how easy it was to get backstage
passes for concerts just by calling up the right people and pretending
to be, for example, a secretary at a record company. She became an active
phreaker at the very end of the 70's, and was naturally an expert at social
engineering.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Soon, she hooked up with a couple of guys
named <b>Ron</b> and <b>Kevin Mitnick</b>, both notorious hackers, later
to be arrested for breaking into the computers of various large corporations.
Susan's specialty was attacking military computer systems, which gave
her a sense of power. To reach her objectives, she could employ methods
that would be unthinkable for male hackers: she sought out various military
personnel and went to bed with them. Later, while they were sleeping,
she could go through their clothes for usernames and passwords. (Many
people kept these written down on pieces of paper in order to remember
them). Susan therefore hacked so that she could feel a sense of <i>power
</i>or <i>influence </i>in this world, despite her hopeless social predicament.
For her, hacking was a way to increase her self-esteem.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">She was determined to learn the art of hacking
down to the finest details. When her hacker friend, Ron, didn't take her
completely seriously, she became angry and did everything she could to
get him busted. Another reason for her anger was, supposedly, that she
had had short relationship with him but he had chosen another, more socially
acceptable girlfriend over her. It was probably Susan who broke into U.S.
Leasing's systems and deleted all the information off one computer, filling
it with messages such as "FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU", and programming
the printers to continuously spit out similar insults. Among all the profanities,
she wrote the names Kevin and Ron. The incident led to the first conviction
of the legendary Kevin.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">When Ron and Kevin were arrested, Susan
was given immunity from prosecution in return for witnessing against them.
Later, she referred to herself as a security expert, and conspicuously
demonstrated how easily she could break into military computers. It is
beyond all doubt that Susan really <i>had</i> enormous capabilities, and
that she really <i>could</i> access top-secret information in military
systems. It is less certain that she could fire nuclear missiles. It is
clear that she couldn't do it using only a computer. Possibly, with her
access to secret phone numbers, personal information, and security codes,
she <i>might</i> have been able to trick the personnel at a silo into
firing a missile. I really hope that she couldn't. Stories about hackers
like Susan provided the basic idea for the movie <i>War Games</i>. Susan
has currently abandoned hacking in favor of professional poker playing,
which she engages in with great success.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">However, Susan is more of the exception
that confirms the rule when it comes to hacking as a male endeavor. This
phenomenon has lots of candidate explanations, ranging from moronic propositions
that computers are unfeminine because they were invented by men (like
the sowing machine, the coffee maker, and the telephone), to suggestions
that women are somehow alien to the internal competition for status and
arrogance that characterizes hackers. All of this is naturally bullshit.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">The real reason to the inequality within
the computing world is <i>probably</i> that many women are raised to fulfill
passive roles. While men learn to passionately engage themselves in discussion
over, for example, things on the TV screen, women learn to passively observe
and act as social complements on the sidelines. Passion, assertiveness,
and arrogance, all typical characteristics of hackers, are seldom encouraged.
<i>Women are taught a superficially passive demeanor, in which their only
possibility for action is by entrusting it to the hands of men</i>. All
exploration of new territory apparently has to be done by men. (Preferably
<i>young</i> men). As an example, look at our traditional way of handling
emotional and sexual relations, where the general trend is still that
men take the initiative and women should provide the passive, nurturing
factor. Another factor is that men are more solitary than women. It's
an open subject as to why this is, but it is obvious that it is incredibly
difficult to break this pattern.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Since hackers are normally of an age in
which it is very important to externally display one's gender identity,
many women distance themselves from computers out of fear of seeming "unfeminine".
This act, which is perceived as an autonomous decision by the individual,
is actually part of the social indoctrination of traditional gender roles.
Parents and relatives add to this by giving computers almost exclusively
to boys, and almost never to girls. Among the home computer hackers
during the period of 1980-89, about 0.3 % were female, according to rough
estimates. In the U.S., there was a female Apple II cracker who managed
to liberate around 800 games from their copy protection. In Europe, the
most famous female hackers were part of the <b>TBB</b> (The Beautiful
Blondes) group, which specialized in C64 and consisted of four women under
the pseudonyms of <b>BBR, BBL, BBD,<i> </i></b>and <b>TBB</b>, of which
BBR and TBB were programmers. They became known on the Scene through a
number of demos toward the end of the 80's. Cynically enough, both BBR
and TBB died in 1993, not even reaching the age of 20. Among today's Amiga
and PC enthusiasts, the proportion of women is a little higher, somewhere
around 1% (Source: <b>The Mistress</b> in <i>Skyhigh "17</i>, 1995).</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">At MIT, the cradle of hacker culture, there
weren't any women at all. There were female programmers who used the machines,
and even really good ones, but they never developed the obsession found
among the young men at MIT. These hackers thought it had to be a matter
of genetic differences that caused the women to not fall into this obsession.
This is a dangerous opinion and absolutely untrue. According to statistics,
most boys who become intensively engaged in computing are around 14-15
years old. The same preoccupation occurs in women too, but usually about
two years earlier, since their biological clock dictates it. Most people
know what 12-year-old girls can get caught up in with such intense interest
that they forget social duties and just concern themselves with the <i>hobby</i>
for its own sake. The women's (or, rather, the girls') equivalent
of the rather fickle but enchanting object known as the computer, is another
object with similar characteristics - a four-legged one, which we usually
call a <i>horse</i>. In many cases the similarities are striking, even
though it is difficult to prove that the same mechanisms lie behind it.
Programming a computer is really not that different from teaching a horse
to jump fences. It includes the same measure of competition, control,
and ceremony. With the boys in front of the computer, there's an almost
empathic passion, just like it is with the girls in the stables.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">It's completely obvious that if this trend
continues, men will acquire the power in a future society largely built
on computer technology. It would be a good thing if more women used computers.
Even hackers are generally positively of a positive attitude towards seeing
more women in their male-dominated fields. The few women that exist on
the Scene have been very successful, and received lots of attention as
"exotic" phenomena. The respect for female hackers is very great.
Supposedly, there are also female hackers who have hidden their gender
and are assumed to be male by their hacker friends. The thrill of playing
out such a role isn't hard to understand. For the first time in history,
it's been possible to assume a gender opposite of one's own without great
difficulty, and for a woman to really be treated like a man.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">The German police sometimes use this respect
for female hackers to bust hackers and software pirates. By publishing
posts and ads on BBSs and in computer magazines, using female names, they
attract the attention of their targets. It is a matter of argument whether
it's ethically correct to exploit people's emotions in this manner in
order to fight crime, and it obviously does no service to equality. It
becomes even more difficult for women to break into a sub-culture where
they might be suspected of being law enforcement moles.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman"> <b>Pornography, etc.</b><br>
One cannot fail to note the preponderance of male chauvinism on the Internet
and in the home-computing world. Basically, it all started with the game
<i>Softporn</i> for the Apple II, by the <b>Sierra On-Line</b> computer
company, and the even more successful sequel for the IBM PC: <i>Leisure
Suit Larry</i>. The object of the two games is the same: getting women
into bed. The fact that the Internet is crawling with soft- and hardcore
pornography doesn't help things either. Whether or not this is a sign
of a screaming need for sexual stimulation among male computer users is
hard to say. (In any case, there's no shortage of pictures of naked men).
Naturally, it's less embarrassing to download pictures to your computer
than going out and buying porn mags - since no one can see what you're
doing. (As far as you know, at least).</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">A large part of the pictures available on
the Internet are marketing tools for different pay-BBSs, from which you
can retrieve even more pictures - if you pay… As usual there is,
in the porn industry, a ruthless commercial interest in the Internet.
Sex sells, and the Net is used as bait in a new and lucrative market.
I'm going to emphasize that this is mostly a trend in the U.S. I have
yet to hear of a Swedish BBS that works this way - instead, in Sweden
it's free to download the pictures, which the users engage in with abandon.
A few porn magazines have opened their own Internet zones which users
have to pay to gain access to.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Some PC enthusiasts have gotten a bug for
collecting porn pictures, and collect them in the same manner as others
collect stamps or trading cards. Actually, this hobby isn't anything strange.
During the early years of hacking, many collected thousands of computer
games just to have them. It was <i>forbidden</i>, since the manufacturers
claimed that copying the games was prohibited. Pornography is <i>both</i>
taboo and copyright-protected, since they are almost always scanned from
porn magazines. It should be added that the porn industry is less than
pleased with this type of distribution.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Censoring these pictures on the network
is virtually impossible, and not necessarily desirable. The Internet is
based on the supposition that you search for the information that you're
interested in, and that you thereby bypass information that you find irrelevant,
and this is the philosophy that colors the attitude of those who maintain
the network. Whoever publishes the information holds the responsibility,
and the middleman cannot be blamed for anything. It would be just as consistent
to accuse Telia or the postal service of being accessories in crime for
not conducting enough surveillance and letter-scanning. Communication
should be free.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">SUNET (Swedish University NETwork), under
the command of Björn Eriksen, distributes the Internet in Sweden.
They have so far consistently refused to interfere with the flow of information.
(And I hope they never will). Individual universities, however, have (following
public awareness) started to block certain discussion groups with themes
such as piracy, sex, suicide, and drugs. Blocking pictures in general,
however, is much more tricky, not to say impossible. If someone encrypts
the pictures, it becomes <i>completely</i> impossible to stop them. The
only thing you can do is monitor the pictures stored on the computers
inside your own organization, which has led to public intervention against
pornography at the Lund and Umeå universities, among others.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">If you really wanted to crush the market
for the porn industry, you could simply remove its entitlement to copyrights
for its products. This would immediately ruin the market for the established
industry, and force the companies to go bankrupt in just a couple of years. I
will, for the sake of clarity, add that most women who are actively involved
with BBSs and the Internet take the whole thing in good stride. If someone
insults them with profanities, they usually respond with the text version
of a pat on the head - <i>"There, there, calm down now"</i>,
or something similar.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Even if cyberspace is male-dominated, we
can comfort ourselves with the fact that the world's first programmer,
<b>George Byron</b>'s daughter <b>Ada Lovelace</b>, was a woman. Ada was
a <i>real</i> hacker, by the classic definition. She was the product of
a failed marriage between Byron and Annabella Milbanke. Just like many
contemporary hackers, she escaped painful emotions by dedicating herself
to the natural sciences together with her friend <b>Charles Babbage</b>,
and completely immersed herself in the quest to construct <i>the analytical
machine</i>.</font></p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p align="center"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"> </font><b><font size=2 face="Times New Roman"><a href="ch13web.htm"><img src="arrowleft.gif" width="45" height="54" align="absmiddle" name="ch1web.htm" border="0"></a><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+1" color="#999999">
<a href="mainindex.htm">INDEX</a> </font><a href="ch15web.htm"><img src="arrowright.gif" width="45" height="54" align="absmiddle" border="0"></a></font></b></p>
<p align=center> </p>
<p align=center><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><font size="1">Design
and formatting by <a href="mailto:nirgendwo@usa.net">Daniel Arnrup</a>/<a href="http://www.voodoosystems.nu">Voodoo
Systems</a></font></font></p>
<P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT COLOR=BLUE><B></b></FONT></P>
</BODY>
</HTML>
|
