Copyright 1995 The Tribune Co. Publishes The Tampa Tribune The Tampa Tribune September 15, 1995, Friday, FINAL EDITION SECTION: FRIDAY EXTRA!, Pg. 18 LENGTH: 961 words HEADLINE: Computer vets hacked off by crooks; A decade ago, hackers' stunts were relatively harmless. BYLINE: Reid Kanaley BODY: PAUL TAYLOR, A 25-year-old self-taught computer whiz on probation for hacking, talks about the hacker ethic in the same way old men reminisce about a bygone era. "The hacker ethic was born in the early '80s," said Taylor, of Ridley, Pa., near Philadelphia. It meant that the "main reason to hack is to learn," and "when you get into a (computer or telephone) system, don't mess anything up - look around and leave, without getting caught." Taylor says he has followed that ethic (except for the part about getting caught rerouting telephone calls). But these days? "There's the younger guys who get on. They say, "We're going to go in the DMV and make ourselves licenses, the hell with ethics.' " The keyboard and phone-pad jockeys who claim membership in a subculture noted for breaking-and-entering in cyberspace find themselves these days wrestling with the often ambiguous morals of their gray-area pursuits. They are also trying to come to grips with the surge of new people and data onto the Internet, and their own creeping celebrity. The nerd image dies hard. If a recent Nevada gathering was any indication, today's hacker is still typically a white male in his teens or early 20s. But he is more likely to have purple hair, pierced eyebrows, tattoos and combat boots than horn-rimmed glasses, chest-hugging flood pants and a vinyl pocket protector. With millions of people now on-line, a lot of interest has been directed toward these supposed gremlins in the cybershadows. Stephen Cobb, a computer security expert for the National Computer Security Association, said hacking, with its anarchic, anti-establishment edge, may be "the rock and roll of the 1990s." Recent movies - such as "Johnny Mnemonic," "The Net," "Virtuosity" and "Hackers," opening today - put computers at the center of their plots. And there are more to come. Two screenwriters attended Defcon, the Las Vegas conference that attracted about 400 self-professed hackers last month. Those attending said their negative, even criminal, image is largely undeserved. They lay claim to a philosophical tradition that has evolved its own set of libertarian ideals and values. In fact, the hacker ethic cited by Taylor was actually nurtured during the 1960s, when personal computers were only a dream, and computer networks were exclusive to a tight group of government and academic researchers. As described in the 1984 book "Hackers" by Steven Levy, the hacker ethic evolved from growing beliefs among enthusiasts that computers really could change people and society, that there ought to be free and total access to information, that authority should be mistrusted and decentralization promoted. These notions were embodied both in the eventual development of the user-friendly Apple personal computer by a Berkeley hacker named Stephen Wozniak, and in the open, chaotic architecture of the Internet, a global web of 40,000 computer networks and tens of millions of interconnected computers. "Hackers have pretty much written all the software running on the Internet," said a woman who calls herself Susan Thunder. Thunder, 36, is a California hooker-turned-hacker whose exploits were chronicled in the 1991 book "Cyberpunk." European hackers take credit for setting up electronic bulletin boards for relief workers and peace groups in the war-ravaged former Yugoslavia, where they've also rigged diesel generators and satellite phone hookups to keep the patchwork system on-line where normal utilities are cut off. "Hacking is not always malicious," said Taylor. "It's basically something you do that's not-for-profit." Thunder, on the other hand, said she got "a kick out of getting classified data." She insisted, however, that hacking is misrepresented to the public, that it is simply "the pursuit of knowledge" for 95 percent of its devotees. Yet Thunder hosted a fundraising event during the Las Vegas conference to help her friend, Kevin D. Mitnick, a well-known hacker arrested in February after a nationwide hunt. "Unfortunately, Kevin's demonstrated his proclivity to land in that 5 percent," said Thunder. Mitnick allegedly roamed the Internet to steal data worth millions and pilfer 20,000 credit card numbers. He also is accused of being the hacker who taunted one of the nation's foremost computer security experts by tapping into the expert's own databases in San Diego last Christmas Day. To distinguish good hacking from bad, some in the subculture use a new term, "cracking," to describe the work of the destructive hackers, said Cobb. "When I started being a hacker, it was a more honorable term," said Mark Carey, 22, a video-game programmer who lives in Las Vegas. These days, he said, "the line between a hacker and a cracker is a very delicate line, but there is a line." According to Cobb, "The problem you run into is: What can be the legitimate basis for hacking, if that hacking is any sort of serious hacking?" After all, hacking does involve gaining unauthorized access to computer or telephone systems. The hackers say their explorations demonstrate the insecurity of electronic networks, and their probings should serve to warn individuals and companies to be wary travelers on the information highway. But critics say hackers are just trying to excuse behavior that is bad, or illegal. "It would not be a service to me for someone to tell me my window is unlocked by coming into my living room," said Bill Cheswick, coauthor of a new book "Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker." "I don't want them in. I don't care if they have ethics or not." "If hackers were system administrators, they'd soon change their tune," added Cobb.