e recesses of
their operating software almost as a matter of routine. "Computer
security" in these early, primitive systems was at best an
afterthought. What security there was, was entirely physical, for it
was assumed that anyone allowed near this expensive, arcane hardware
would be a fully qualified professional expert.

In a campus environment, though, this meant that grad students,
teaching assistants, undergraduates, and eventually, all manner of
dropouts and hangers-on ended up accessing and often running the works.

Universities, even modern universities, are not in the business of
maintaining security over information. On the contrary, universities,
as institutions, pre-date the "information economy" by many centuries
and are not-for-profit cultural entities, whose reason for existence
(purportedly) is to discover truth, codify it through techniques of
scholarship, and then teach it. Universities are meant to PASS THE
TORCH OF CIVILIZATION, not just download data into student skulls, and
the values of the academic community are strongly at odds with those of
all would-be information empires. Teachers at all levels, from
kindergarten up, have proven to be shameless and persistent software
and data pirates. Universities do not merely "leak information" but
vigorously broadcast free thought.

This clash of values has been fraught with controversy. Many hackers
of the 1960s remember their professional apprenticeship as a long
guerilla war against the uptight mainframe-computer "information
priesthood." These computer-hungry youngsters had to struggle hard for
access to computing power, and many of them were not above certain, er,
shortcuts. But, over the years, this practice freed computing from the
sterile reserve of lab-coated technocrats and was largely responsible
for the explosive growth of computing in general society--especially
PERSONAL computing.

Access to technical power acted like catnip on certain of these
youngsters. Most of the basic techniques of computer intrusion:
password cracking, trapdoors, backdoors, trojan horses--were invented
in college environments in the 1960s, in the early days of network
computing. Some off-the-cuff experience at computer intrusion was to
be in the informal resume of most "hackers" and many future industry
giants. Outside of the tiny cult of computer enthusiasts, few people
thought much about the implications of "breaking into" computers.
This sort of a