First Principles - 'Hack'

The first hack I ever did was executed at an exhibition stand run
by BT's then rather new Prestel service. Earlier, in an adjacent
conference hall, an enthusiastic speaker had demonstrated viewdata's
potential world-wide spread by logging on to Viditel, the
infant Dutch service. He had had, as so often happens in the these
circumstances, difficulty in logging on first time. He was using one
of those sets that displays auto-dialled telephone numbers; that was
how I found the number to call. By the time he had finished his third
unsuccessful log-on attempt I (and presumably several others) had all
the pass numbers. While the BT staff were busy with other visitors to
their stand, I picked out for myself a relatively neglected viewdata
set. I knew that it was possible to by-pass the auto-dialler with its
pre-programmed phone numbers in this particular model, simply by
picking up the the phone adjacent to it, dialling my preferred
number, waiting for the whistle, and then hitting the keyboard button
labelled 'viewdata'. I dialled Holland, performed my little by-pass
trick and watched Viditel write itself on the screen. The pass
numbers were accepted first time and, courtesy of...no, I'll spare
them embarrassment...I had only lack of fluency in Dutch to restrain
my explorations. Fortunately, the first BT executive to spot what I
had done was amused as well.
Most hackers seem to have started in a similar way. Essentially
you rely on the foolishness and inadequate sense of security of
computer salesmen, operators, programmers and designers.
In the introduction to this book I described hacking as a sport;
and like most sports, it is both relatively pointless and filled with
rules, written or otherwise, which have to be obeyed if there is to
be any meaningfulness to it. Just as rugby football is not only about
 forcing a ball down one end of a field, so hacking is not just about
using any means to secure access to a computer.
On this basis, opening private correspondence to secure a password
on a public access service like Prestel and then running around the
system building up someone's bill, is not what hackers call hacking.
The critical element must be the use of skill in some shape or form.