Underground (book)

infobox Book


author = Suelette Dreyfus
name = Underground
country = Australia
language = English
genre = Non-Fiction
publisher = Reed Books Australia
release_date = 1997
media_type = Paperback
isbn = ISBN 1-86330-595-5

Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier is a 1997 book by Suelette Dreyfus. It describes the exploits of a group of Australian, American, and British black hat hackers during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

*"Craig Bowen" (nickname), administrator of two important Australian BBS ("Pacific Island" and "Zen")
*"The Parmaster", an American hacker who avoided capture by the United States Secret Service from July 1989 to November 1991
*"Phoenix", "Electron" and "Nom", who were convicted in the first major Australian trial for computer crimes
*"Pad" and "Gandalf", the British founders of the notorious "8lgm" group
*the Australian "Mendax" and "Prime Suspect", who managed to penetrate the DDN, NIC and the Nortel internal network, and the phreaker "Trax"
*"Anthrax", another Australian hacker and phreaker

The book also mentions other hackers who had contacts with the protagonists, among them "Erik Bloodaxe" of the "Legion of Doom" and "Corrupt" of the "Masters of Deception".

The first chapter of "Underground" relates the diffusion and reactions of the computer security community to the WANK worm that attacked DEC VMS computers over the DECnet in 1989 and was purportedly coded by a Melbourne hacker.

The author made the electronic edition of the book freely available in 2001 at [http://www.underground-book.com/ www.underground-book.com] .

The 2002 documentary "In the Realm of the Hackers", directed by Kevin Anderson and centered around "Phoenix" and "Electron", was inspired by this book.

External links

* [http://www.underground-book.com/ Website about the book]
* [http://www.xs4all.nl/~suelette/underground/justin/contents.html Online version of the book]