“It was not too long ago, and certainly an experience to
remember. If you had ever shared in such an experience, you would
know the tell-tale signs too. It coincides with a deep, sinking
feeling; not in your stomach, but in the back of your head,
bringing on the type of sensation that makes your vision a bit
unfocused and makes your thoughts slightly more acute. Yes, those
of you who have experienced this know all to well the emotions
associated with the realization that an unwelcome guest has paid
your system a visit.”
“That’s right: “cracked!” An intruder had violated my system
boundaries and had taken liberties with who-knows-what.”
“You can learn a lot from a cracker, especially in the
newly-discovered time that you now find yourself with as you
reinstall the operating system from the ground up. After pulling
the remains of your system off onto a Jaz drive or 8mm tape, you
are alone with a distribution CD and the screen showing the
progress of the what used to be the system partitions being
reformatted. So, while the disk is being formatted and the CD
is spinning, there’s plenty of time to educate yourself with the
trails left behind by the cracker — from the safety of a laptop —
that is not hooked up to the network — that you will be returning
to your buddy soon anyway.“