Hacking The Planet

This image was for my DEFCON 13 opening but I used a funny experience from my flight instead.

I discovered hacking as an electronic technician at Teradyne in Agoura Hills, CA. They had dozens of Microvax II systems overseas and I realized I could hack from Agoura Hills into Boston HQ, from Boston to Berlin, Berlin to Tokyo, Tokyo back into Agoura Hills and remotely run the Microvax test system right next to me.

So I did it.

It was an awesome adrenaline rush.

The delay was several seconds but it was a hack around the planet!!! The circumference of the earth... 25,000 miles!!

Six years later I'm watching the Hackers movie and the "Hack The Planet" scene comes on. I'd mentioned my hack to local hackers in L.A. and it's an amazing coincidence that my phrase was in this movie.

Many years later, I discovered:

a) Rafael Moreu wrote the screenplay in Los Angeles in the early 90s.

b) He interviewed local hackers to develop the composite anti-hero of Zero Cool.

I hacked the planet in 1988, the same year Zero Cool crashed Wall Street. He was eleven years old in the movie but...

maybe he was actually my age.