UNDERGROUND

An hour or so later, when the CitiSaudi data dump had finally finished, Par was stunned at what he found in his capture. These weren’t just any old cards. These were debit cards, and they were held by very rich Arabs. These people just plopped a few million in a bank account and linked a small, rectangular piece of plastic to that account. Every charge came directly out of the bank balance. One guy listed in the data dump bought a $330 000 Mercedes Benz in Istanbul – on his card. Par couldn’t imagine being able to throw down a bit of plastic for that. Taking that plastic out for a spin around the block would bring a whole new meaning to the expression, ‘Charge it!’

When someone wins the lottery, they often feel like sharing with their friends. Which is exactly what Par did. First, he showed his room-mates. They thought it was very cool. But not nearly so cool as the half dozen hackers and phreakers who happened to be on the telephone bridge Par frequented when the master of X.25 read off a bunch of the cards.

Par was a popular guy after that day. Par was great, a sort of Robin Hood of the underground. Soon, everyone wanted to talk to him. Hackers in New York. Phreakers in Virginia. And the Secret Service in San Francisco.

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Par didn’t mean to fall in love with Theorem. It was an acci- dent, and he couldn’t have picked a worse girl to fall for. For starters, she lived in Switzerland. She was 23 and he was only seventeen. She also happened to be in a relationship – and that relationship was with Electron, one of the best Australian hackers of the late 1980s. But Par couldn’t help himself. She was irresistible, even though he had never met her in person. Theorem was different. She was smart and funny, but refined, as a European woman can be.

They met on Altos in 1988.

Theorem didn’t hack computers. She didn’t need to, since she could connect to Altos through her old university computer