Myspace's Tom Anderson was an 80s "WarGames" Hacker

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/30/myspace-cofounder-tom-anderson-was-a-real-life-wargames-hacker-in-1980s/

by dmix • 18 years ago

69 26 18 years ago

DaniFong3• 18 years ago

I used to think that Myspace left open the possibility for embeds by sheer ignorance. It now seems a lot more likely that they knew what they were doing...

GavinB• 18 years ago

Part of the thing that people think is fun about myspace is the feeling that they're hacking it by customizing their profile.

DaniFong3• 18 years ago

Exactly. Customization pushes a very fundamental human button.

I'm reminded of some archaeological studies of human culture, using gene studies and recovered tools and a million other pieces of evidence. They determined that clothes were developed nearly 70,000 years ago, whereas spoken language, as we now know it, arose around 50,000 years ago.

In other words, fashion predated language.

Hexstream2• 18 years ago

I don't see what's so interesting about this article...

Hexstream2• 18 years ago

Anyone care to enlighten me?

edit: I just reread the article... Let's see, Tom Anderson created MySpace, did war-dialing in the WarGames times, got access to the Chase bank system (apparently with a default or weak password), told 40 of his friends how to do it, and they all got raided simultaneously.

Public figure + black hat hacking in the past = interesting?

There's one thing I found really interesting:

"One of the reasons Anderson would hack into living room sized mainframe systems was to get access to computers that could run a C compiler to learn programming. There were no open source or free C compilers at the time, and personal computers had very limited memory and processing power, so hackers would try to access them on other systems."

tlrobinson2• 18 years ago

I think most people assumed the MySpace guys knew just enough PHP to get MySpace off the ground and then got lucky. It's interesting to see there's a little more to it than that.

KevBurnsJr3• 18 years ago

For a long time, I wondered whether Tom was a real person.

It's nice to have a criminal record to go with his face.

Makes him feel a little more real.

He is my friend, u know...

copenja• 18 years ago

Well, I worked at myspace so I can tell you that he is very real.

He is actually a really cool guy.

BrandonM• 18 years ago

I voted the article up simply because it was a good piece of original, well-balanced, interesting investigative reporting.

btw0• 18 years ago

Smart people tend to do smart things that keep surprising the rest throughout their lives.

iamdave• 18 years ago

That was actually a damn fine article. Informative, and completely devoid of that TechCrunch fluff. I've got a whole new look at Tom now..

Prrometheus• 18 years ago

The things you find out about your friends...

tlrobinson2• 18 years ago

My respect for MySpace Tom almost rose significantly, until I got to this bit...

"Anderson obtained or guessed the passwords necessary to get through the first level of security and, once connected, changed at least two passwords to prevent bank officials from accessing the system. The group also created fictitious accounts, and Anderson, using the Lord Flathead name, left a message saying that unless he was given free use of the system he would destroy records."

Not cool. Pretty stupid too.

dmix• 18 years ago

14 years old hacking into a major banks computer system in the 1980s, with a group of (40+) hackers looking up to him.

At that age he was bound to let that go to his head and get a little too confident.

KevBurnsJr3• 18 years ago

Yup, that's a recipe for bust.

wheels• 18 years ago

I, fortunately, did absolutely nothing idiotic at the age of 14.

ig1• 18 years ago

+1 for techcrunch doing actual investigative journalism.

acesamped• 18 years ago

I wonder if he hacked into his schools mainframe and altered his academic record (like in the movie). hmmmm...

kids...

Myspace's Tom Anderson was an 80s "WarGames" Hacker

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