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THE ILLUMINATI CONSPIRACY

at its Washington headquarters. Nor had it installed the mandatory patches. So another event was staged for German television audiences. This time, in front of the cameras, Bach and Handel broke into the two NASA computers in Washington, DC, and installed the mandatory patches that Digital had issued four months earlier. It took a matter of minutes in each case. The hackers had fixed the security flaw that NASA could not be bothered to fix for itself.

A spokesman for NASA in Washington, DC, was not impressed. The loophole in the operating system was not a 'security flaw', he insisted. The information on the computers was not classified: it was just scientific data, for the use of scientists generally. The two computers were, he said, 'like a public library'.

The VAXbusters knew differently. With the higher privileges they had been able to manipulate from the multitude of IDs and passwords they had copied, they had the authority of the chief librarian in NASA's library. They had roamed through the off-limits sections of the shelves; one of the files they had copied was a fifty-two-page document outlining the security within the entire NASA computer system.

The story, despite the Americans' professed indifference, got heavy play. Steffen found himself on television more than once, explaining the arcana of hacking and his own role in the VAXbuster saga. Eventually the media interest waned; and that, Steffen assumed, was that. He had presumed without the Illuminati.

The French were less phlegmatic than the Americans. They had been suffering some 'very serious' hacking incidents that had begun in 1986 and were still continuing in 1987. The incidents included the theft and destruction of important programs and data from VAX computers at Philips-France and SGS-Thomson - the two companies targeted by the KGB. The total loss to French companies, it was alleged, reached an astronomical level, some billions of francs.

When the French authorities were told about the VAXbusters, they became convinced that German hackers were the culprits. The penetration techniques used on the French VAXen were the same as those described in the August report for the German secret service.

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