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join me on this crusade? Or at least give support? Can I claim an act upon these creeps as LoD vengeance for defiling the hackers' image? What say, all?

An hour and a half later The Prophet uploaded his response:

Don't froth at the mouth, Puppy; you'll probably just attract the attention of the authorities, who seem to have handled this well enough on their own. Too bad the idiots at NASA and Los Alamos couldn't have done the same. How many times are they going to allow their security to be penetrated? How do you think this is going to affect domestic hackers? My guess is, the Feds are going to bear down on us harder . . .

The Highwayman, one of the bulletin board's system operators, suggested: 'Let's break into the Soviet computers and give the info to the CIA. I know you can get on a Soviet PSN [Public Switched Network, the public telephone system] from an East German gateway from West Germany . . .'

Other Legionnaires were less patriotic. Erik Bloodaxe said: 'Make money any way you can!! Fuck it. Information is a valuable commodity, and should be sold. If there is money to be made, then make it. Fuck American secrets. It doesn't matter. If Russia really wanted fucking something they would get it. Good for whoever sold it to them!!'

The last message was posted late that same night. 'This government deserves to be fucked,' said The Urvile. 'I'm all for a government that can help me (hey, kamerad, got some secrets for you cheap). Fuck America. Democracy is for loozers. Dictatorship, rah! rah!'

At this early date there were rumours that Chaos had been involved with the Soviet hacker gang, even that some of its members had been arrested. One of the Legionnaires tried calling up Altos - the board in Munich that had become an international hacker hang-out - to find out what was going on. The board was down, he reported, but it was only some sort of technical fault.

To the watching Secret Service agents, at least some of the messages suggested that American hackers might well follow in the footsteps of the Soviet hacker gang. It was disquieting - even if the

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