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Mile End exchange – the telephone office nearest QMC – traced the hacker back to a telephone in Enfield. Another monitor was placed on the suspect number to record all future activity.

On 5 July Bob came into work to find that the computer journal recording the Mad Hacker’s intrusions had been wiped out. That could only have happened if the hacker had captured sysman status again. Jones also found this message:

This installation has been hacked by Alan Dolby.

Alan Dolby is a registered member of Hacking Inc. (ICL Division) which is a subsidiary of Hacking International.

This hack is © 1988 by Alan Dolby (the Mad Hacker).

The announcement was followed by a message for Marlyn, a computer operator previously employed by QMC and wrongly believed by the Mad Hacker to be the sysman:

Now Marlyn is probably thinking !@£?$ (sh*t) how the hell did he get in this time . . . I better have a look at where I keep his journals . . . Oh sh*t she says, they are not there anymore . . . !@£?$

Now Marlyn it’s getting pretty boring having to keep on teaching you manners. I’d rather be at my other sysman hack sites. So I hope you have learned (except how I did it) from this Marlyn, and reply to my messages, otherwise you will make me very very angry and Roger (Dr Roger MacKenzie) will tell you one thing, you won’t like it when I’m angry, I go around XU (:SYSMAN) ECT (no what I mean).

The reference was to the Mad Hacker’s successful lock-out of MacKenzie from his own system. The message continued:

Still don’t get too despondent Marlyn, I mean what did you expect?? If I can hack Roger’s place twice, then anything else is just a piece of cake and I mean your no guru Marlyn . . . Roger is the guru, he writes programs, he doesn’t phone up saying Oh Roger help me Roger . . .

Have I wound you up enough Marlyn???

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