THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN, Edition 1 SAT 04 OCT 1997, Page S01 HACK STOCK / THREE DAYS OF SUN, FUN AND BREAK-INS By: SUELETTE DREYFUS AT THE centre of the camp site lay a large black tombstone. On it was engraved the name Bill Gates and this epitaph: "Where do you want to go today?". Mock mourners paused for a moment's silence and, after raising their glasses in a toast to Bill's demise, attached their own epitaphs to the stone: "It seems Bill has signed the final nondisclosure agreement" and "Death is not a bug, it's a feature". A handwritten sign reading "Microsoft Mouse" pointed to a dead fieldmouse. Never let it be said that hackers don't have a sense of humour. They are by definition irreverent, and at HIP '97 they revelled in the opportunity to push the envelope. HIP '97, a three-day log-in outside Amsterdam in August, featured an impressive arsenal of technology: a kilometre of fibreoptic cable; more than 800 computers; a mobile trailer with a dozen payphones; a red circus tent; 20 portable toilets; an endless supply of techno music; a pirate radio station; two police; three telescopes and a temporary astronomy lab; and more than 1500 hackers, phreakers and computer network enthusiasts from around the world. And all this was put to some truly disrespectful uses. Hidden in one of the portable toilets was a waterproof Web camera, and running amok around the main tent was an interactive wheelchair controlled by voyeurs on the Internet. The 1997 HIP (Hacking in Progress) conference was the third such celebration of European underground techno enthusiasm. The first, The Galactic Hacker Party, was in 1989, followed by HEU (Hacking at the End of the Universe) '93. As with HIP '97, these festivals were held in the Netherlands, and were organised by the same group of freethinking Dutch hackers. This year the conference's main focus was on government censorship of the Net and the problems, such as the growth of muchhated spam , associated with commercialisation of the Net. But its raison d'etre was much broader: to celebrate the irreverence and do-it-yourself outlook that has made electronic banditry so attractive to so many people.The Dutch Government was prepared for the worst: HIP '97 had surely the only contract in the world that specifically prohibited computer hacking from a camp site. "The forestry department found out who we were just before we signed the camp sites contract and insisted on adding an antihacking clause," said conference organiser Maurice Wessling. In turn, when it came to admission -about $100 for three days for ordinary people -the organisers felt compelled to create a special "corporate" ticket for business people, which cost $1000. "Without that, corporations probably wouldn't think it was a serious conference, so we gave them the option of a serious price," Wessling explained. I had gone to HIP '97 to hunt for the quintessential modern hacker. The new European hacker is a different creature from the established American version, who is typically a male aged 18-21 with a propensity for demolishing hotel telephone switchboards. At HIP '97, the talk was all about building things, not tearing them down. At least a quarter of the HIPsters were female, many were over 30, and almost everyone dressed in rugged geek instead of attitude-wear. There was little evidence of nerdiness; people geeking in French just don't seem so geeky. At night, the darkened camp site turned into a collection of tent parties, with people chatting in person and online -sometimes with a fellow hacker only a few tents away. Ethernet cables crisscrossed the fields and meandered into tents which glowed from the eerie light of computer screens inside them. During the day, those who were too lazy or too hot -to watch the conference presentations in the main circus tent simply tuned into the Real Audio/Visual broadcasts across the HIP network. I came upon a group of experts from the Forensic Science Laboratory in the Dutch Ministry of Justice, a few of whom watched the events from the cool comfort of their army tent. These people normally spend their days investigating evidence for judges, which often involves matching their wits with hackers trying to hide data. But at HIP '97 they vied with the hackers in more benign ways, quickly earning a reputation as killer Quake players. Organisers cautioned participants against doing anything illegal while at the camp site. (The Netherlands introduced strict antihacking laws in 1993.) There was another good reason for staying on the right side of the law: two police officers were on duty at all times. Marked only by their bright orange HIP '97 badges -and by discreet, waist-level lumps under their casual T-shirts -the officers blended into the HIP crowd like a couple of average guys. Maybe the badges were a giveaway, because when the officers went for a walkaround the main party tent, where more than 50 hackers had set up their machines on the HIP network, there was nothing but a sea of screen savers. The officers took the event in good humour. They weren't there to spy, rather to act as a deterrent. Besides, like many at HIP, they had come to learn about the state of hackers' skills at workshops such as "How to build your own DES cracker", "PIC chip programming", "Practical PGP attacks", "Smartcard security" and "Perl as a hacker tool". T HE police, like everyone else, will remember their encounters with the HIP car in the main bar tent. A team of tech-heads had worked around the clock putting together this experimental mobile interactive site, but they hadn't worked out all the glitches. Almost everyone who sat down in the tent for more than five minutes soon found themselves accosted by a jerking modified black electric wheelchair, with a sleek notebook protected under a plastic bubble on top, speakers, the curious eye of a Web camera and a protruding microphone. The contraption was completely controlled by people on the Internet; visitors to the Web site could remotely drive it around the tent, see everything and hold live conversations with people at HIP. Best of all, it was remote-controlled, giving distant electronic visitors the ultimate freedom. Unfortunately, either the drivers of the remote HIP car couldn't see the thick wooden supporting poles of the tent, or they didn't care to notice them. It was not uncommon to see the car back up, swing around in the opposite direction and accelerate into a pole at top speed, sending the support team diving. Eventually, it was assigned a permanent babysitter. The car grew out of another Dutch wireless project which also made a guest appearance at HIP. Titled "Real life", this involved a journalist who walked around wearing a Web-linked digital camera on her head, interviewing people. Viewing the scene live, people on the Net typed in questions to ask and directions in which to go. An operator then read out these requests via wireless earpiece to the journalist, who voiced the questions. The Net audience could then hear the answers live via the reporter's microphone. (In one trial run of the project prior to HIP '97, the journalist -who was at the beach was ordered b Yher Net masters into the ocean in pursuit of a bikini-clad swimmer.) As with the HIP car, this appliance also experienced glitches, such as interference from mobile phone towers. Indeed, technical problems were frequent throughout the conference. At a few of the presentations, which were broadcast in a live link-up with Beyond HOPE, the American hacker conference that was being run simultaneously in New York, communication broke down entirely. Hundreds of HIPsters waited patiently in sweltering heat in the giant circus tent. First there was sound, but no pictures. Then pictures, but no sound. Sometimes the two came together, sometimes not. Not all participants felt the need to help out; for many of them, being there was enough. Computer network student Takayuki Hono, 22, travelled from Japan to "meet hacker people" and learn more about networks. To him, a hacker was "a teacher -someone to learn from". It was irrelevant, Hono said, whether a hacker used his expertise in legal or illegal ways. Chaos Computer Club member Barbara Thoens agreed that the meaning of hacker had changed. CCC, as the famous German hacker club is commonly known, sent about 30 people to HIP, two of whom gave presentations on the security vulnerabilities of ActiveX . Thoens said hacking was about solving technical problems in a creative way, and the purpose of CCC was to share knowledge. But, she added, it was also to have a say on governments' control over the Net. The political element of hacking loomed large at HIP '97, and the German Government in particular came under fire for its heavyhanded attempts at Net censorship. Dutch cyber-activist Eveline Lubbers described an incident in which someone put Radikal, a small German left-wing magazine, on a Dutch Web site after the German Government had banned it. The German Government hassled the Dutch Internet service provider (ISP), XS4All (pronounced "access for all"), but it refused to remove the Web site. So Germany blocked all port 80 access to XS4All, meaning that no-one in Germany could get to any Web page housed on one of the largest public Dutch ISPs. Outraged, Dutch hackers set to work on a technical solution to the German ban. By changing the IP address of the Web server hourly, they thwarted it. The German Government's response was swift and ruthless: it blocked all Internet traffic from the large Dutch ISP, effectively banning the entire population of Germany from any direct Net contact with thousands of Dutch citizens. The ban was a strategic mistake. Within weeks, about 150 Web sites in 20 countries were proudly displaying copies of Radikal. The little fringe magazine that Germany had hoped to silence was now being read by thousands of people, along with a detailed description of the government's attempts to censor it on the Net. Germany had won the battle, but lost the war. Eventually Germany relented and dropped its Net blockade, although the magazine remains banned in Germany. As I was wandering toward the circus tent, I found a small group of Australians. They were easil Yidentifiable as the only HIPsters wearing wide-brimmed hats. Adjusting her big straw chapeau to fend off the summer sun, former Sydneysider Josephine Grieve, who is now living in Amsterdam, joked, "Mad dogs and hackers go out in the midday sun." An artist, Grieve said she had come to the conference to learn more about the growing link between community activists around the world and hackers. She believes that this tie is now so strong that any contemporary definition of hackers and hacking must include a cyber-activist element. "A few years ago, hacking was this illegal activity; worlds have changed since then," she said. "Hackers have gone from being llegal' to being a vital part of the new economy. The few scandals are irrelevant to the impact of a whole generation of hackers. Now hackers are driving economic development." The next conference is most probably four years away, which gives hackers plenty of real time to push the envelope still further. Yet, strangely enough, it didn't matter. Few, if any, complaints were heard. HIP hackers shrugged their shoulders, and invariably a few jumped down from the bleachers to help out the sound and vision guys.