[12971] in Cypherpunks
Rucker on "Cryps"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Arthur Chandler)
Tue May 3 18:59:05 1994
Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 15:45:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: Arthur Chandler <arthurc@crl.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Cc: cyberspace/Humanities@sfsu.edu
There is an unflattering picture of crackers and anti-crackers (and
crypto-heads?) in Rudy Rucker's new novel, *The Hacker and the Ants*.
Here's a sample:
* * * * * * * * * *
In the valley these days, phreaks were youths who cobbled together
their own approximation of a decent cyberspace deck and afterward used it
for weird cyberspace pranks. Cryps were phreaks who'd turned professional
and gone into the employ of companies involved in industrial espionage.
If you broke into some company's machines often enough, they were likely
to hire you as a cryp to break into other companies, or they might use
you as a security consultant to keep out the other cryps. It was a
vicious circle -- the cryps' security-cracking escapades created a demand
for the services they could provide.
(*The Hacker and the Ants*, page 90)
