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voice. “I’m having trouble logging in to one of my accounts on the Ark.”
    “You’ll have to contact Jerry Covert.”
    I asked for his extension; she didn’t hesitate to give it to me, and when I reached him, I said, “Hey, Jerry, this is Anton,” figuring that even if he didn’t know Chernoff personally, he was almost certain to know the name.
    “Hey, how’re you doing?” he answered jovially, obviously not familiar enough with Chernoff in person to know that I didn’t sound like him.
    “Okay,” I said, “but did you guys delete one of my accounts? I created an account for testing some code last week, and now I can’t log in.” He asked what the account log-in was.
    I knew from experience that under RSTS/E, account numbers were a combination of the project number and the programmer number, such as 1,119—each number running up to 254. Privileged accounts always had the project number of 1. And I had discovered that the RSTS/E Development Team used programmer numbers starting at 200.
    I told Jerry that my test account was “1,119,” crossing my fingers that it wasn’t assigned to anyone.
    It was a lucky guess. He checked and told me there wasn’t any 1,119 account. “Damn,” I answered. “Somebody must have removed it. Can you re-create it for me?”
    What Chernoff wanted, Chernoff got. “No problem,” Jerry said. “What password do you want?”
    I spotted a jar of strawberry jelly in the kitchen cabinet across from me. I told him, “Make it ‘jelly.’ ”
    In hardly more than a blink, he said, “Okay, all done.”
    I was
stoked
, the adrenaline running high. I could hardly believe it could’ve been so easy. But would it really work?
    From my computer, I called the dial-in number my would-be mentor Neal had given me. The call connected and this text appeared:
     
RSTS V7.0-07 * The Ark * Job 25 KB42 05-Jul-80 11:17 AM
    # 1,119
    Password:
    Dialup password:
     
    Damn, damn, damn. I dialed Jerry Covert back, again as Chernoff. “Hey, I’m dialing in from home, and it’s asking for a dial-up password.”
    “You didn’t get it in your email? It’s ‘buffoon.’ ”
    I tried again and
I was in!
    Before anything else, I started grabbing all the passwords for the guys in the development team.
    When I got together with Neal, I told him, “Getting into the Ark was a snap. I have every RSTS/E developer’s password.” He rolled his eyes with an expression that said,
What’s this guy been smoking?
    He dialed the modem number and got to the Ark’s log-in banner. Telling him to “move over,” I typed the log-on credentials and got the “Ready” prompt.
    “Satisfied, Neal?” I asked.
    He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was like I had shown him a winning lottery ticket. After they had picked my brain for details of how I had gained access, Neal, Dave, and a few other friends went to a company called PSI near Culver City, where they had the newest, fastest modems, running at 1,200 baud—four times as fast as the 300-baud modems the rest of us had. The guys started downloading the RSTS/E source code.
    The old adage says there’s no honor among thieves. Instead of taking me into their confidence and sharing information, they downloaded the source code for RSTS/E and kept it to themselves.
    I learned later that these bastards actually called DEC and told themthe Ark had been hacked, and gave
my
name as the hacker. Total betrayal. I had no suspicion these guys would dream of snitching on me, especially when they had reaped such rich rewards. It was the first time of many instances to come when the people I trusted would betray me.
    At seventeen, I was still in high school but dedicated to working on what might be called a PhD in RSTS/E hacking. I would find targets by checking want ads for companies looking to hire a computer person experienced with RSTS/E. I’d call, claiming to be from DEC Field Support, and was usually able to talk a system administrator into revealing dial-up