DARKMARK

a quick learner and before long his computer was scanning for servers
on the Internet.

Using an automatic program, his computer would send myriad
messages onto the Web that would effectively knock on the door of
servers whose physical location could have been anywhere in the world.
When the server answered the door, Matrix’s computer would ask, ‘Can
I come in?’ Most servers would then reply to his computer, ‘What’s
the password?’ But he found a sufficient number of servers whose
administrators had not bothered to set a password, in which case the
server replied to Matrix’s machine, ‘Sure, come on in. I’m yours to do
with as you please, you naughty master computer!’

For Matrix, administrators who left their computers vulnerable like
this were beneath contempt. Anyone could walk in and steal a compa-
ny’s secrets. It’s no different, he thought, from me taking my wallet
stuffed full of notes to a shopping centre and then placing it in the
middle of the mall before walking away.

Then there were other servers whose passwords could be easily
guessed, such as those that retained the default password from the
manufacturer, usually something like ‘admin’ or — the most crushingly
stupid password of all — ‘password’.

With other computers, he found a vulnerability in their security
system (perhaps a little-used ‘port’ or point of entry that failed to ask
for a password), which he could exploit to gain access to the inner
workings of the server. It might have looked like rocket science to most
computer users, but to Matrix it was like pushing at an open door and
he could teach anyone how to do it in half an hour.

The first task Matrix had to undertake, once he had taken control
of the server, was to fix the vulnerability that he himself had exploited
to gain entry: he had to ensure that nobody else could attack it as he
had done.

Having entered a server, he was then in a position to control it. If
he wished, he could watch all the email and Internet traffic going in
and out. But he didn’t wish: all he wanted to do was use these servers
to receive, store and distribute games using fXp technology.

Matrix was just fifteen years old, but he could at will come and go
in huge parts of the Internet that most adults did not even appreciate
existed. His parents had no idea of the secret world he was exploring
from his bedroom. Nor were they likely to find out — downloading