Keynote: Hacking the Iron Curtain: From smuggling computer parts to owning...
summary
Students build Cobra computer clones around a Z80 CPU, soldering motherboards from factory rejects, custom video cards and cassette storage; fewer than a thousand Cobras exist and a factory unit costs about half a car. Parts trade uses Kent cigarettes and coffee. Night-time lab crews write worms and viruses that scan vulnerability databases, a worm reaches contractor networks and yields a file listing thousands of Pentagon employees. Many homebuilt machines actually boot and run games.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Communist Romania birth
- 3:13Cloning computers behind Iron Curtain
- 7:35Students building Cobras secretly
- 13:03Defying system via tech
- 26:45Communism collapse freedoms
- 30:23Politehnica’s rebel lab
- 34:52Teenage hacker Larry
- 43:07Pentagon hack and beyond
- 45:13Rock musician turned hacker
- 48:03Hackers smarter than professors
- 51:20Sysadmin office pranks
- 53:06From II do double one to security
- 55:58Legacy of rebel hackers
- 57:46Passion and discovery stories
