Shadowfires

to accurately track all supplies within the system and choose the perfect place and time at which to intercept them. Later, Dalmet often managed to erase all record of a stolen shipment from the computer; then, through computer-generated orders, he was able to direct unwitting supply clerks to destroy the paper files relating to that shipment-so no one could prove the theft had ever occurred because no one could prove there had been anything to steal in the first place. In this brave new world of bureaucrats and high technology, it seemed that nothing was actually real unless there were paperwork and extensive computer data to support its existence. The scheme worked wonderfully until Ben Shadway started nosing around.
    Shipped back to the States in disgrace, Sharp was not despairing
because he took with him the uplifting knowledge of the computer's wondrous talent for remaking records and rewriting history. He was sure he could use it to remake his reputation as well.
    For six months he took courses in computer programming, worked at
it day and night, to the exclusion of all else, until he was not only
a first-rate operator-programmer but a hacker of singular skill and
cleverness. And those were the days when the word hacker had
not yet been invented.
    He landed a job with Oxelbine Placement, an executive-employment
agency large enough to require a computer programmer but small and
low-profile enough to be unconcerned about the damage to its image
that might result from hiring a man with a dishonorable discharge.
All Oxelbine cared about was that he had no civilian criminal record
and was highly qualified for his work in a day when the computer
craze had not yet hit the public, leaving businesses hungry for
people with advanced data-processing skills.
    Oxelbine had a direct link with the main computer at TRW, the
largest credit-investigating firm. The TRW files were the primary
source for local and national credit-rating agencies. Oxelbine paid
TRW for information about executives who applied to it for placement
and, whenever possible, reduced costs by selling to TRW information
that TRW did not process. In addition to his work for Oxelbine, Sharp
secretly probed at
TRW's computer, seeking the scheme of its data-encoding system. He used a tedious trial-and-error approach that would be familiar to any hacker a decade later, though in those days the process was slower because the computers were slower. In time, however, he learned how to access any credit files at TRW and, more important, discovered how to add and delete data. The process was easier then than it would be later because, in those days, the need for computer security had not yet been widely recognized. Accessing his own dossier, he changed his Marine discharge from dishonorable to honorable, even gave himself a few service commendations, promoted himself from sergeant to lieutenant, and cleaned up a number of less important negatives on his credit record. Then he instructed TRW's
computer to order a destruction of the company's existing hard-copy file on him and to replace it with a file based on the new computer record.
    No longer stigmatized by the dishonorable-discharge notation on
his credit record, he was able to obtain a new job with a major
defense contractor, General Dynamics. The position was clerical and
did not require security clearance, so he avoided coming under the
scrutiny of the FBI and the GAO, both of which had linkages with an
array of Defense Department computers that would have turned up his
true military history. Using the Hughes
computer's links with those same Defense Department systems, Sharp was eventually able to access his service records at the Marine Corps Office of Personnel (MCOP) and change them as he had changed his file at TRW. Thereafter, it was a simple matter to have the MCOP computer issue an order for the destruction of the hard copy of Sharp's
Marine records and replacement with the “updated, corrected, and
amended” file.
    The FBI maintained its own records of men involved in criminal
activity while in military service. It used these for cross-checking
suspects in civilian criminal cases-and when required to conduct an
investigation of a federal job applicant who was in need of a
security clearance. Having compromised the MCOP computer, Sharp
directed it to send a copy of his new records to the FBI, along with
a notation that his previous file contained “serious inaccuracies