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Funny how life turned out for two hackers who broke into forbidden files; definitely out-of-bounds cyber chambers where even angels would fear to tread. One became a billionaire, the world’s youngest, and the other went into hiding fearing for his life.
First about the rich guy - Mark Zukerberg or ‘Zuck’ as he’s known is a short. He’s nerdy, baby face with curly hair. He’s a student at Harvard and has a girlfriend called Erica. His obsession is to become a member of an elite club exclusively for privileged and well-heeled males. “I’ll take you along once I join the club,” he condescendingly tells Erica. That’s it. She dumps him. He hurries to his dorm; Opens his laptop; and begins blogging about Erica calling her names. While venting his anger, a light bulb comes on in his head – how about a website – a sort of “Hot or Not” which lets the Harvard guys compare Harvard women against each other. His best friend Eduardo is excited about the idea. Together they set up a site in less than 60 minutes hacking into the databases of various residence halls, downloading pictures and names of the women students. They call the page ‘FaceMash,’ where male students choose which of two girls is more attractive. Within half an hour, the entire Harvard computer network gets jammed as everyone logs on to the new site. The month that follows sees the birth of ‘The Facebook’, an exclusive network of friends who exchange personal information about each other in cyber space.
Mark is ‘geek patrol’ whose fingers are glued to his keyboard while Eduardo is the business manager ‘plotting’ the site’s future. He wants to go commercial as the site spreads like a jungle fire and before one can catch one’s breath; ‘The Facebook’ enters the dorms and classrooms of all the Ivy League schools across the US and the world beyond to land on laptops across Planet Earth. Three years later, the site is worth 16 billion dollars with investors wooing Mark with more money.
Having reached the zenith of success and wealth, Mark’s downhill starts. He dumps his best friend and partner Eduardo because greed and his obsession to be recognised as the greatest, takes over. Enter Sean Parker. Remember Napster? Parker was its co-founder who in the late 90s almost busted the multi-billion music industry with Napster that allowed Internet users to download millions of songs they could choose from. Parker elbows out Eduardo to take his place and controls Mark’s millions. The scene moves to Silicon Valley where the big bucks are. Parker gets Mark to change the name of his site by removing ‘The’ before ‘Facebook.’
On February 4, 2004, it becomes ‘Facebook.’ Six years later a movie called Social Network has hit the theatres here in the US. Americans of all ages swarm to see the story of how a computer genius ‘invented’ a site which today has (update) more than 500 million active users (including Gen Musharraf!) out of which eight hundred and seventy-nine are the founder’s ‘friends.’ But Zuck protects his privacy even though he insists “I’m trying to make the world a more open place.” The movie shows the dark side of Zuck who dumped his Harvard buddies and co-founders. They take him to court and extract their ‘pound of flesh.’
The universal lesson then is: Guys and gals, if jilted, channelise your anger into creativity and become a billionaire! If Zuck can do it, why not you?
Hacker number two is Julian Assange, the 39 year old Australian and founder of the WikiLeaks whistle-blowers’ Web site. Brazenly he hacks into Pentagon computers and pulls out 391,832 secret documents on the Iraq war. At a recent news conference in London, Assange boasts that his break in constitutes the most “comprehensive and detailed account of any war ever to have entered the public record.” Earlier WikiLeaks causes cyber convulsions at Pentagon by posting its 77,000 classified documents on the war in Afghanistan.
Like Zuck, Assange has a near genius IQ and spent years hacking into computers with classified information; gathering secrets in bulk and then releasing them “instantly and globally.” Like Zuck, he too has ditched many of his co-workers because he considers himself as indispensable. “I am the heart and soul of this organisation, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organiser, financier, and all the rest.”
Assange is fast losing awe and respect of the world. Many feel he’s putting lives in danger by giving out their identities. Assange is accused of targeting the US by exposing its deepest secrets. But he defends himself by saying that America is an increasingly “militarised society and a threat to democracy” adding “We have been attacked by the United States, so we are forced into a position where we must defend ourselves.”
Known as the “James Bond of journalism,” Assange is being hunted by western intelligence agencies. He’s become so paranoid of his safety that he reportedly exchanges cellphone messages which are encrypted; continuously swaps cell phones; checks into hotels using false identity, changes the colour of his hair; sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends.
The universal lesson for hacker number two is: don’t mess with Pentagon, CIA, FBI, the British military intelligence and spy agency MI 5 and MI 6, unless you want to die. How can one man, no matter even as brilliant as Assange, take on the most powerful and dangerous institutions of the world single handed?
