The New York Times January 26, 1995, p. C17 Books of the Times Kids or Conspirators: How Hackers Got Caught MASTERS OF DECEPTION The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace By Michelle Slatalla and Joshua Quittner 225 pages. HarperCollins Publishers. $23. By Chirstopher Lehmann-Haupt It's difficult to feel much besides amused admiration for the computer hackers spotlighted in "Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace," by Michelle Slatalla and Joshua Quittner, a married couple who are reporters for Newsday. After all, what mainly characterizes the gang of adolescents they write about is high intelligence, infinite resourcefulness and boundless curiosity. Among the Masters of Deception, as the gang is called, there is Paul Stira, nicknamed Scorpion, who as a child learned to program a computer even before he had his hands on one and went on to master the art of cracking computer-game copy-protection codes. Mark Abene, a k a Phiber Optik, was so driven to understand how machines work that he explored and mastered the most sophisticated of the telephone company's computers. Eli Landopoulos, or Acid Phreak, after helping lure Phiber Optik away from a rival cyberspace gang, Legion of Doom, was moved to write "The History of MOD" for other hackers to envy. And John Lee, or Corrupt, found computer hacking a better way to survive than running with a street gang. It is difficult for the reader of this book to look upon these and other members of the gang as criminals. Yet they were eventually charged by a New York grand jury with conspiring to "gain access to and control of computer systems in order to enhance their image and prestige among computer hackers," among other counts. And they ended up pleading guilty and serving jail terms, which they have completed. In telling their stories, Ms. Slatalla and Mr. Quittner have almost as hard a time finding a continuous thread as the Government did building a coherent case against the hackers. The authors begin by describing a crash of the AT&T long-distance system that occurred on Jan. 15 1990. The authors write of the gang's reaction to this crisis: "No self-re-specting computer hacker would ever destroy anything. No hacker would ever purposely hurt the phone system. Paul just wanted to look around. He just wanted to learn more. He'd know it if he'd done something bad. Wouldn't he?" The lively narrative then backtracks to tell how the hackers formed their gang the previous year. This sequence creates the impression that the gang will turn out to have caused the crash, an expectation that is buttressed by other evidence that Ms. Slatalla and Mr. Quittner describe. The boys crashed smaller systems they invaded, like the Learning Link, a collection of electronic bulletin boards for educators and librarians that is owned by Channel 13/WNET, New York City's public broadcasting television station. The gang left the message "Happy Thanksgiving you turkeys, from all of us at MOD," which prevented access to the bulletin board's files. As the authors write, "the Learning Link crash would become the pivotal event in the case that the Federal Government was slowly building against the boys in MOD." The process was slow because the investigators had to weigh the need for evidence against the risk of damage. As the authors write: "It was kind of like having a tarantula crawl up your leg. If you shook it off too fast, it would escape into the wall. But if you waited too long, you got bitten." But when, about half way through the book, the narrative arrives back at the AT&T crash of 1990, we learn that the failure was traced not to anything the hackers did but to what the author's describe as "a routine update of the AT&T software." True the gang did much that was wrong like creating and using unbillable telephone accounts, trespassing in cyberspace to make long-distance calls, looking up private information and using it to harass other hackers and stealing and selling other people's credit card numbers. In short, certain members crossed the line between hacking and cracking and thereby violated the hacker ethic, which holds, in the authors' words: "Thou shalt not destroy. It's O.K. to look around, but don't hurt anything. It's good enough just to be here." Yet the fact remains that the gang did not cause the AT&T crash. And the worst that was done appears to have happened at a remove from what Mr. Abene was responsible for and after Mr. Stira had more or less withdrawn from hacking. Yet these two received the stiffest sentences. Mr. Abene, the last to complete his sentence, was released in the fall of last year. So one has the impression that what mattered to the Government was less the mischief done than the potential for mischief. What the slightly jumbled narrative does capture effectively is the contrast between the manic glee of the hackers at the prospect of a vast new unexplored world to conquer, and the Government's nervous disapproval and understandable need to set limits on a mysterious new frontier. The authors try to present both points of view. They don't reveal where their sympathies lie until the last line of their book. Here, after describing the meeting of a hackers' club as "the milling clumps of boys" who "are the picture of entropy, of disorganization, of isolated growing pains and undeveloped social skill," they write with tongue in cheek as their concluding paragraph: "This is the conspiracy." End