Confessions of a hacker
By the age of 20, Benjamin Breuninger's life was a mess. Estranged from his mother and stepfather, a dropout with no job and months behind on his rent, he often went a day or more without eating.
Online, he had a different life. There, he was Konceptor, a skilled hacker who broke into computer networks, defaced Web sites and strutted in online newsgroups such as alt.2600, where he closed his frequent postings with this warning: "The Keystroke is mightier than the Pen. And this is My GAME."
In 2 1/2 years in the late 1990s, Breuninger hacked into dozens of computer systems. He peeked at the payroll of a nearby Taco Bell, left messages supporting Jesse Ventura on the St. Paul Public Library and KSTP radio Web sites and stole thousands of Internet e-mail accounts and passwords.