Documentary Description
In the late 1980s, Melbourne was the hub of the computer underground
in Australia, if not the world. The hackers who formed the underground
were not disgruntled computer professionals or gangs of organised
criminals. They were disaffected teenagers who used their basic home
computers to explore the embryonic Internet from inside their locked,
suburban bedrooms. From this shadowy world emerged two elite hackers
known as Electron and Phoenix, who formed part of an alliance called
The Realm.
Together, Electron and Phoenix stole a restricted computer security
list and used it to break into some of the world’s most classified and
supposedly secure computer systems. So fast and widespread was the
attack, people assumed it was an automated program, until Phoenix
called The New York Times to brag. Soon the US Secret Service and the
FBI were on their trail and, within months, the Australian Federal
Police had raided their homes.
Using a combination of interviews and dramatic reconstructions, In
the Realm of the Hackers charts Electron’s journey from his initial
innocent explorations to his ultimate obsession. It vividly recreates
the climate of the 1980s, before there was public access to the
Internet.
In the Realm of the Hackers takes us headlong into the clandestine,
risky but intoxicating world of the computer underground to uncover not
only how the hackers did it but why.
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