Susan Headley (Susy Thunder)
termhackingISP & telecom
The Los Angeles phone phreak of the late 1970s and early 1980s who was among the first true masters of social engineering - talking her way into telephone company systems and military networks by voice alone, at a time the technique had no name.
She ran in the same circle as the young Kevin Mitnick, testified against her associates, and then left the scene entirely, later working as a poker dealer and a librarian. Her erasure is itself instructive: she appears in the 1991 book Cyberpunk and in scattered interviews, but the histories that made her contemporaries famous mostly wrote her out. The method she perfected - authority in the voice, homework before the call - is now the foundation of an entire industry's training.
Also known as: susy thunder, susan thunder, cyberpunk book