the KGB hack (Karl Koch)
lorehackingsecurity
The late-1980s West German intrusion ring that sold access to US military and research systems to the Soviet KGB for cash and drugs - the far end of the trail Cliff Stoll followed from a 75-cent accounting error.
Its most haunted figure was Karl Koch, alias Hagbard Celine after a character in the Illuminatus! trilogy, a young man convinced the number 23 governed reality. He confessed, was granted amnesty, and in 1989 was found burned to death in a forest outside Hanover - officially a suicide, endlessly disputed. The story gave German cinema the film 23 and the hacker scene its most cautionary legend: the first documented case of computer intrusion sold to a foreign intelligence service, and a reminder of what the underground's drift toward espionage cost the people inside it.
Also known as: karl koch, hagbard celine, cuckoo's egg hackers, 23