How Computers Work, Ninth Edition

Chapter 31. How Internet Security Fights Off PC Invaders

WE should be grateful that most computer crackers are grossly egotistical. The very premise of breaking into a megacorporation’s giant computer, leaving a virus, or substituting a screen of his own scatological design for the company’s home page—that’s done by someone who wants attention. They can’t resist leaving a program or note that’s a digital sign of Zorro, something to let you know that while you might own the computer, the cracker owns its soul.

I’m using the term cracker here instead of hacker, which most people think of when they hear about some teenager who broke into the high school’s ...