What does an underground board look like? What distinguishes it from a standard board? It isn't necessarily the conversation -- hackers often talk about common board topics, such as hardware, software, sex, science fiction, current events, politics, movies, personal gossip. Underground boards can best be distinguished by their files, or "philes," pre-composed texts which teach the techniques and ethos of the underground. These are prized reservoirs of forbidden knowledge. Some are anonymous, but most proudly bear the handle of the "hacker" who has created them, and his group affiliation, if he has one.

        Here is a partial table-of-contents of philes from an underground board, somewhere in the heart of middle America, circa 1991. The descriptions are mostly self- explanatory.

BANKAMER.ZIP     5406     06-11-91 Hacking Bank America
CHHACK.ZIP       4481     06-11-91 Chilton Hacking
CITIBANK.ZIP     4118     06-11-91 Hacking Citibank
CREDIMTC.ZIP     3241     06-11-91 Hacking Mtc Credit Company
DIGEST.ZIP       5159     06-11-91 Hackers Digest
HACK.ZIP        14031     06-11-91 How To Hack
HACKBAS.ZIP      5073     06-11-91 Basics Of Hacking
HACKDICT.ZIP    42774     06-11-91 Hackers Dictionary
HACKER.ZIP      57938     06-11-91 Hacker Info
HACKERME.ZIP     3148     06-11-91 Hackers Manual
HACKHAND.ZIP     4814     06-11-91 Hackers Handbook
HACKTHES.ZIP    48290     06-11-91 Hackers Thesis
HACKVMS.ZIP      4696     06-11-91 Hacking Vms Systems
MCDON.ZIP        3830     06-11-91 Hacking Macdonalds (Home Of The Archs)
P500UNIX.ZIP    15525     06-11-91 Phortune 500 Guide To Unix
RADHACK.ZIP      8411     06-11-91 Radio Hacking
TAOTRASH.DOC     4096     12-25-89 Suggestions For Trashing
TECHHACK.ZIP     5063     06-11-91 Technical Hacking

        The files above are do-it-yourself manuals about computer intrusion. The above is only a small section of a much larger library of hacking and phreaking techniques and history. We now move into a different and perhaps surprising area.

+------------+
|  Anarchy   |
+------------+

ANARC.ZIP        3641     06-11-91 Anarchy Files
ANARCHST.ZIP    63703     06-11-91 Anarchist Book
ANARCHY.ZIP      2076     06-11-91 Anarchy At Home
ANARCHY3.ZIP     6982     06-11-91 Anarchy No 3
ANARCTOY.ZIP     2361     06-11-91 Anarchy Toys
ANTIMODM.ZIP     2877     06-11-91 Anti-modem Weapons
ATOM.ZIP         4494     06-11-91 How To Make An Atom Bomb
BARBITUA.ZIP     3982     06-11-91 Barbiturate Formula
BLCKPWDR.ZIP     2810     06-11-91 Black Powder Formulas
BOMB.ZIP         3765     06-11-91 How To Make Bombs
BOOM.ZIP         2036     06-11-91 Things That Go Boom
CHLORINE.ZIP     1926     06-11-91 Chlorine Bomb
COOKBOOK.ZIP     1500     06-11-91 Anarchy Cook Book
DESTROY.ZIP      3947     06-11-91 Destroy Stuff
DUSTBOMB.ZIP     2576     06-11-91 Dust Bomb
ELECTERR.ZIP     3230     06-11-91 Electronic Terror
EXPLOS1.ZIP      2598     06-11-91 Explosives 1
EXPLOSIV.ZIP    18051     06-11-91 More Explosives
EZSTEAL.ZIP      4521     06-11-91 Ez-stealing
FLAME.ZIP        2240     06-11-91 Flame Thrower
FLASHLT.ZIP      2533     06-11-91 Flashlight Bomb
FMBUG.ZIP        2906     06-11-91 How To Make An Fm Bug
OMEEXPL.ZIP      2139     06-11-91 Home Explosives
HOW2BRK.ZIP      3332     06-11-91 How To Break In
LETTER.ZIP       2990     06-11-91 Letter Bomb
LOCK.ZIP         2199     06-11-91 How To Pick Locks
MRSHIN.ZIP       3991     06-11-91 Briefcase Locks
NAPALM.ZIP       3563     06-11-91 Napalm At Home
NITRO.ZIP        3158     06-11-91 Fun With Nitro
PARAMIL.ZIP      2962     06-11-91 Paramilitary Info
PICKING.ZIP      3398     06-11-91 Picking Locks
PIPEBOMB.ZIP     2137     06-11-91 Pipe Bomb
POTASS.ZIP       3987     06-11-91 Formulas With Potassium
PRANK.TXT       11074     08-03-90 More Pranks To Pull On Idiots!
REVENGE.ZIP      4447     06-11-91 Revenge Tactics
ROCKET.ZIP       2590     06-11-91 Rockets For Fun
SMUGGLE.ZIP      3385     06-11-91 How To Smuggle

        *Holy Cow!* The damned thing is full of stuff about bombs!

        What are we to make of this?

        First, it should be acknowledged that spreading knowledge about demolitions to teenagers is a highly and deliberately antisocial act. It is not, however, illegal.

        Second, it should be recognized that most of these philes were in fact *written* by teenagers. Most adult American males who can remember their teenage years will recognize that the notion of building a flamethrower in your garage is an incredibly neat-o idea. *Actually* building a flamethrower in your garage, however, is fraught with discouraging difficulty. Stuffing gunpowder into a booby-trapped flashlight, so as to blow the arm off your high-school vice-principal, can be a thing of dark beauty to contemplate. Actually committing assault by explosives will earn you the sustained attention of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

        Some people, however, will actually try these plans. A determinedly murderous American teenager can probably buy or steal a handgun far more easily than he can brew fake "napalm" in the kitchen sink. Nevertheless, if temptation is spread before people a certain number will succumb, and a small minority will actually attempt these stunts. A large minority of that small minority will either fail or, quite likely, maim themselves, since these "philes" have not been checked for accuracy, are not the product of professional experience, and are often highly fanciful. But the gloating menace of these philes is not to be entirely dismissed.

        Hackers may not be "serious" about bombing; if they were, we would hear far more about exploding flashlights, homemade bazookas, and gym teachers poisoned by chlorine and potassium. However, hackers are *very* serious about forbidden knowledge. They are possessed not merely by curiosity, but by a positive *lust to know.* The desire to know what others don't is scarcely new. But the *intensity* of this desire, as manifested by these young technophilic denizens of the Information Age, may in fact *be* new, and may represent some basic shift in social values -- a harbinger of what the world may come to, as society lays more and more value on the possession, assimilation and retailing of *information* as a basic commodity of daily life.

        There have always been young men with obsessive interests in these topics. Never before, however, have they been able to network so extensively and easily, and to propagandize their interests with impunity to random passers-by. High-school teachers will recognize that there's always one in a crowd, but when the one in a crowd escapes control by jumping into the phone-lines, and becomes a hundred such kids all together on a board, then trouble is brewing visibly. The urge of authority to *do something,* even something drastic, is hard to resist. And in 1990, authority did something. In fact authority did a great deal.