What's the shortest way to hack a Linux box?

HAL 2001 – Day One

"You're hackers, aren't you," the barman said, eyeing us. No one said a thing. The darkness of the Eurotunnel rolled by. Apparently we'd given ourselves away by talking too enthusiastically about IPV6. He looked around conspiratorially, lowered his voice. "Can you get me some credit card numbers?"

It was the same everywhere. "Are you going to read all my private mail?" said a Dutch woman who seemed like she really wanted someone to read her private mail. "I haven't even got time to read my own," one of us said. "You're hackers aren't you?" a guy on the train to Amsterdam asked. "So... can you hack my friend's website?"

The geeks were coming in two by two, from all over the world, in planes, trains, in cabs; walking, shouldering their tents and backpacks, making with grim determination for a wet, muddy field in the middle of North East Holland. Everywhere they went, they seemed to strike people with the same mixture of fear and curiosity.

"Do you know how to get free cable?"
"How do I get better credit?"
"Can you hack into my bosses' computer?"

Many of them, understandably paranoid about police and government spooks, tried to ignore the questions. They wanted to at least arrive at their destination without getting arrested. They were headed for Hackers at Large, the largest festival of its kind in Europe, the definitive meeting place for the continent"s geeks and nerds.

At this year's HAL, as at the last, the authorities are ready with presigned agreements that allow them to cut the gigabyte uplink being piped into the fields if the HAL network becomes a source of any, er, problems. "They are waiting to cut our link to the world," says the Hackers Guide to the Campsite, the festival's manual. "Yes, you read right: cut the link. 100% packet loss." There are reportedly representatives here from all the world's major security agencies and sshhh! but anyone who the organisers think is a policeman or a CIA operative is being given a light red wrist band. Just so you know who you're talking to when you're asked if you're able to crack the e-book security provision.

Who knows, really, what any of them are up to, as they sit there in their thousands banging away at notebooks, smoking cigarettes and joints (this is Holland, after all), listening to jungle and death metal. Who knows, maybe there really is some sinister conspiracy going on somewhere to overthrow some state or other, hack into the Pentagon, set off a thermnuclear war. But somehow it seems unlikely.

One guy, a master yo-yoer with a mouse cord wrapped round his hat and a network adapter dangling billabong-style, is giving out yo-yos to anyone who wants them. Coca-cola has given him three hundred thousand to dispose of. People are wearing "Google" t-shirts and everyone wants to know where you get them. A man dressed as Lara Croft, complete with pneumatic falsies, is making his way around looking mean. There's network cable everywhere, criss-crossing across stretches of grass, and geeks in tents are peering out from behind processor towers. The tents have names like "Iguana Colony," "L2600," "/home."

Ladies and gentlemen, we are in geek heaven, and they've got nothing on their mind but being geeks. "What's the shortest way to hack a Linux box?" the guy next me is saying. "Seven characters. It can be done in seven characters. If I can do it in any less, I win the big prize. You want to know what the seven characters are? Well they're "rm –r /..."." But he's not telling the rest. You'll have to work it out for yourselves.

HAL2001 is taking place from 10th-12th August at Twente, Holland. 2,700 hackers from all over the world have gathered to compute, camp, chat and attend a series of lectures on hacking, the net, and security-related issues.