In the vast majority of cases, the process of 'getting in' is much more satisfying than what is discovered in the protected computer files. In this respect, the hacker is the direct descendant of the phone phreaks of fifteen years ago. Phone phreaking became interesting as intra-nation and international subscriber trunk dialling was introduced, but when the London-based phreak finally chained his way through to Hawaii, he usually had no one there to speak to except the local weather service or American Express office, to confirm that the desired target had indeed been hit. One of the earliest of the present generation of hackers, Susan Headley, only 17 when she began her exploits in California in 1977, chose as her target the local phone company and, with the information extracted from her hacks, ran all over the telephone network. She 'retired' four years later, when friends started developing schemes to shut down part of the phone system.

There is also a strong affinity with program copy-protection crunchers. Most commercial software for micros is sold in a form to prevent obvious casual copying, say by loading a cassette, cartridge or disk into memory and then executing a 'save' on to a blank cassette or disk. Copy-protection devices vary greatly in their methodology and sophistication and there are those who, without any commercial motive, enjoy nothing so much as defeating them. Every computer buff has met at least one cruncher with a vast store of commercial programs, all of which have somehow had the protection removed--and perhaps the main title subtly altered to show the cruncher's technical skills--but which are then never actually used at all.