Unfortunately, the number
of hackers with the time and inclination to perform
this sort of overhaul had dwindled to the point that
the system-administrator argument prevailed.
Cadging passwords and deliberately crashing the system
in order to glean evidence from the resulting wreckage,
Stallman successfully foiled the system administrators'
attempt to assert control. After one foiled "coup
d'etat," Stallman issued an alert to the entire AI staff.
"There has been another attempt to seize power,"
Stallman wrote. "So far, the aristocratic forces have
been defeated." To protect his identity, Stallman
signed the message "Radio Free OZ."
The disguise was a thin one at best. By 1982,
Stallman's aversion to passwords and secrecy had become
so well known that users outside the AI Laboratory were
using his account as a stepping stone to the ARPAnet,
the research-funded computer network that would serve
as a foundation for today's Internet. One such
"tourist" during the early 1980s was Don Hopkins, a
California programmer who learned through the hacking
grapevine that all an outsider needed to do to gain
access to MIT's vaunted ITS system was to log in under
the initials RMS and enter the same three-letter
monogram when the system requested a password.
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