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CHAPTER FOUR - Targets
----------------------

     Wherever  hackers  gather,  talk  soon  moves  from  past achievements and
adventures to speculation about what  new territory might be explored.  It says
much  about  the  compartmentalisation  (RAD:  20  letter  words!)  of computer
specialities  in  general  and  the  isolation  of micro-owners from mainstream
activities in particular that a great  deal of this discussion is like  that of
navigators in  the days  before Columbys:  the charts  are unreliable,  full of
blank spaces and confounded with myth.

     In this chapter I am attempting to  provide a series of notes on the  main
types of services potentially  available on dial-up, and  to give some idea  of
the sorts of protocols and conventions  employed. The idea is to give  voyagers
an outline atlas of what is interesting and possible, and what is not.


ON-LINE HOSTS

On-line services were the first form of electronic publishing: a series of  big
storage computers  - and  on occasion,  associated dedicated  networks - act as
hosts  to  a  group  of  individual  databases  by providing not only mass data
storage and the approproate 'search language' to access it, but also the  means
for  registering,  loggind  and  billing  users.  Typically,  users  access the
on-line hosts via a phone number  which links into a public data  network using
packet switching (there's more on thse networks in chapter 7).

     The  on-line  business  began  almost  by accident; large corporations and
institutions  involved  in  complicated  technological  developments found that
their libraries simply couldn't keep track of the publications of relevant  new
scientific  papers,  and  decided  to  maintain  indices of the papers by name,
author, subject-matter, and so on, on  computer. One of the first of  these was
the araments and aircraft company, Lockheed Corporation.

     In time the scope of these indices expanded and development and  outsiders
- sub-contractors, research  agencies, universities, government  employees, etc
were  granted  access.  Other  organisations  with similar information-handling
requirements asked if  space could be  found on the  computer for their  needs.
Eventually Lockheed and others recognised  the begginnings of a quite  seperate
business; in Lockheed's case it lead  to the foundation of Dialog, which  today
acts  as  host  and  marketing  agent  for almost 300 seperate databases. Other
on-line hosts  include BRS  (Bibliohraphic Retrieval  Serives), Comshare  (used
for sophisticated financial modelling),  Datastar, Blaise (British Library),  I
P Sharp and Euronet-Diane.

     On-line  services,  particularly  the  older  ones,  are  not   especially
user-friendly by modern standards.  They were set-up at  a time when both  core
and  storage  memory  was  expensive,  and  the  search  langauges tended to be
abbreviated and formal. Typically they  are used, not by the  eventual customer
for the information,  but by professional  intermediaries - librarians  and the
like -  who have  undertakens special  courses. Originally  on-line hosts  were
accessed   by   dumd-terminals,   usually   teletypewriters   like   the  Texas
Whisperwriter portable with built-in acoustic modem, rather than than by  VDUs.
Today the trend is to use  'front-end' intelligent software on an IBM  PC which
allows the naive user to  pose his/her questions informally while  offline; the
software then  redefines the  information request  into the  formal language of
the  on-line  host  (the  user  does  not  witness  this process) and then goes
on-line  via  an  auto-dial  modem  to  extract  the information as swiftly and
efficiently as possible.

     On-line  services  require  the  use  of  a whole series of passwords: the
usual NUI  and NUA  for PSS  (see chapter  7), another  to reach  the host, yet
another for the specific information  service required. Charges are either  for
connect-time or per record retrieved, or sometimes a combination.

     The categories  of on-line  service include  bibliographics, which  merely
indexes the exsistence of  an article or book  - you must then  find a physical
copy  to  read;  and  source,  which  contains  te  article or extract thereof.
Full-text services not only contain the  complete article or book but will,  if
required, search the entire text (as  opposed to mrere keywords) to locate  the
desired information. An example of this  is LEXIS, a vast legal database  which
contains  nealy  all  important  US  and  English  law  judgements,  as well as
statutes.


NEWS SERVICES.

The vast  majority of  news services,  even today,  are not,  in the  strictest
sense, computer-based, although computers play an important role in  assembling
the information and, depending  on the nature of  the newspaper or radio  or tv
station receiving it, its subsequent handling.

The  world's  big  press  agencies  -  United Press, Associated Press, Reuters,
Agence  France  Presse,  TASS,  Xinhua,  PAP,VoA  -  use  telex  techniques  to
broadcast  their  stories.  Permanent  leased  telegraphy  lines  exist between
agencies and  customers, and  the technology  is pure  telex: the 5-bit Bauddot
code (rather than  ASCII) is adopted,  giving capital letters  only, and 'mark'
and 'space'  are sent  by changing  the voltage  on the  line rather than audio
tones. Speeds are 50 or 75 baud.

     The user cannot interrogate the agency  in any way. The stories come  in a
single stream which  is collected on  rolls of paper  and then used  as per the
contract between the agency and subscriber.

     To  hack  a  news  agency  line  you  will need to get physically near the
appropriate leased line, tap in by means of an inductive loop, and convert  the
changing voltage levels (+/- 80  volts) into something your RS-232  can handle.
You will then need software to  translate the Baudot code into the  ASCII which
your computer can handle internally, and display on screen or print to a  file.
The Baudot code is given in Appendix IV.

     None of this is easy and  will probably involve breaches of several  laws,
including theft of copyright material!  However a number of news  agencies also
transmit services by radio,  in which case the  signals can be hijacked  with a
short-wave receiver. Chaper 9 Explains.

     Historic  news,  as  opposed  to  the  current stuff from agencies, is now
becoming available on-line. The New York Times, for example, has long help  its
stories in an electronic 'morgue' or clippings library. Initially this was  for
internal use, but  for the last  several years it  has been sold  to outsiders,
chiefly  broadcasting  stations  and  large  corporations.  You  can search for
information by  a combination  of keyword  and date-range.  The New  York Times
Information Bank is available through several on-line hosts.

      As the world's great newspapers increasingly move to electronic means  of
production  -  journalists  working  at  VDUs, sub-editors assembling pages and
direct-input into photo-typesetters - the additional cost to each newspaper  of
creating its  own morgue  is relatively  slight and  we can  expect to see many
more commercial services.

     In  the  meantime,  other  publishing  orgranisations  have sought to make
available articles, extracts or complete,  from leading magazines also. Two  UK
examples are Finsbury Data  Services' Textline and Datasolve's  World Reporter,
the  later  including  material  from  the  BBCs monitoring service, Associated
Press, the  Economist and  the Guardian.  Textline is  an abstract service, but
World  Reporter  gives  the  full  text.  In  October  1984 it already held 500
million English words. In  the US there is  NEXIS, which chares resources  with
LEXIS; NEXIS help  16 million full  text articles at  the same date.  All these
services  are  expensive  for  casual  use  and  are  accessed by dial-up using
ordinary asynchonous protocols.

     Many electronic  newsrooms also  have dial-in  ports for  reporters out on
the job;  depending on  the system  these ports  not only  only the reporter to
transmit his or her  story from a portable  computer, but may also  (like Basys
Newsfury  used  by  Channel  Four  News)  let  them see news agency tapes, read
headlines  and  send  electronic  mail.  Such  systems  have ben the subject of
considerable hacker speculation.


FINANCIAL SERVICES

The  financial   world  can   afford  more   computer  aids   than  any   other
non-governmental  sector.  The  vast  potential  profits  that  can  be made by
trading  huge  blocks  of  currency,  securities  or  commodities  -  and   the
extraordinary advantages that a slight  'edge' in information can bring  - have
meant that the City,  Wall Street and the  equivilants in Hong Kong,  Japan and
major Eiropean capitals  have been in  the forefront of  getting the most  from
high-speed comms.

     Ten year ago the sole form of instant financial information was the  tiker
tape - telegraphy technology delivering  the latest share price movements  in a
highly abbreviated  form. As  with its  news equivalents,  these were broadcast
services  (and  still  are,  for  the  services  still exist) sent along leased
telegraph lines. The  user could only  watch, and 'interrogation'  consisted on
back-tracking along the tape of paper. Extel (Exchange Telegraph) continues  to
use this  technique, though  it is  gradually upgrading  by using  viewdata and
intelligent terminals.

     However, just over ten years  ago Reuters put together the  first packages
which gave  some intelligence  and 'questioning  power' to  the end  user. Each
Reuters' Monitor is intelligent, containing  (usually) a DEC PDP-8 series  mini
and some firmware which  accepts and selects the  stream of data from  the host
at the far end of the  leased line, marshalls interrogation requests and  takes
care of  the local  display. Information  is formatted  in 'pages'  rather like
viewdata  frames,  but   without  the  colour.   There  is  little   point   in
eavesdropping into a  Reuters line unless  you know what  the terminal software
does. Reuters now face an agressive rival  in Telerate, and the fight is on  to
deliver  not  only   fast  conprehensive  price   services  but   international
screen-based  dealing  as  well.  The  growth  of  Reuters and its rivals is an
illustraion  of  technology  creating  markets  -  especially  in international
currency - where none existed before.

     The  first  sophisticated  Stock  Exchange  prices 'screens' used modified
closed circuit television technology. London  had a system called Market  Price
Display Service - MPDS - which consisted of a number of tv displays of  current
prices services on  different 'channels' which  could be selected  by the user.
But  \ondon  now  uses  TOPIC,  a  leased  line variant on viewdata technology,
though with its  magazine-like arrangement and  auto-screen refresh, it  has as
much in  common with  teletext as  Prestel. TOPIC  carries about  2,500 of  the
total 7,500 shares  traded in London,  plus selected analyitical  material from
brokers. Datastream represents a much higher level of sophistication: using  in
40,000  pounds  plus  pa  terminals  you  can  compare  historic  data  - price
movements, movements against sector indices etc - and chart results.

     The hacker's  reward for  getting into  such systems  is that  you can see
share and other prices on the  move. None of these prices is  confidential; all
could be obtained by ringing  a stockbroker. However, this situation  is likely
to change; as the City  makes the change from traditional  broker/jobber method
of dealing  towards specialist  market making,  there will  then be  electronic
prices services giving privileged information to specialist share dealers.

     All these services are only available via leased line; City  professionals
would not tolerate the delays and uncertainties of dial-up facilities.  However
dial-up  ports  exist  for  demonstrations,  exhibitions,  engineering  and  as
back-up - and a lot of hacking efort has gone into tracking them down.

     In  the  United  States,  in  addition  to  Reuters,  Telerate  and  local
equivilants of  offical streams  of stock  exchange and  over-the-counter data,
tere is Dow  Jones, best known  internationally for its  market indices similar
to those produced by  the Financial Times in  London. Dow Jones is  in fact the
owner of the Wall Street  Journal and some influencial business  magazines. Its
Dow Jones News/Retrieval Service is aimed at businesses and private  investors.
It features current chare prices, deliberately delayed by 15 minutes,  historic
price data,  which can  be charted  by the  user's own  computer (typically  an
Apple or  IBM PC)  and historic  'morgure' type  of company  news and analysis.
Extensions of the service enable customers to examine accounts of companies  in
which they are interested. The bulk of the information is US-based, but can  be
obtained  world-wide  via  packet-switching  netowkrs.  All  you  need  are the
passwords and special software.


BUSINESS INFORMATION

Business  information  is  usually  about  the  credit-worthiness of companies.
company annual reports, trading opportunities and market research. The  biggest
electronic credit data  resources is owned  by the international  company Dun &
Bradstreet: during 1985-86 it is due  to spend 25 million pounds of  making its
data available all over Europe, including the UK. The service, which nd market 
research.  The  biggest  electronic  credit  data  resources  is  owned  by the
international company Dun & Bradstreet: during 1985-86 it is due to s
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