Stephen Gold (15 January 1956 – 12 January 2015) was a skilled hacker and

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

who in the mid-1980s was charged with, convicted and later acquitted of, 'uttering a forgery' in what became known to the popular press of the time as "The Great Prestel Hack". Gold, and fellow hacker

Robert Schifreen Robert Jonathan Schifreen (born October 1963) is a former UK-based computer hacker and magazine editor, and the founder of IT security awareness training programme SecuritySmart.co.uk. He was the first person charged with illegally accessing a comp ...

, were said to have accessed, inter alia, the personal message account of

Prince Philip Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, later Philip Mountbatten; 10 June 1921 – 9 April 2021) was the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. As such, he served as the consort of the British monarch from El ...

. The facts as outlined in ''

The Hacker's Handbook ''The Hacker's Handbook'' is a non-fiction book in four editions, each reprinted numerous times between 1985 and 1990, and explaining how phone and computer systems of the period could be 'hacked'. It contains candid and personal comments from ...

'' are that he was 'fitted' up, having tried, repeatedly and unsuccessfully, to warn BT's Prestel via Micronet of the security holes. Gold later became a "respected

information security Information security, sometimes shortened to InfoSec, is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthori ...

journalist".Tim Ring
"Respected Information Security Journalist Steve Gold Dies"
''SC Magazine'', 13 January 2015 In 1984, Gold and fellow journalist/hacker

demonstrated an "ad hoc penetration test" of a

Prestel Prestel (abbrev. from press telephone), the brand name for the UK Post Office Telecommunications's Viewdata technology, was an interactive videotex system developed during the late 1970s and commercially launched in 1979. It achieved a maxim ...

network which, according to the writer Nick Barron, used "a combination of clever shoulder surfing and good old-fashioned hacking skills". An archive telling the story of how the 1980s hack of Prince Philip’s mailbox led to UK anti-hacking legislation is held at

The National Museum of Computing The National Museum of Computing is a museum in the United Kingdom dedicated to collecting and restoring historic computer systems. The museum is based in rented premises at Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire and opened in 2007 ...

in Bletchley. Gold and Schifreen were convicted in 1986, (after a series of pre-'trials') at

Southwark Crown Court The Crown Court at Southwark, commonly but inaccurately called Southwark Crown Court, is one of two locations of the Crown Court in the London SE1 postcode area, along with the Crown Court at Inner London. Opened in 1983, the brick building is ...

on a charge of misusing passwords: the actual charge sheet read "uttering a forgery", under the

Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981 The Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981 (c 45) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which makes it illegal to make fake versions of many things, including legal documents, contracts, audio and visual recordings, and money of the Uni ...

. They appealed successfully and were twice acquitted by higher courts on the basis that they had not obtained any material gain from their exploits. The appeals were pursued right up to the House of Lords by BT at taxpayers expense during the Thatcher era. Their case, it has been said, "led directly to the introduction of the 1990

Computer Misuse Act The Computer Misuse Act 1990 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, introduced partly in response to the decision in ''R v Gold & Schifreen'' (1988) 1 AC 1063 (see below). Critics of the bill complained that it was introduced hastily ...

". Gold was 'de facto' author of the fourth edition of ''

'', previous editions of which had been completed by "Hugo Cornwall", owProfessor

Peter Sommer Peter Sommer Christensen (born 28 August 1974 in Skanderborg) is a Danish singer and songwriter. His lyrics are often characterized by interesting puns and word plays. Besides his solo career, he was in the duo Superjeg with Carsten Valentin ...

. Gold died on 12 January 2015. and is commemorated by webpage Silent Modems created by friends and followers in his memory.

References

2015 deaths British technology writers 1956 births {{England-writer-stub

See also

References