Bill Landreth
More info
- Alias
- The Cracker
- Known for
- Inner Circle, Out of the Inner Circle (1985)
- Country
- USA
The teenage hacker "The Cracker", arrested in 1983, who two years later published a book on computer security — through Microsoft Press.
Landreth belonged to the Inner Circle, a small group of early hackers who traded knowledge over BBSes and got into GTE's Telemail email service on the Telenet network. The FBI moved in in 1983; Landreth, then in his late teens, got probation rather than prison.
His book Out of the Inner Circle (1985) was one of the first in which a hacker explained to a general audience how break-ins worked and how to defend against them — much the same conversion Kevin Mitnick made fifteen years later, minus the speaking fees. In 1986 Landreth vanished, leaving behind a troubling note; he resurfaced the following year.