Hackers

The hunt for Australia's most infamous computer cracker.

The gifted Melbourne teenage hacker who called himself Pheonix was just the sort of intruder universities, corporations and government departments had most cause to fear in the late 1980s. Combining doggedness, arrogance and brilliant computer skills, he had for years evaded computer security experts, the US Secret Service and Australia's police forces as he crept through the world's most sensitive computer systems, bragging of his exploits as he went.

It took a special type of cop to bring Pheonix down - and Bill Apro, a young Australian Federal Police officer, was that cop. To Apro it was celar that catching hackers would require new policing methods, so he began to delve deeper into the furtive world of computer hacking.

With a determination that bordered on an obsession, Apro began to build his own hackers database and went undercover ot rub shoulders with some fo the world's top hackers. He watched from the shadows as Pheonix cruised through the nascent Internet, snatching information about nuclear weapons testing, corporate secrets and the security vulnerabilities on major computer systems.

This is the inside story of Bil Apro's hunt for Pheonix.