Stephen Gold
Stephen Gold (15 January 1956 – 12 January 2015) was a skilled hacker and journalist 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, were said to have accessed, inter alia, the personal message account of Prince Philip. The facts as outlined in The Hacker's Handbook 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 journalist". In 1984, Gold and fellow journalist/hacker Robert Schifreen demonstrated an "ad hoc penetration test" of a Prestel 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 in Bletchley. Gold and Schifreen were convicted in 1986, (after a series of pre-'trials') at Southwark Crown Court on a charge of misusing passwords: the actual charge sheet read "uttering a forgery", under