Karl Koch (hacker)

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Karl Koch (hacker) bigraphy, stories - Spies

Karl Koch (hacker) : biography

July 22, 1965 – May 23, 1989

Karl Werner Lothar Koch (July 22, 1965 – ca. May 23, 1989) was a German hacker in the 1980s, who called himself "hagbard", after Hagbard Celine. He was involved in a Cold War computer espionage incident.

Biography

Koch was born in Hanover. As his moniker would suggest, he was heavily influenced by The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. Besides adopting his pseudonym from a character in the book, he also named his computer "FUCKUP" ("First Universal Cybernetic-Kinetic Ultra-Micro Programmer"), after a computer designed and built by that character.

Koch was loosely affiliated with the CCC. He worked with the hackers known as DOB (Dirk-Otto Brezinski), Pengo (Hans Heinrich Hübner), and Urmel (Markus Hess), and was involved in selling hacked information from US military computers to the KGB. Clifford Stoll’s book The Cuckoo’s Egg gives a first-person account of the hunt and eventual identification of Hess. Pengo subsequently came forward and confessed to the authorities.

Koch was found burned to death with gasoline in a forest near Celle, Germany. The death was officially claimed to be a suicide.

Karl Koch in media

Books

Movies

A German movie about his life, entitled 23, was released in 1998. While the film was critically acclaimed, it has been harshly criticized as exploitative by real-life witnesses. A corrective to the film’s take is the documentation written by his friends. – mostly in German

In 1990 a documentary was released titled "The KGB, The Computer and Me"

Music

  • Koch was memorialized by Clock DVA at the opening of their music video for "The Hacker".