Karl Koch (hacker)

Karl Koch, 1985, in Hanover

Karl Koch ( Karl Werner Lothar Koch , also known under his pseudonym Hagbard Celine ; * July 22, 1965 in Hanover ; † May 23 or 24, 1989 in Ohof ) was a German hacker .

Family and youth

Koch grew up under difficult circumstances. His mother died of cancer in 1976 and his father had alcohol problems. As a teenager, Koch was interested in astronomy and was involved in the state student council . He attended the Comenius School in Hanover . In 1979 Karl's father gave him the book Illuminatus! - The golden apple that had a very strong influence on him. From his income as a member of the state student council, he bought his first computer in 1982 . In August 1984, his father also died of cancer. In 1985, Koch and other hackers first founded the computer regulars' table in Café Filmore on Lister Meile in Hanover-Oststadt , from which the Chaos Computer Club Hanover developed. During this time, Koch came into contact with hard drugs more and more frequently. In February 1987, Cook broke because of a holiday in Spain ; and was a rehab in the Psychiatric Clinic in Aachen ward. He left the clinic again in May 1987.

Hacker career

In 1984 Koch inherited 240,000 DM after his father died from cancer, half of which he left to his sisters. From his share of the inheritance he rented his own apartment in Hanover and bought an Atari ST among other things . Shortly afterwards he co-founded an offshoot of the Chaos Computer Club in Hanover under the name "Leitstelle511", which still exists today.

Koch used the pseudonym "Hagbard Celine" in the data networks (name of a main character in the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson , which Koch read at the age of 14 and who strongly influenced him). He also named his computer after that of the Illuminatus trilogy "FUCKUP" ("First Universal Cybernetic-Kinetic Ultra-Micro Programmer"). Koch was convinced that it was the Illuminati like them in Illuminatus! actually exist and tried - like Hagbard Celine in the novel - to fight them with his own means, namely hacking.

Karl Koch was a staunch anarchist and anti-fascist who made his hacks because of his attitude: "Knowledge must be equally accessible to everyone!"

From 1985 Koch was a member of the SPD .

KGB hack

→ Main article : KGB hack

Koch became known through the so-called KGB hack, in which he worked with the German hackers “DOB” (Dirk-Otto Brezinski), “pengo” ( Hans Heinrich Huebner ) and “urmel” ( Markus Hess ). The croupier "Pedro" ( Peter Carl ) - who was in notorious money worries - saw in the skills of the hackers an opportunity to earn money. The idea to sell their discoveries on the hacked western computer systems to the KGB came from "Pedro". The group was exposed in 1986 by the American astrophysicist Clifford Stoll , a systems administrator at the University of California at Berkeley , after he discovered that a mainframe he was responsible for cost 75 US cents for claimed Computing power that could not be assigned to a billing account. Since this was an indication of an unauthorized intruder, he investigated the matter despite the small amount and ultimately got Koch on the trail. Stoll wrote the book Kuckucksei about these events .

death

In the months before his death, Koch worked as a driver for the state office of the Lower Saxony CDU . On June 1, 1989, his body was found in a forest near Ohof in the Gifhorn district , after having been missing for a week. The official stated cause of death was self-immolation . Possible reasons are assumed to be Koch's long emotional absorption through the “hunt for Illuminati” and his constant drug consumption, which in the late 1980s drove him further and further into psychological problems and also resulted in hospital stays. In the hacker scene in particular, there are rumors that Karl Koch was murdered - possibly for political reasons or as a result of his involvement in the criminal milieu. The circumstances of death are not fully understood.

reception

The feature film 23 - Nothing is as it seems by Hans-Christian Schmid from 1998 traces Koch's life and work. When portraying certain people and events, the film deviates from the facts - mainly for dramaturgical reasons. The role of Koch was played by August Diehl , who received the German Film Prize for it. In the following year, Schmid published a book with a biography of Koch together with Michael Gutmann .

In February 2016, a theater adaptation of the film under the same title was premiered at the Junge Schauspiel Hannover (director: Christopher Rüping ).

literature

• Thomas Ammann , Matthias Lehnhardt, Gerd Meißner, Stephan Stahl: Hackers for Moscow. German computer spies in the service of the KGB. Wunderlich, Reinbek 1989, ISBN 3-8052-0490-6 .
• Katie Hafner , John Markoff : Cyberpunk. Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier. Simon & Schuster, New York 1995, ISBN 0-684-81862-0 .
• Hans-Christian Schmid , Michael Gutmann : 23. The story of the hacker Karl Koch (= German volume 8477). Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-423-08477-4 .
• Clifford Stoll : Cuckoo's Egg . The hunt for the German hackers who cracked the Pentagon. 5th edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-596-13984-8 .

Web links

• Knight Lightning : German Hackers Break Into Los Alamos and NASA. In: Phrack . Volume 3, 1989, No. 25, March 29, 1989.
• Death of a hacker. Suicide or execution? Video, 10 min. In: Spiegel TV , June 11, 1989.
• Freke Over , Armin, Wilhelm, Hans and Steffen (eds.): Documentation about Karl Koch. Self-published, Hanover 1989 (PDF).
• Susanne Nolte: On the 20th anniversary of Karl Koch's death: the fall of man. In: iX - magazine for professional information technology , June 2009, p. 93.
• Ulrich Clauß: Hacker legend: ancestor of the Pirate Party lay charred in the forest. In: Die Welt , May 25, 2012.
• Stefan Krempl : Karl Koch: The death of a hacker and the "morbid fascination of secret services". In: Heise Online , May 25, 2014.
• Frank Patalong : One of the first German hackers - the mysterious death of Karl Koch . In: one day , 23 May 2019.

Footnotes

1. ↑ Susanne Nolte names 23 May: On the 20th anniversary of Karl Koch's death. In: iX - magazine for professional information technology . June 2009, p. 93; May 24th calls the obituary of his sister, see Freke Over , Armin, Wilhelm, Hans and Steffen: Documentation about Karl Koch. 1989, p. 9 (PDF) .
2. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, the information comes from the documentation Freke Over , Armin, Wilhelm, Hans and Steffen: Karl Koch. 1989, especially Koch's self-written curriculum vitae on p. 4 f. (PDF) .
3. ^ Carsten Ost: Karl Koch. Memories of a friend on his personal homepage, March 2001.
4. ↑ Hans-Christian Schmid, Michael Gutmann: 23. The story of the hacker Karl Koch (= German volume 8477). Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1999, p. 19. The authors quote from a résumé written by Karl himself in 1989.
5. ↑ Hans-Christian Schmid, Michael Gutmann: 23. The story of the hacker Karl Koch (= German volume 8477). Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1999, p. 19.
6. ^ Control center 511 Chaos Computer Club Hannover. 5th October 2015.
7. ↑ Karl Koch: Knowledge must be accessible to everyone. Today hacker Karl Koch would have been 45 years old. His maxim: Knowledge must be equally accessible for everyone! dctp.tv , July 22, 2010, accessed June 14, 2014 . 
8. ↑ Susanne Nolte: On the 20th anniversary of Karl Koch's death. In: iX - magazine for professional information technology . June 2009, p. 93.
9. ↑ 23 - Nothing is what it seems. ( Memento of the original from January 24, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: SchauspielHannover.de ; Stefan Gohlisch: Hacker Karl Koch as a stage play. In: [[Neue Presse (Hanover) |]] , February 22, 2016 (conversation with the director).