Harvard and MIT have a lot of crosstalk. If he knew people at MIT and was around, which I assume he did and was, it's generally socially acceptable to take part in "hacks" (breaking into locked places is one type).
But he wasn't "taking part in" a hack, he was the hack. Ringleader, sole proprietor, everything.
Crosstalk or not he should have started it at Harvard if it were so obviously on the up and up.
And in any event once he was kicked off the network to such an extent as to require entering a network closet (note it was never locked, so there was no 'hack' to be had here physically) to regain the subnet he should have taken that as notice that his 'hack' was unwelcome. Well, he should have taken the hint earlier too...
Sure, pulling off a hack, if that makes you feel better.
Where does it say he needed to go to the network closet to regain net access? It sounds like the admins didn't have him on their radar until after he had planted his download box. It just seems like a convenient place to leave a computer downloading things for a long time.
> Where does it say he needed to go to the network closet to regain net access? It sounds like the admins didn't have him on their radar until after he had planted his download box. It just seems like a convenient place to leave a computer downloading things for a long time.
You should go study the whole thing again.
Basically he started off leeching off of Wifi only.
At some point JSTOR noticed and complained to MIT so they blocked (get this), his IP address.
So Aaron picked a different IP.
Then they blocked his MAC (this is all on Wifi, still).
So Aaron changed his MAC.
Eventually MIT and JSTOR figured out how to block him off of their wireless completely (or at least, to rate-limit the JSTOR access over Wifi).
It was only at this point that Aaron changed strategies into trying to hookup with a wired connection directly to the MIT switches, by finding and utilizing the network closet.
