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Hacktoids (or, The Limn Index)

Limn tapped its extensive network of underground operatives to bring you this extraordinary list of facts about hacks, leaks, and breaches.

Number of U.S. Presidents who were also painters: 4
Number of U.S. Presidential paintings released by hackers? 23 1
Number of U.S. Presidential nude self-portrait paintings released by hackers: 2 2

Number of times Sony was pwned in 2011: 213
Cost to Sony of 2011 PlayStation Hack: $171M4
Number of people arrested for the 2011 Playstation hack: 0

Number of phone phreakers threatened with arrest in 1962: a handful.5
Number of phone phreakers threatened with arrest in 1962 who went on to become any Ivy League professor and famous information designer: 16

Number of FBI moles urging LulzSec to hack the Icelandic parliament to provide the FBI with the perfect excuse to visit Iceland so that they could investigate WikiLeaks? 17
Number of FBI Agents kicked out of Iceland by the prime minister: “8 or 9”.8

Number of poems about hacking in Phrack 36 (1991): 109
Number of poems about Hacking in The New Yorker in 1991: 0
Number of times the word “hacker” was used in The New Yorker before 2008: fewer than 10
Number of times the word “hacker” was used in The New Yorker after 2008: more than a thousand.10

Number of pages in Pentagon Papers leak: 700011
Number of documents in Manning/WikiLeaks leak: “more than 700,000”12
Number of times “spirit cooking” and “pizza” were referenced in DNC/Podesta hacks: Not enough to warrant shooting up Comet Ping Pong.

Number of Computer Fraud and Abuse Act cases filed against individuals between 2011-2016: 77413
Number of Computer Fraud and Abuse Act cases filed against corporations since the CFAA’s inception in 1984: 0

Launch of Ikea Website: 1998
Launch of the unofficial platform IkeaHackers.net: 2006 14
Year the first officially Ikea-approved hackable sofa bed will hit the market: 2018 15

Number of phone calls AT&T monitored to search for phreaks & fraud between 1964 and 1970: 33 million
Number of calls recorded for the same purpose over the same time period: 1.5 million16

Number of times an electrical grid has been paralyzed by hackers since 1902: 3.
Number of times an electrical grid has been paralyzed by squirrels since 1902: 952.17

About the Authors
Christopher M. Kelty

Christopher M. Kelty is a Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Two Bits (Duke University Press, 2008) and The Participant (University of Chicago Press, 2019).  His current work is the Labyrinth Project (labyrinth.garden),  a multi-disciplinary collaborative research inquiry into  conflict and controversy in urban ecologies in Los Angeles.

E. Gabriella Coleman
E. Gabriella Coleman holds the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University.
Bibliography
1 Panganiban, Roma. N.d. "4 Presidents Who Painted for Fun and Profit" Available at link.

2 Smoking Gun. 2013. "Audacious Hack Exposes Bush Family Pix, E-Mail," The Smoking Gun, February 7. Available at link. See also: Read, Max. 2013. "These New George W. Bush Paintings May Herald a 'Cat Period'," Gawker, August 27. Available at link. There were 3 in the original leak on The Smoking Gun website, but a few weeks after Gawker published 6 new paintings, and then 12 others, and then a final 2, claiming each time they were also from Guccifer (other websites say that with all the positive attention the first 3 paintings got, it is maybe Bush himself who "leaked" the next paintings to Gawker). Including the Gawker leaks, the total number of leaked paintings would be23. Guccifer accessed the pictures by simply breaking into Bush's daughter AOL Mail account.

3 Security Curmudgeon. 2011. "Absolute Sownage: A concise history of recent Sony hacks," Attrition.org, June 4. Available at link.

4 Tassi, Paul. 2011. "Sony Pegs PSN Attack Costs at $170 Million, $3.1B Total Loss for 2011," Forbes. May 23. Available at link.

5 Lapsley Phil. 2013. Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell. New York: Grove Press.

6 You Tube. 2013. "Edward Tufte on Aaron Swartz, JSTOR downloads and his own hacking," YouTube. January 21. Available at link.

7 Poulsen, Kevin. 2013. "WikiLeaks Volunteer Was a Paid Informant for the FBI," Wired. June 27. Available at link.

8 Carr, David and Ravi Somaiya. 2014. "Assange, Back in News, Never Left U.S. Radar." New York Times. June 24. Available at link.

9 Homey the Hacker. 1991. "Hack," Phrack Magazine vol. 3, no. 36 Available at link. The original poem reads as follows:

======/
Hack
/======

[Sung to the tune of Stand by REM]

Hack in the place where you live
Now dial out
Think about telnet, wonder why you have it now
Hack in the place where you work
Now dial up
Think about tymnet, wonder why you have it

If you are real board hack with SUN
Carry a lap-top to help along
A PAD is there to move you around
If You're not careful your hands will be bound

Hack in the place where you live
Now dial out
Think about telnet, wonder why you have it now
Hack in the place where you work
Now dial up
Think about tymnet, wonder why you have it

A PAD is there to move you around
If you're not careful your hands will be bound

If accounts were trees
Trees would be falling
Listen to reason
Foley is calling
_ _
(repeat an (_X_) amount of times)

Now Hack!

10 http://www.newyorker.com/search

11 Sheehan, Neil. 1971, "Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of Growing U. S. Involvement," The New York Times, June 13. Available at link.

12 Lewis, Paul. 2013. "Bradley Manning given 35-year prison term for passing files to WikiLeaks," The Guardian. August 21. 2013. Available at link.

13 US Courts' Federal Judicial Caseload Statistics. Available at link.

14 The Internet Archive, available at link.

15 Debczak, Michele. n.D. "IKEA to Roll Out Hackable Furniture in 2018". Mental Floss. Available at link.

16 Lapsley Phil. 2013. Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell. New York: Grove Press.

17 http://cybersquirrel1.com/