Wire Pirates

Someday the Internet may become an information superhighway, but right now it is more like a 19th-century railroad that
passes through the badlands of the Old West. As waves of new settlers flock to cyberspace in search for free information
or commercial opportunity, they make easy marks for sharpers who play a keyboard as deftly as Billy the Kid ever drew a
six-gun.
It is difficult even for those who ply it every day to appreciate how much the Internet depends on collegial trust and mutual
forbearance. The 30,000 interconnected computer networks and 2.5 million or more attached computer…