WHAT’S up, Times readers? Normally right now you’d be nodding off over a very thoughtful prescription for offering Qaddafi an honorable exile at a plastic surgery teaching hospital. But not today, people! Because I deleted that snoozer when I hacked my way in here.
That’s right. I hacked the Op-Ed page. You’re only reading this because I broke into The Times’s internal network (“The Old Gray Linux Box” we call it) and put this piece in the lineup myself.
Surprise, surprise: a dead-tree media company’s cyber-security was no tougher to crack than Citibank’s or the C.I.A.’s or any of the other institutions my brethren have hacked into in the past few months.
You’re probably wondering what I want. To be clear: I, along with a large group of my associates, am acting alone. We take orders from no one. Though in the spirit of disclosure, in this one Estonian chat room there’s a 9-year-old boy with some surprisingly good ideas.
We are completely untraceable, except for my byline, which only just now occurred to me might be a problem.
Anyway, I wanted to set right a lot of the misunderstanding about us hackers that has emerged this summer.
First, hackers are not criminals. I mean, technically, if you’re into a strict reading of the penal code, some of us are. But even the most radical hacktivist groups among us — even lawless, renegade outfits like Anonymous and LulzSec and News Corp. — are doing the valuable service of reminding the world that there are no such things as “total security” or “journalistic ethics.”
Which brings me to point 2.0: hacking’s a fact of life now. Computer hacking, phone hacking, credit card hacking — these are but the beginning. We can hack anything. I’m personally sitting on 52,000 T-Mobile account passwords, 14 million Frontier Airlines EarlyReturns™ points, a thumb drive full of Balenciaga handbag serial numbers, and 200 slightly racy beach-vacation photos of a certain well-known celebrity chef. I’m not making a threat. I’m just saying if a two-top doesn’t open up at a certain French fish restaurant next Thursday night, I tweet the Speedo pics.
So we’re here to stay and only getting closer. This summer, Facebook hired 21-year-old George Hotz, a k a Geohot, famed for hacking into Sony’s “unbreakable” PlayStation 3 system. The new head of security for Icann, the regulatory body that manages the Internet’s foundational structure, is Jeff Moss, a k a Dark Tangent. The Defense Department, F.B.I. and C.I.A. routinely bring hacking talent in-house. Basically, our institutions now base their human resources strategies on the plot of “48 Hrs.”
I’m also hoping The Times will see the logic of making this Op-Ed column a regular gig for me. In fact, I’m demanding it. Otherwise, things could get ugly.
You don’t think I’m serious, do you?
Fine — here’s a little taste of some of the humiliation that awaits.
FACT: The New York Times network’s user name and password were “intern” and “Ochs1234.” Come on. To hacktivists like me that’s like an engraved invitation — if we ever even used paper, which we don’t.
FACT: The boys in corporate don’t want anyone to know, but 70 percent of company revenues last year came from Times New Roman font royalties.
FACT: Tom Friedman’s column has, for the last three years, been written not been by Tom Friedman but by a consortium of Malaysian university students studying artificial intelligence. T.F. has agreed to keep this quiet because the Malaysians agreed to give him the book rights to the whole thing. 
And for my last trick FACT: Most amazing of all — now the world can be told — Maureen Dowd ==>
Congratulation reader! Our very good reputation firm has now possession of Yakutsk gold mine but needs financing wired to Moscow for financial purposes. Due to short time we have re-hacked newspaper Web site for spreading word to smart Op-Ed readers ==>
HEY. MY NAME'S DAVE. I'M NOT WEARING UNDERPANTS. Vidlink:www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vbz ==>
Arghh, sorry. Hacker Steve here again. Clearly some bugs to work out. Go read “Thomas L. Friedman” for a few minutes? I gotta go ask my Estonian what to do here. Check back next Tuesday. That’s the slot I’ve decided I want.
Steve Bodow is co-executive producer and former head writer for “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.”