HOT GOSSIP

Exclusive - Interview With A Uk Hacker

Iād heard a few stories about Dangerous Bunting and the
tricks he gets up to on the Internet, and I was interested
to know more about him. So how do you interview a hacker,
and what kind of people are they? Well I was soon to find
out!

Dangerous Bunting, probably better known as Heath Bunting,
is in consultant marketing and underground art, and apart
from being an expert with computers, heās also a lecturer,
and is currently booked for exhibitions and conferences in
Switzerland, Dublin and Budapest.

Heās polite, laid back, friendly, intelligent, he has a
sense of humour, yet heās a little paranoid and quietly
extrovert. He drinks lots of water, he doesnāt smoke and he
cares about the environment. So whatās a nice guy like this
doing hacking his way through cyber space?

His interests are varied, he likes art, you could say heās a
cyber artist. Some of his work is very abstract, and heās a
dab hand at graffiti. Oh the shock! I ask him if heās one of
those guys who sprays the walls with painted graffiti.

ć Not at allä he says, producing pieces of black and white
chalk, ćif I feel like it, I might draw pictures of people,
anywhere, on walls, whatever, theyāre just small pictures,
and theyāre not permanent because theyāre drawn in chalk, I
just like peopleä.

So what does he like about people?

He thinks people are extremely interesting subjects and he
likes to study them. At the moment heās working on a a
href="pleasur.html">pleasure project, and it certainly
involves people. In fact in the not too distant future Heath
Bunting plans to become a Japanese female. Does this mean
heās going for a sex change?

ć Noä he giggles ćitās an on-line identity, on the Net
people tend to think that Japanese women are techno
intellects and men find them very attractive, itās an
experiment and I hope to learn something from it.ä Iām not
sure how Iām going to play it yet, but I expect it will
involve correspondence, you know exchange of e-mailä.

Heās also interested in Pirate Radio, heās not directly
involved, but interested. With a glint in his eye, he tells
me about the 40 UK pirate radio stations which exist, and
how three hours after being closed down, theyāre up and
running yet again. He says he likes the music, but I wonder,
is it the challenge which is so attractive to him?

I get the impression that Dangerous Bunting likes a
challenge, but he admits that some of his challenges which
were meant to be funny, didnāt always turn out to be that
way. Like the time when he planted a fake bomb in a
girlfriends car, he was looking for a reaction, he got one,
she called the police, and the bomb squad arrived and blew
it up.

ćWell Iām an artistä, he said ć it was a sculpture, it
wasnāt supposed to be a threatening hoax. I didnāt think it
would be such a problem, when I realised it was, I ended up
turning myself in, but when I called the police, they didnāt
believe I did it. They were very nice to me, and apparently
I could have got a seven year sentence for hoaxing a bomb,
but I meant no harm, it was supposed to be a joke on a
friendä.

So what about the hacking?

Heath Bunting became famous, or infamous which ever way you
care to look at it, for hacking into a corporate site and
uploading editorial and shocking pictures of animals which
had been experimented on in the name of science. He claimed
that the company whose site heād hacked into, were using
animals in their experiments and that he did it for his
mother who is an animal rights activist.

He now plans to become the first Internet beggar by going
into sites and leaving begging letters. Heās already tried
the experiment, and so far heās received £10.00.

ćItās all part of a study which is to do with pleasure,
involving time, art and people. Everything I do is part of
this programmeä he says.

So what else is he up to? He tells me heās now working on a
virus, albeit a friendly one. I wonder how there can be such
a thing as a friendly virus? Well, he insists there is such
a thing, and he claims that it may well be a musical virus.

ćIt wonāt do any harm, it wonāt destroy a hard disc, or have
anything to do with messing up data, itāll just play a tuneä
he said.

I wanted to know what he really thought about the Internet,
and where he thought it would all end up.

ć In the future I believe it will become very commercial,
itāll be taken over by corporateās, it will eventually be
controlled by a small number of biggies, and that is sadä.

Heath Bunting has been playing around with computers since
he was 14 years of age. One wonders how many more little
Buntings are out there playing around with their computers,
and one can only hope that if anything, they grow up with a
sense of humour and not a feeling for destruction.

Thankyou Heath Bunting for this interview. Georgina Bruni

Georgina Bruni 
Hot Gossip UK 
E-Zine http://www.itl.net/goto/hotgossip