I was a teenage hacker, admits presidential runner O’rourke

DEMOCRAT presidential contender Beto O’rourke has revealed he was a teenage hacker for one of the oldest online hacking groups in the US.

Mr O’rourke, 46, confirmed yesterday that he was a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow, and posted online essays under the pseudonym Psychedelic Warlord.

He also acknowledged that, during those teenage years, he stole long-distance phone services needed to access online discussions through dial-up internet connections. Mr O’rourke told Reuters he pilfered the services “so I wouldn’t run up the phone bill”.

However, there is no indication that Mr O’rourke himself engaged in the edgiest sorts of hacking activity – breaking into computers or writing code that enabled others to do so.

The revelations are unlikely to damage the telegenic prospective president who has energised a passionate base of young supporters drawn in by his history as a punk musician and his penchant for skateboarding.

The Texas front-runner is seen to have star quality and triggered a media scrum when he flew to Iowa to launch his campaign this week after finally announcing his candidacy.

Yesterday he was continuing to campaign in rural Iowa, in the small town of Washington, three hours from the capital Des Moines.

Dozens of Iowans packed into a small art gallery in the main square as news filtered through. Sandy Bateman, 65, a retired nurse wearing a Beto for Texas T-shirt, told The Daily Telegraph: “A lot of people did stupid things when they were young.”

The admission from O’rourke makes the ex-congressman the most prominent former hacker in American politics.

After his active period in the late Eighties, the group became famous for releasing tools that allowed ordinary computer users to hijack other people’s machines. Though it was controversial, the resulting chaos forced Windows maker Microsoft to dramatically improve security.

For Mr O’rourke, the long-suppressed tale fills out an unusual portrait for a presidential aspirant. Born to a prominent El Paso family and sent to a boarding school and an Ivy League college, Mr O’rourke felt a misfit as a youth, arrested on drunk-driving charges and playing in a punk band.

In the Eighties he decided to seek out bulletin board systems – the online discussion forums that at the time were the best electronic means for connecting people outside the local school, church and neighbourhood.

“You just wanted to be part of a community,” he said.