Karl Koch (hacker)

Karl Koch (July 22, 1965 – May 23, 1989) was a German hacker from the 1980s who used the nickname Hagbard Celine (first name of the protagonist of the book trilogy Illuminatus!). He is considered by many to be the inventor of the Trojan horse and was involved in an espionage incident during the Cold War.

Early Years

Koch was born in Hanover on July 22, 1965. His mother died in 1976 of cancer and his father was an alcoholic. From a young age he was interested in astronomy and participated in the student council of his region. With the income he earned in that position he bought his first computer. On his eleventh birthday, his father gave him what became his life's obsession, Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy. In 1984, his father died of a brain tumor, leaving him an inheritance of 240,000 German marks (half of this money he gave to his sister) with which he bought, among other things, an Atari ST.

Hacker and spy

As his pen name indicates, he was greatly influenced by the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. In addition to adopting the name of a character from the book, he also called his computer 'FUCKUP'. ("First Universal Cybernetic-Kinetic Ultra-Micro Programmer") in honor of a computer designed and built by that character. He was addicted to drugs and became extremely paranoid, to the point of becoming convinced that the Illuminati were real and that he was part of the fight against them, just like his literary namesake.

Koch was loosely affiliated with the Chaos Computer Club. He worked with well-known hackers DOB (Dirk-Otto Brezinski), Pengo (Hans Heinrich Hübner) and Urmel (Markus Hess). He sold US military information to the KGB. Eventually, he and Pengo turned themselves in to the authorities and confessed to their crime.

Death

On May 23, 1989, his charred body, burned with gasoline, was found in a forest near Celle. According to some sources, the body was separated from the car about 25 meters in a wooded area. It is generally considered that it was a suicide. There are also theories that he was killed for investigating secret societies.

Koch in the media

Literature

• Katie Hafner, John Markoff. CYBERPUNK: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier, Revised (November 1, 1995 edition). Simon & Schuster. pp. 400. ISBN 0684818620.

Cinema

• A German film was filmed about his life, entitled 23which was premiered in 1998. While acclaimed by criticism, it has been severely criticized for the exploitation of real-life witnesses. It serves as a corrective of the film the documentation written by his friends.

Music

• Koch was commemorated by the Clock DVA electronic group at the start of his musical video for "The Hacker".