He and Mendax joked that if they called a `hot' site they would use
Trax's technique to send the line trace—and the bill—back to one
very special number. The one belonging to the AFP's Computer Crime
Unit in Melbourne.

All three IS hackers suspected the AFP was close on their heels. Roving through the Canberra-based computer system belonging to the man who essentially ran the Internet in Australia, Geoff Huston, they watched the combined efforts of police and the Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNET) to trace them.

Craig Warren of Deakin University had written to Huston, AARNET technical manager, about hacker attacks on university systems. Huston had forwarded a copy of the letter to Peter Elford, who assisted Huston in managing AARNET. The hackers broke into Huston's system and also read the letter:

From G.Huston@aarnet.edu.au Mon Sep 23 09:40:43 1991

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