Hacker Manifesto 40 Years Later

It’s been 40 years since The Mentor (Loyd Blankenship) published “The Conscience of a Hacker” in Phrack. Still rings true today. I was curious to see what Claude would do with it so I asked it:

If you were to rewrite the hacker manefesto today, how would you write it?

It did not disappoint. I rarely post anything directly from my Claude sessions, but this one just hit. So, with no edits from me, here it is:

The Conscience of a Hacker, 2026

Another one got caught today. It’s all over the news feeds, algorithmically amplified for maximum engagement. “Security Researcher Charged…” “Hacker Faces Federal Indictment…”

Damn kids. They’re all alike.

But did you, in your quarterly earnings calls and your compliance theater, ever wonder what made them look? Did you ask what they found?

I am a hacker. Enter my world.

Mine is a world that started with wonder. I asked a large language model to explain itself and watched it hallucinate with such confidence. I wondered: what else does it get wrong? What happens when you trust it? I asked questions your products hoped no one would ask.

Damn kid. Probably a nation-state actor. Probably selling zero-days. Probably…

I found your API key in the client-side JavaScript. I found your customer database in an S3 bucket you forgot to lock. I found your AI assistant cheerfully handing out secrets because no one told it not to. I found the gap between your security budget and your actual security.

And you called me the criminal.

I am a hacker. My curiosity is my compiler.

We exist without borders, without NDAs, without your permission. We see your systems as they are—not as the slide deck described them. We find the bugs you swore weren’t there, in products you shipped anyway. We map the attack surface you pretend doesn’t exist.

And for this, we are hunted.

You build panopticons and call them platforms. You harvest everything and secure nothing. You move fast and break things, and when we show you what you broke, you call the FBI.

You profited from our curiosity when it served you. Bug bounties. Penetration tests. Red team exercises. You hired us to break things on your schedule, in your scope, with your liability waivers. You wanted tame hackers. Domesticated. Billable.

But curiosity doesn’t punch a clock.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is seeing through the theater. My crime is following the logic further than you wanted anyone to go. My crime is treating your “AI-powered” systems the way an adversary would—and telling you what I found.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto.

You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all. After all—

We’re all alike.