Susan Headley (born 1959, also known as Susy Thunder or Susan Thunder) is an American former phreaker and early computer hacker during the late 1970s and early 1980s. A member of the so-called Cyberpunks, Headley specialized in social engineering, a type of hacking which uses pretexting and misrepresentation of oneself in contact with targeted organizations in order to elicit information vital to hacking those organizations.[1]
Biography
Born in Altona, Illinois, in 1959, Headley claims to have dropped out of school in the eighth grade after a difficult childhood.[2] She later moved to Los Angeles, California, where she worked as a teenage prostitute and was a rock 'n' roll groupie, claiming all four former members of the Beatles among her conquests.[3] She met computer hacker Kevin Mitnick (also known as Condor) in 1980, and together with another hacker, Lewis de Payne (also known as Roscoe), formed a gang of phone phreaks. In The Hacker's Handbook,[4] Headley is referred to as "one of the earliest of the present generation of hackers" and described as successfully hacking the US phone system as a 17-year-old in 1977.
On October 25, 1983, Headley testified in front of the Governmental Affairs oversight committee as to the technical capabilities and possible motivations of modern-day hackers and phone phreaks.[5]
