Stephen Gold

Stephen Gold (15 January 1956 - 12 January 2015) was a hacker and journalist who in the mid-1980s was convicted—and then acquitted—of accessing the personal message account of Prince Philip. Gold later became a "respected information security journalist".

In 1984, Gold and a fellow journalist Robert Schifreen demonstrated an "ad hoc penetration test" of a Prestel network which, according to the writer Nick Barron, used "a combination of clever shoulder surfing and good old-fashioned hacking skills".

He and Schifreen were convicted at Southwark Crown Court on charges under the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, but they "successfully appealed and were acquitted on the basis that they had not obtained any material gain from their exploits". Their case, it was said, "led directly to the introduction of the 1990 Computer Misuse Act". Gold later described the event in The Hacker's Handbook, of which he co-wrote later editions with Professor Peter Sommer.

Gold died on 12 January 2015. He was commemorated by the creation of the webpage Silent Modems by his friends and followers.