My Hacker Theory in a nutshell (4) #39
This is the eighth installment of "My Hacker Theory in a nutshell (4)," part #39 of my Turin Shroud Encyclopedia. See Part 1 for more information about this 5-part series. Although a reference date may be the same, e.g. "[18Feb14]," when clicked it will open at the correct place in the source.
[Index #1] [Previous: My Hacker Theory (3) #38] [Next: My Hacker Theory (5) #40].
■ Evidence that the hacker was Arizona laboratory physicist Timothy W. Linick (1946-89), aided by German hacker, Karl Koch (1965-89).
• The beginning of my Hacker Theory In the early 1990s I was the System Administrator of a wide area network of 7 Western Australian rural hospitals' UNIX computer systems[22Feb14; 05Jul14; 24Oct16; 23Jan17].
Clifford Stoll As part of my job interest in computer security, I read Clifford Stoll's 
1989 book, "The Cuckoo's Egg" [Right]. Stoll is a former astronomer in Berkeley University's W.M. Keck Observatory, who in 1986 was redeployed to help manage a large computer network at Berkeley University's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL)(not Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)[22Feb14]. Stoll recounted how lax was the computer security at universities in the 1980s[22Feb14; 03Jun14]. He described how easy it was then to hack into university networked computer systems[22Feb14; 03Jun14]. Any of LBL's scientists could log into LBL's computer, and then, over ARPANET (a precursor to the Internet) connect to a distant computer[22Feb14; 03Jun14]. Once connected, they could log into the distant computer by entering an account name and password[22Feb14; 03Jun14]. The only thing protecting the networked computer was the password, since account names were easy then to figure out[22Feb14; 03Jun14]. And Stoll was amazed that on many of high-security sites the hacker could easily guess passwords, since many system administrators had never bothered to change the passwords from their factory defaults, even on military bases, a hacker was able to log in as "guest" with no password[TCW]! No physical security was needed at LBL and laboratory doors were seldom locked[22Feb14; 03Jun14]. In 1986 Stoll detected, and eventually caught, a hacker Markus Hess (1960-), who dialied into LBL's computer from Germany, and `piggybacked' from there to hack into government, business and military computers [22Feb14; 03Jun14]. Hess was a member of the same Chaos Computer Club that Karl Koch was a member of[03Jun14]. Both Hess and Koch sold their hacked information to the KGB[03Jun14]. But it was more than a decade later, in January 2005, that I discovered the Shroud[30Jun07].
David Sox's "The Shroud Unmasked" In June 2007 I read in shroudie turned sceptic David Sox (1936-2016)'s 1988 book, "The Shroud Unmasked," the account provided by an eyewitness, Prof. Harry Gove (1922-2009), of very first radiocarbon dating of the Shroud at Arizona laboratory[22Feb14]. That the "calculations were produced on the [AMS] computer, and displayed on the screen"[23Jan17].
[Above: Page 147 of David Sox's 1988 book, "The Shroud Unmasked," with "The calculations were produced on the computer ..." outlined in red and "Timothy Linick, a University of Arizona research scientist, said ..." (which I did not notice at the time) outlined in blue.]
All this was under computer control and the calculations produced by the computer were displayed" Later in 2007[10Dec07] I read Gove's own eyewitness account, which evidently is the original, since he gives the date "1350 AD", and Sox was not there:
"The first sample run was OX1. Then followed one of the controls. Each run consisted of a 10 second measurement of the carbon-13 current and a 50 second measurement of the carbon-14 counts. This is repeated nine more times and an average carbon-14/carbon-13 ratio calculated. All this was under computer control and the calculations produced by the computer were displayed on a cathode ray screen. The age of the control sample could have been calculated on a small pocket calculator but was not-everyone was waiting for the next sample-the Shroud of Turin! At 9:50 am 6 May 1988, Arizona time, the first of the ten measurements appeared on the screen. We all waited breathlessly. The ratio was compared with the OX sample and the radiocarbon time scale calibration was applied by Doug Donahue. His face became instantly drawn and pale. At the end of that one minute we knew the age of the Turin Shroud! The next nine numbers confirmed the first. It had taken me eleven years to arrange for a measurement that took only ten minutes to accomplish! Based on these 10 one minute runs, with the calibration correction applied, the year the flax had been harvested that formed its linen threads was 1350 AD-the shroud was only 640 years old! It was certainly not Christ's burial cloth but dated from the time its historic record began" (my emphasis)[22Febr14; 10Mar17].So I realised in 2007 that it was not the actual radiocarbon dating of the Shroud that those in Arizona's laboratory were seeing, but what the AMS computer was displaying. That between the actual carbon dating by the AMS system and those watching the computer screen, was a computer program[24Oct16]! That an explanation of why the first-century Shroud had a 1260-1390 radiocarbon date, is that a hacker had installed a program in the three laboratories' AMS computers which substituted the Shroud's actual radiocarbon date with bogus dates, which when combined and averaged made it appear the Shroud dated shortly before its first undisputed appearance at Lirey, France in ~1355[24Oct16]!
However, I had only started this blog on 30 June 2007], and had a lot to learn about the Shroud, so didn't begin to post that the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud may have been hacked until 2014.
The following are the main items of evidence from all my "hacker" posts, grouped together, to save space, that the three radiocarbon dating laboratories, Arizona, Oxford and Zurich, were indeed duped by a computer hacker, Timothy Linick, aided by German hacker, Karl Koch.
■ Evidence that Timothy Linick was the leaker of Arizona's "1350" date[24Jun14; 30Dec15].
• Linick was quoted in Sox's 1988 book, "If we show the material to be medieval that would definitely mean that it is not authentic."
"The night before the test Damon told Gove he would not be surprised to see the analysis yield a date around the fifth-century, because after that time the crucifixion was banned and a forger would not have known of the details depicted so accurately on the Shroud. Timothy Linick, a University of Arizona research scientist, said: `If we show the material to be medieval that would definitely mean that it is not authentic. If we date it back 2000 years, of course, that still leaves room for argument. It would be the right age - but is it the real thing?'" (my emphasis)[05Mar15; 30Dec15; 19Jan16; 06Aug18].• Linick had signed a confidentiality agreement This was despite Linick having signed a confidentiality agreement, "not to communicate the results to anyone":
“The next morning at about 8 am (6 May 1988) I arrived at the Arizona AMS facility ... I would be the only one present outside the Arizona AMS group. Doug immediately asked me to sign the following statement: `We the undersigned, understand that radiocarbon age results for the Shroud of Turin obtained from the University of Arizona AMS facility are confidential. We agree not to communicate the results to anyone- spouse, children, friends, press, etc., until that time when results are generally available to the public.’ It had been signed by D J Donahue, Brad Gore, L J Toolin, P E Damon, Timothy Jull and Art Hatheway, all connected with the Arizona AMS facility, before I signed. My signature was followed by T W Linick and P J Sercel, also from the Arizona facility" (my emphasis)[GH96, 262; 31Mar14;19Jan16; 22Nov16; 23Jun18; 06Aug18]When Linick's quote in Sox's book (above) was discovered by Arizona laboratory leaders, Linick might have argued that he didn't communicate the results to Sox. But, apart from it breaching the spirit of his signed confidentiality agreement by communicating with Sox, as we shall see, Linick did communicate Arizona's first run "1350" result to Sox.
• Richard Luckett leaked Arizona's "1350" date On 26 August 1988 the London Evening Standard ran a front-page story, "Shroud of Turin Really is a Fake," with an accompanying article by Cambridge librarian Richard Luckett (1945-2020), stating that a probable date of about 
[Left: Richard Luckett who had been the Pepys Librarian at Magdalene College, Cambridge, since 1982[05Mar15], i.e. Luckett's position in August 1988 when he leaked, on behalf of Sox, who received it from Linick, Arizona's "1350" first run date of the Shroud to the London Evening Standard.]
1350 looks likely" and remarking that "laboratories are rather leaky institutions"[05Mar15]. This generated a world-wide media frenzy, yet none of the laboratories, nor the British Museum, knew Luckett, or how he had obtained his information[05Mar15]. It was assumed that the Oxford laboratory, which had completed its dating on 6 August, had leaked the "1350" date to Luckett, but not only was Oxford's mean date "several decades less than 1350 AD," in an Associated Press story of 9 September 1988, Luckett was quoted as saying: "I had an absolutely marvellous leak from one of the laboratories and it wasn't Oxford"[05Mar15].
Previously, on 3 July 1988, columnist Kenneth Rose (1924-2014) in the London Sunday Telegraph, had reported on the ongoing radiocarbon 
[Right: The late Kenneth Rose, was the first to leak on 3 July 1988 that the carbon dating of the Shroud would be "medieval"[05Mar15].]
dating of the Shroud that, "In spite of the intense secrecy surrounding the investigation I hear signs that the linen cloth has been proved to be mediaeval"[05Mar15]. The story was picked up by news media around the world[05Mar15]. Suspicion fell on Oxford laboratory having leaked the results, but Oxford's Prof. Edward Hall (1924-2001) and Robert Hedges (1944-) in a letter to The Times of 9 July, pointed out that Oxford had not then begun its dating of the Shroud[05Mar15].
Notes:
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its title, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
Bibliography
GH96. Gove, H.E., 1996, "Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud," Institute of Physics Publishing: Bristol UK.
TCW. "The Cuckoo's Egg (book)," Wikipedia, 25 March 2025.
Posted 7 April 2025. Updated 16 April 2025.
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