I recall thinking back then that hackers were mysterious and cool. Fast forward to becoming a computer programmer and spending my life reverse engineering basically everything to be able to do my job and it seems laughable how much fear people have of basically anyone that spends time understanding anything they don't.

Look! A witch! :D

Also, I guess if you were a girl, you had a free pass, because if this article was anything to go by, hackers could only be boys(?)

I suspect it's also a nod to the prejudice of the father, if he had been real.

Something being picked up by the "mainstream press" does not mean it is not satire.

There are all kinds of satire and hoaxes that have been reported by the mainstream press as truth and reality...

Yes, my point was that especially in 2001, it would have been easy to not have the technical acumen to realize the story was satire, and to write a serious news story about it.