Wow, thanks, all! Ask and ye shall receive...! Here's what Helen sent:
a shell is a type program-- a shell program (like the shell on an oyster) is a protected program that ususally is a control program for a network.
just as shell corporation will hold the stock to other corporations, shell programs holds the network information.
did you have a computer back in DOS days? before everyone had windows.. you had to have a "bootstrap start" on floppy or "autoexe.bat" (an automatical executed batch) file on your hard drive.. shell program are similar to autoexe.bat files.. but they are for networks.
the shell promgram had all the address for all the other programs the network needed to run.
shell programs are very simple --but very powerful, think of them as a type of pass (master) key to a network.
In the sentence is sounds like Anu created a Shell program-- (Hack(ed) one) but since he was running a list server --not a standard network, his shell had was not a straight forward one.
