Great Hacker War

The Great Hacker War was a 1990–1991 conflict between the Masters of Deception (MOD) and a fraction of the older guard hacker group Legion of Doom (LOD). Each side attempted to hack the other's computers across Internet, X.25, and telephone networks.

Timeline

The Great Hacker War escalated in the space of only a few days with a series of four key events.

Event One

The Great Hacker War began with the closing of an invite-only bulletin board called "Fifth Amendment", whose participants were some of the world's most successful hackers. It was run by members of the newly reformed LOD under the leadership of Chris Goggans ("Erik Bloodaxe") and Loyd Blankenship ("The Mentor").

The closing of the board had been blamed on John Lee ("Corrupt") of the MOD in a cryptic message left to users. Chris Goggans (LOD) had claimed that Lee had been distributing information that was discussed on the board. MOD had discovered that Chris Goggans and his friends had decided to use the information being posted on the board to start a security company and contact all companies being discussed about the security flaws posted on Fifth Amendment.

Event Two

A few prank phone calls to the home number of the new LOD upset Goggans and prompted him to put out a call to find the personal information of the members of the MOD. Peacemakers intervened and a conference call was arranged on an unnamed RBOC telephone bridge in the Midwest. As members of the MOD silently joined the conference call, they overheard the members of the LOD using racial slurs to describe the ethnicity of members of the MOD. The peace conference quickly degenerated into threats and prank calls to members of the LOD, whose personal information had already been uncovered by the MOD.

Event Three

A last-minute, late-night peace talk was held between Chris Goggans (LOD) and Mark Abene ("Phiber Optik") of MOD. Unknown to Goggans, John Lee ("Corrupt") was listening in on three-way. Goggans became angry that Abene would not fulfill his numerous demands for the personal information of MOD members, and for the MOD's hacking information that he considered the property of LOD.

Abene refused to meet Goggans's demands, and Goggans uttered his infamous phrase that began the war in earnest - "MOD is nothing but niggers, spics, and white trash." That night, prank phone calls began to Abene's house and a call went out to the hacker underworld putting a bounty on the heads of MOD members.Fact|date=December 2007

Event Four

The members of the MOD decided to eavesdrop on Chris Goggans's phone calls to determine his motives. Using the undocumented remote headset feature on a DMS-100 phone switch local to Goggans, the MOD overheard what they had suspected earlier. Goggans, Scott Chasin ("Doc Holiday"), and Jake Kenyon Shulman ("Malefactor") had decided to form a security company called ComSec.

Epilogue

The war subsided after MOD emerged the superior hacker clan. MOD had usurped several key assets that LOD had a tenuous grasp on (PSN's) and revealed skill sets that they clearly lacked (RBOC systems control)Fact|date=May 2008. Chris Goggans much to the chagrin of his business partner, Jake Kenyon Shulman, decided to begin an aggressive campaign of narcing on MOD in order to get revenge for his stinging loss in the Great Hacker WarFact|date=May 2008.

ee also

*Masters of Deception - One side of the Great Hacker War
*Legion of Doom - One side of the Great Hacker War
*Chris Goggans ("Erik Bloodaxe")
*Mark Abene ("Phiber Optik")
*Nahshon Even-Chaim ("Phoenix")

External links

* [http://www.textfiles.com/hacking/modbook4.txt modbook4.txt] — "The Book of MOD: Part Four: End of '90-'1991"
* [http://www.textfiles.com/hacking/modbook3.txt modbook3.txt] — "The Book of MOD: Part Three"

References

* "The Masters of Deception: The Gang that Ruled Cyberspace" (ISBN 0-06-092694-5)
* "Gang War in Cyberspace." "Wired" 2.12 [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.12/hacker_pr.html]
* "Notorious M.O.D." "Wired" 9.06 [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.06/mustread.html?pg=7]