Craig Neidorf (born 1969), a.k.a.Knight Lightning, is an American editor. He was one of the founding editors of Phrack Magazine, an ezine. [1]
In 1990. he was charged for fraud. Though later the charges were dropped. The case was a catalyst in the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Prophet, a witness, admitted that he had never known Neidorf to break in to any computer. Also that no one in the Legion of Doom considered Craig a hacker. [2]
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Craig Neidorf studied at University of Missouri. [3]
In 1985, Craig, along with Randy Tischler (aka Taran King), came up with the concept of Phrack and started publishing it since then.
In February 1990, Neidorf was arrested and was charged with fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property for stealing a confidential document, the E911 document, from the Bell South telephone company and with publicly distributing it in february 1989. [4] BellSouth described the document, on the subject of the inner workings of the Enhanced 911 system, as being worth US$79,449. [5]
The case became a controversial issue for the digital underground and Neidorf's defence was organised, not funded, by the fledgling Electronic Frontier Foundation. On 27 July 1990, the fourth day of trial, the case was dismissed. The charges were dropped when it was revealed that the document was not a source code but rather a memorandum and that it could be ordered from BellSouth by phone for $13.50. The proceedings are formally known as United States v. Riggs . [6]
He was not found innocent though the trial was dropped. On September 9, 1991, he was granted motion for the "expungement and sealing" of his indictment record. Craig became determined to become a lawyer. In 2020, he was working as a researcher at Electronic Frontier Foundation. [2]
Phrack is an e-zine written by and for hackers, first published November 17, 1985. It had a wide circulation which included both hackers and computer security professionals.
Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term phreak is a sensational spelling of the word freak with the ph- from phone, and may also refer to the use of various audio frequencies to manipulate a phone system. Phreak, phreaker, or phone phreak are names used for and by individuals who participate in phreaking.
Loyd Blankenship, better known by his pseudonym The Mentor, is an American computer hacker and writer. He has been active since the 1970s, when he was a member of the hacker groups Extasyy Elite and Legion of Doom.
Operation Sundevil was a 1990 nationwide United States Secret Service crackdown on "illegal computer hacking activities." It involved raids in approximately fifteen different cities and resulted in three arrests and the confiscation of computers, the contents of electronic bulletin board systems (BBSes), and floppy disks. It was revealed in a press release on May 9, 1990. The arrests and subsequent court cases resulted in the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The operation is now seen as largely a public-relations stunt. Operation Sundevil has also been viewed as one of the preliminary attacks on the Legion of Doom and similar hacking groups. The raid on Steve Jackson Games, which led to the court case Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. United States Secret Service, is often attributed to Operation Sundevil, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation states that it is unrelated and cites this attribution as a media error.
Chris Goggans is an American hacker, a founding member of the Legion of Doom group, and a former editor of Phrack magazine. He is known as an expert in security as well as for his statements on hacker ethics and responsibility.
Aaron Hillel Swartz was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. As a programmer, Swartz helped develop the web feed format RSS; the technical architecture for Creative Commons, an organization dedicated to creating copyright licenses; the website framework web.py; and Markdown, a lightweight markup language format. Swartz was involved in the development of the social news aggregation website Reddit until he departed from the company in 2007. He is often credited as a martyr and a prodigy, and his work focused on civic awareness and activism.
Nahshon Even-Chaim, aka Phoenix, was the first major computer hacker to be convicted in Australia. He was one of the most highly skilled members of a computer hacking group called The Realm, based in Melbourne, Australia, from the late 1980s until his arrest by the Australian Federal Police in early 1990. His targets centred on defense and nuclear weapons research networks.
The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier is a work of nonfiction by Bruce Sterling first published in 1992.
Electron was the computer handle of Richard Jones, a member of an underground hacker community called The Realm. Jones, born in June 1969, was one of three members of the group arrested in simultaneous raids by the Australian Federal Police in Melbourne, Australia, on 2 April 1990. All three — Nahshon Even-Chaim, Electron and Nom — were convicted of a range of computer crimes involving the intrusion into US defense and government computer systems and the theft of an online computer security newsletter in the late 1980s and early 1990.
United States v. ElcomSoft and Dmitry Sklyarov was a 2001–2002 criminal case in which Dmitry Sklyarov and his employer ElcomSoft were charged with alleged violation of the DMCA. The case raised some concerns of civil rights and legal process in the United States, and ended in the charges against Sklyarov dropped and Elcomsoft ruled not guilty under the applicable jurisdiction.
globalHell was a group of hackers. The group disbanded in 1999 due to being prosecuted for computer intrusion. The combined losses were estimated to be ranged between $1.5m and $2.5m. They were one of the first hacking groups who gained notoriety for website defacements and breaches. It is called a "cybergang" as it had many of the same characteristics of a gang, such as the organizational structure. They carried out some of the same activities as a gang, including trafficking in stolen credit card numbers.
The Computer Underground Digest (CuD) was a weekly online newsletter on early Internet cultural, social, and legal issues published by Gordon Meyer and Jim Thomas from March 1990 to March 2000.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet civil liberties.
Justin Tanner Petersen was an American hacker, concert promoter, sound engineer, private investigator and an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. While tasked with helping to catch other hackers and fugitives wanted by the FBI, he continued to commit serious crimes.
Leonard Rose, aka Terminus, is an American hacker who in 1991 accepted a plea bargain that convicted him of two counts of wire fraud stemming from publishing an article in Phrack magazine.
In United States v. Riggs, the government of the United States prosecuted Robert Riggs and Craig Neidorf for obtaining unauthorized access to and subsequently disseminating a file held on BellSouth's computers. The file, referred to as the E911 file, gave information regarding BellSouth's products implementing 911 emergency telephone services. Riggs and Neidorf were both indicted in the District Court of the Northern District of Illinois on numerous charges relating to the dissemination of the E911 text file. As Riggs had previously been indicted in the Northern District of Georgia in relation to the same incident, his charges from Illinois were transferred to Georgia. Riggs ultimately pleaded guilty in Georgia and was sentenced to 21 months in prison and two years' supervised release. Neidorf pleaded not guilty in Illinois and the government dropped all charges against Neidorf four days after the trial began.
Tor Bernhard Ekeland is a New York City based computer, trial and appellate lawyer. He is best known for representing hackers prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ("CFAA"), as well as white-collar defendants, in federal criminal court and on appeal across the United States.
Carding is a term describing the trafficking and unauthorized use of credit cards. The stolen credit cards or credit card numbers are then used to buy prepaid gift cards to cover up the tracks. Activities also encompass exploitation of personal data, and money laundering techniques. Modern carding sites have been described as full-service commercial entities.
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