Erik Bloodaxe (hacker)

Last updated
Chris Goggans
Born (1970-01-01) January 1, 1970 (age 53)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Nationality American
Other namesEric Bloodaxe
Occupation(s) Programmer, entrepreneur, editor
Known forFounding member of Legion of Doom (hacking) (LOD), Hacking, infosec, computer security

Chris Goggans (also known as Erik Bloodaxe in honor of the Viking king Eric I of Norway) 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.

Contents

Career history

Around 1990-1991, Goggans and other Legion members set up a computer security firm, Comsec, which went out of business by 1992. [1] [2] He later became a senior network security engineer for WheelGroup, a network security group. [3] [4] [5]

In his closing remarks at a 1995 conference, Goggans remarked that the global hacker community was disorganized and uncoordinated, suggesting that they should focus an attack on some foreign country, such as France. [6] [7]

As of 2005, Goggans is a recognized expert on information security. He has performed network security assessments for some of the world's largest corporations, including all facets of critical infrastructure, with work spanning 22 countries across four continents. Groggans has worked with US Federal law enforcement agencies on notorious computer crime cases. His work has been referenced in publications such as Time , Newsweek, and Computerworld , as well as on networks such as CNN and CNBC.[ citation needed ]

Goggans has been asked to present at major conferences such as COMDEX, CSI, ISACA, and the Black Hat Briefings [ citation needed ], as well as having co-authored numerous books, including Implementing Internet Security, Internet Security Professional Reference, Windows NT Security, and The Complete Internet Business Toolkit.

During the summer of 2003, Goggans was invited to become an associate professor at the University of Tokyo's Center for Collaborative Research.[ citation needed ]. In the winter of 2008, Chris Goggans was in India for the ClubHack hacker convention. [8]

Currently, Goggans is president of SDI, Inc., a Virginia-based corporation providing information security consulting.

Issues with law enforcement

Goggans was raided by the US Secret Service on March 1, 1990, but was not charged. [9]

In a 1994 interview, he claimed he had never engaged in malicious hacking, explaining:

"Malicious hacking pretty much stands against everything that I adhere to. You always hear people talking about this so-called hacker ethic and I really do believe that. I would never wipe anything out. I would never take a system down and delete anything off of a system. Any time I was ever in a system, I'd look around the system, I'd see how the system was architectured, see how the directory structures differed from different types of other operating systems, make notes about this command being similar to that command on a different type of system, so it made it easier for me to learn that operating system" "Sure, I was in The Legion of Doom. I have been in everybody's system. But I have never been arrested. I have never broken anything, I have never done anything really, really, criminally bad.” [10]

However, in a phone call intercepted by the Australian Federal Police as part of an investigation into Australian hacker Phoenix (Nahshon Even-Chaim) Goggans was heard planning a raid in which the pair would steal source code and developmental software from Execucom, a Texas-based software and technology company headquartered in Austin, and sell it to the company's rivals.

In the call, recorded on February 22, 1990, and later presented in the County Court of Victoria [11] as evidence against Even-Chaim, Goggans and Even-Chaim canvassed how much money they could make from such a venture and how they would split fees from Execucom's competitors. During the call, Goggans provided Even-Chaim with a number of dial-up access numbers to Execucom's computers, commenting: "There are serious things I want to do at that place", and "There’s stuff that needs to happen to Execucom". [12] While there is no evidence that Goggans and Even-Chaim acted on this discussion, Goggans' statement of his intentions calls into question the nobility of his hacking ethics. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hacker</span> Person skilled in information technology

A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term hacker has become associated in popular culture with a security hacker – someone who utilizes their technical know-how of bugs or exploits to break into computer systems and access data which would otherwise be inaccessible to them – hacking can also be utilized by legitimate figures in legal situations. For example, law enforcement agencies sometimes use hacking techniques in order to collect evidence on criminals and other malicious actors. This could include using anonymity tools to mask their identities online, posing as criminals themselves. Likewise, covert world agencies can employ hacking techniques in the legal conduct of their work. On the other hand, hacking and cyber-attacks are used extra- and illegally by law enforcement and security agencies, and employed by state actors as a weapon of both legal and illegal warfare.

<i>Phrack</i>

Phrack is an e-zine written by and for hackers, first published November 17, 1985. Described by Fyodor as "the best, and by far the longest running hacker zine," the magazine is open for contributions by anyone who desires to publish remarkable works or express original ideas on the topics of interest. It has a wide circulation which includes 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.

The Conscience of a Hacker is a small essay written January 8, 1986 by a computer security hacker who went by the handle of The Mentor, who belonged to the second generation of hacker group Legion of Doom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cybercrime</span> Type of crime based in computer networks

Cybercrime is a type of crime involving a computer or a computer network. The computer may have been used in committing the crime, or it may be the target. Cybercrime may harm someone's security or finances.

The Great Hacker War was a purported conflict between the Masters of Deception (MOD), an unsanctioned splinter faction of the older hacker group Legion of Doom (LOD), and several smaller associated groups. Both primary groups involved made attempts to hack into the opposing group's networks, across the Internet, X.25, and telephone networks. In a panel debate of The Next HOPE conference, Phiber Optik re-iterated that the rumored "gang war in cyberspace" between Legion of Doom and Masters of Deception never happened, and that it was "a complete fabrication" by the U.S attorney's office and some sensationalist media. Furthermore, two other high-ranking members of the LOD confirmed that the "Great Hacker War" never occurred, reinforcing the idea that this was just a competition of one-upmanship and not a war.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Abene</span> American InfoSec expert and former hacker

Mark Abene is an American information security expert and entrepreneur, originally from New York City. Better known by his pseudonym Phiber Optik, he was once a member of the hacker groups Legion of Doom and Masters of Deception.

A grey hat is a computer hacker or computer security expert who may sometimes violate laws or typical ethical standards, but usually does not have the malicious intent typical of a black hat hacker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mathew Bevan</span> British computer hacker (born 1974)

Mathew Bevan is a British hacker from Cardiff, Wales. In 1996 he was arrested for hacking into secure U.S. Government networks under the handle Kuji. At the age of 21, he hacked into the files of the Griffiss Air Force Base Research Laboratory in New York.

A security hacker is someone who explores methods for breaching defenses and exploiting weaknesses in a computer system or network. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, protest, information gathering, challenge, recreation, or evaluation of a system weaknesses to assist in formulating defenses against potential hackers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Fancher</span>

Bruce Fancher is a former computer hacker and member of the Legion of Doom hacker group. He co-founded MindVox in 1991 with Patrick K. Kroupa.

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 centered on defense and nuclear weapons research networks.

<i>The Hacker Crackdown</i> Book by Bruce Sterling

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.

The Legion of Doom (LOD) was a hacker group founded by the hacker Lex Luthor (Raavan) after a rift with his previous group called the Knights of Shadow. LOD was active from the 1980s to the early 2000s, but was most active from 1984–1991 and at the time was considered to be the most capable hacking group in the world. Today, Legion of Doom ranks as one of the more influential hacking groups in the history of technology, appearing to be a reference to the antagonists of Challenge of the Superfriends.

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.

<i>United States v. Riggs</i>

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyberattack</span> Attack on a computer system

A cyberattack is any offensive maneuver that targets computer information systems, computer networks, infrastructures, personal computer devices, or smartphones. An attacker is a person or process that attempts to access data, functions, or other restricted areas of the system without authorization, potentially with malicious intent. Depending on the context, cyberattacks can be part of cyber warfare or cyberterrorism. A cyberattack can be employed by sovereign states, individuals, groups, societies or organizations and it may originate from an anonymous source. A product that facilitates a cyberattack is sometimes called a cyber weapon. Cyberattacks have increased over the last few years. A well-known example of a cyberattack is a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS).

Elias Ladopoulos is a technologist and investor from New York City. Under the pseudonym Acid Phreak, he was a founder of the Masters of Deception (MOD) hacker group along with Phiber Optik and Scorpion. Referred to as The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace in a 1995 non-fiction book, MOD was at the forefront of exploiting telephone systems to hack into the private networks of major corporations. In his later career, Ladopoulos developed new techniques for electronic trading and computerized projections of stocks and shares performance, as well as working as a security consultant for the defense department. He is currently CEO of Supermassive Corp, which is a hacker-based incubation studio for technology start-ups.

References

  1. ↑ Slatalla, Michelle; Quittner, Josh. "Gang War in Cyberspace". Wired.
  2. ↑ New York Times News Service. "Computer Hackers Put New Twist on 'west Side Story'". chicagotribune.com.
  3. ↑ Jordan, Tim; Taylor, Paul (1 November 1998). "A Sociology of Hackers". The Sociological Review. 46 (4): 757–780. doi:10.1111/1467-954X.00139. ISSN   0038-0261. S2CID   56336311.
  4. ↑ Godwin, Grover Maurice (2000). Criminal Psychology and Forensic Technology: A Collaborative Approach to Effective Profiling. CRC Press (Taylor & Francis). p. 224. ISBN   978-1-4200-3862-0.
  5. ↑ Wall, David S. (2017). Cyberspace Crime. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-351-77661-5.
  6. ↑ Reed, Vincent. "SUMMERCON '95 Conference Report". www.ieee-security.org.
  7. ↑ Voyager. "Hacker Scene". dl.packetstormsecurity.net.
  8. ↑ "clubhack.com". clubhack.com. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
  9. ↑ Sterling, Bruce (1994). "Part 2: The Digital Underground". The Hacker Crackdown : Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 2008-07-30.
  10. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2005-08-30. Retrieved 2005-08-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  11. ↑ "countycourt.vic.gov.au". countycourt.vic.gov.au. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
  12. ↑ Bill Apro & Graeme Hammond (2005). Hackers: The Hunt for Australia's Most Infamous Computer Cracker. Five Mile Press. ISBN   1-74124-722-5.
  13. ↑ Even-Chaim was arrested on April 2, 1990 and later convicted of 15 computer crime offences; on October 6, 1993 he was given a suspended 12 month jail sentence and ordered to undertake 500 hours community service. An account of his arrest is also contained in Suelette Dreyfus (1997). Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier . Mandarin. ISBN   1-86330-595-5.
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