 Level Seven Crew Logo | |
| Formation | 1994-2000 |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Hacker groups, Hacker |
| Location | |
Origin | North, New Jersey |
Founders | foil vent |
| Affiliations | Global Hell, Hacking for Girliez |
The Level Seven Crew, also known as Level Seven, Level 7 or L7 was a hacking group that was in operation during the mid to late 1990s. It is rumored to have dispersed in early 2010 when the founder 'vent' was raided by the FBI on February 25, 2013.
Thought to have been derived from Dante Alighieri’s novel, The Inferno. The group called themselves Level Seven after the seventh level of hell, the violent.
Contained in some of the group’s web defacements, was the quote: "il livello sette posidare la vostra famiglia", which loosely translated from Italian says, "Level Seven owns your family".
The group, spent most of their time on IRC - in the EFnet channel #LevelSeven discussing security, or the lack thereof. The group was also associated with other high-profile hacking groups such as globalHell and Hacking For Girliez.
The hacking group was noted in Attrition's Top 20 most active groups of all time by claiming responsibility for over 60 unauthorized penetrations of computer systems in 1999 alone, including The First American National Bank, The Federal Geographic Data Committee, NASA and Sheraton Hotels. [1]
Level Seven is also credited with being the first group to hack a .ma domain and server located in Morocco. The server was owned by the Faculté des Sciences Semlalia, Marrakech
However, the group is most widely known for the September 7, 1999 defacement of (The US Embassy in China's Website), in regards to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.
Level Seven typify a group of hackers who exploit or attack computers and networks for more than just the thrill and challenge, and for reasons other than money. During their era, they were activists, and they used their computer skills to make political statements and protest actions by government and industry. Thus, they bridged the realms of hacking and activism, operating in a domain that is now called "hacktivism". [2]
"I would be inclined to think that normal hackers would not be able to break into something like the US embassy. The security measures they use are very, very different to those protecting a commercial Web server."
- Ian Jonsten-Bryden (British government security expert of Oceanus Security in Suffolk)
"We embrace technology, we learn from it, we use it, and we exploit it. Technology is a very powerful tool, as is knowledge, but some people go beyond these boundaries, testing limits, finding new ways and ideas... we call these people hackers, and we are one of many.."
- vent, September 1999
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.
Internet activism, hacktivism, or hactivism, is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. With roots in hacker culture and hacker ethics, its ends are often related to free speech, human rights, or freedom of information movements.
Cyberterrorism is the use of the Internet to conduct violent acts that result in, or threaten, the loss of life or significant bodily harm, in order to achieve political or ideological gains through threat or intimidation. Acts of deliberate, large-scale disruption of computer networks, especially of personal computers attached to the Internet by means of tools such as computer viruses, computer worms, phishing, malicious software, hardware methods, programming scripts can all be forms of internet terrorism. Cyberterrorism is a controversial term. Some authors opt for a very narrow definition, relating to deployment by known terrorist organizations of disruption attacks against information systems for the primary purpose of creating alarm, panic, or physical disruption. Other authors prefer a broader definition, which includes cybercrime. Participating in a cyberattack affects the terror threat perception, even if it isn't done with a violent approach. By some definitions, it might be difficult to distinguish which instances of online activities are cyberterrorism or cybercrime.
InfraGard is a national non-profit organization serving as a public-private partnership between U.S. businesses and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The organization is an information sharing and analysis effort serving the interests, and combining the knowledge base of, a wide range of private sector and government members. InfraGard is an association of individuals that facilitates information sharing and intelligence between businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other participants dedicated to preventing hostile acts against the United States.
Owned is a slang word that originated in the 1990s among hackers where it referred to "rooting" or gaining administrative control over someone else's computer. The term eventually spread to gamers, who used the term to mean defeat in gaming. Other variations of the word owned include own3d, 0wn3d, pwned, pwnt, POWER OWNED and pooned, terms which incorporate elements of leetspeak.
Honker or red hacker is a group known for hacktivism, mainly present in China. Literally the name means "Red Guest", as compared to the usual Chinese transliteration of hacker.
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.
Website defacement is an attack on a website that changes the visual appearance of a website or a web page. These are typically the work of defacers, who break into a web server and replace the hosted website with malware or a website of their own. Defacement is generally meant as a kind of electronic graffiti and, like other forms of vandalism, is used to spread messages by politically motivated "cyber protesters" or hacktivists. Website defacement can involve adding questionable content or removing or changing the content to make it questionable, or including nonsensical or whimsical references to websites or publicly editable repositories to harm its reputation. Methods such as a web shell may be used to aid in website defacement.
Ankit Fadia is an Indian self-proclaimed white-hat computer hacker, author, and television host. He is considered to be a security charlatan. His work mostly involves OS and networking tips and tricks and proxy websites.
The Internet has a long history of turbulent relations, major maliciously designed disruptions, and other conflicts. This is a list of known and documented Internet, Usenet, virtual community and World Wide Web related conflicts, and of conflicts that touch on both offline and online worlds with possibly wider reaching implications.
Patriotic hacking is a term for computer hacking or system cracking in which citizens or supporters of a country, traditionally industrialized Western countries but increasingly developing countries, attempt to perpetrate attacks on, or block attacks by, perceived enemies of the state.
EC-Council is a cybersecurity certification, education, training, and services company based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Milw0rm is a group of hacktivists best known for penetrating the computers of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai, the primary nuclear research facility of India, on June 3, 1998. The group conducted hacks for political reasons, including the largest mass hack up to that time, inserting an anti-nuclear weapons agenda and peace message on its hacked websites. The group's logo featured the slogan "Putting the power back in the hands of the people."
World of Hell was a grey hat computer hacker group that claims to be responsible for several high-profile attacks in the year 2001. It gained attention due to its high-profile targets and the lighthearted messages it has posted in the aftermath of its attacks.
Teamp0ison was a computer security research group consisting of 3 to 5 core members. The group gained notoriety in 2011/2012 for its blackhat hacking activities, which included attacks on the United Nations, NASA, NATO, Facebook, Minecraft Pocket Edition Forums, and several other large corporations and government entities. TeaMp0isoN disbanded in 2012 following the arrests of some of its core members, "TriCk", and "MLT".
Hector Xavier Monsegur, known also by the online pseudonym Sabu, is an American computer hacker and co-founder of the hacking group LulzSec. Monsegur became an informant for the FBI, working with the agency for over ten months to aid them in identifying the other hackers from LulzSec and related groups while facing a sentence of 124 years in prison. LulzSec intervened in the affairs of organizations such as News Corporation, Stratfor, UK and American law enforcement bodies and Irish political party Fine Gael.
The Syrian Electronic Army is a group of computer hackers which first surfaced online in 2011 to support the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Using spamming, website defacement, malware, phishing, and denial-of-service attacks, it has targeted terrorist organizations, political opposition groups, western news outlets, human rights groups and websites that are seemingly neutral to the Syrian conflict. It has also hacked government websites in the Middle East and Europe, as well as US defense contractors. As of 2011, the SEA has been "the first Arab country to have a public Internet Army hosted on its national networks to openly launch cyber attacks on its enemies".
Ghost Squad Hackers or by the abbreviation "GSH" is a politically motivated hacktivist team responsible for conducting cyber attacks on central banks, Fox News and CNN, leaking sensitive data of the United States Armed Forces, leaking sensitive data of the Israeli government, hijacking Afghanistan's Chief Executive's Twitter account, and much more. Led by the administrative de facto leader known as s1ege. The group's prime intent and focus is embedded on anti-governmental and organization cyber protests within current involvements of media speculation and real life happenings in 2021 to present.They are also a team in and part of the hacktivist group Anonymous.
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