LOpht informs Congress in 1998

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Pigeon
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LOpht informs Congress in 1998

Post by Pigeon » Sat Sep 05, 2015 11:07 pm




The seven young men sitting before some of Capitol Hill’s most powerful lawmakers weren’t graduate students or junior analysts from some think tank. No, Space Rogue, Kingpin, Mudge and the others were hackers who had come from the mysterious environs of cyberspace to deliver a terrifying warning to the world.

The making of a vulnerable Internet: This story is the third of a multi-part project on the Internet’s inherent vulnerabilities and why they may never be fixed.

Your computers, they told the panel of senators in May 1998, are not safe — not the software, not the hardware, not the networks that link them together. The companies that build these things don’t care, the hackers continued, and they have no reason to care because failure costs them nothing. And the federal government has neither the skill nor the will to do anything about it.

“If you’re looking for computer security, then the Internet is not the place to be,” said Mudge, then 27 and looking like a biblical prophet with long brown hair flowing past his shoulders. The Internet itself, he added, could be taken down “by any of the seven individuals seated before you” with 30 minutes of well-choreographed keystrokes.

The senators — a bipartisan group including John Glenn, Joseph I. Lieberman and Fred D. Thompson — nodded gravely, making clear that they understood the gravity of the situation. “We’re going to have to do something about it,” Thompson said.

What happened instead was a tragedy of missed opportunity, and 17 years later the world is still paying the price in rampant insecurity.

Image

L0pht hackers Brian Oblivion, Tan, Kingpin, Mudge, Weld Pond, Space Rogue and Stefan von Neumann testify before a Senate panel in 1998.


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History, the early days. The guys even salvaged a VAX system, pretty cool.

What would one expect from this group.

John Glenn - living astronaut glory

Joseph I. Lieberman - did he ever do anything in Congress except help make the DHS (thanks)

Fred D. Thompson - Nixon era, then actor, now selling Reverse Mortgages on TV.

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Pigeon
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Re: LOpht informs Congress in 1998

Post by Pigeon » Sat Sep 05, 2015 11:08 pm

This is funny

A close call at the NSA

They had an uproariously fun trip to Washington for the Senate testimony, renting a dark green, 15-passenger van and installing an array of antennas on the roof to see what signals they could pick up along the way.

This seemed like harmless hacker fun until they made a stop at the National Cryptologic Museum, on the grounds of the National Security Agency in suburban Maryland. Zatko had visited the NSA several times before, he said, part of gradual move into federal government work. “I wanted them to have sensitivities, to know that hackers aren’t the bad guys,” he explained later.

But on this trip, Zatko accidentally directed the L0pht van, its roof bristling with interception equipment, to the entrance of a secure area of the NSA campus. Driving the van was L0pht member Stefan von Neumann, who appeared confused when he pulled up to a checkpoint manned by an armed military guard. When the guard saluted von Neumann, whose real name is Stefan Wuensch, he asked his fellow hackers, “What should I do?”

In unison, they shouted, “Salute back!”


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Pigeon
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Re: LOpht informs Congress in 1998

Post by Pigeon » Sat Sep 05, 2015 11:12 pm

LOpht Heavy Industries

It's been around a long time.

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