Word: ganges
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Though barely of drinking age, Rosenfeld is a veteran hacker. He says he invaded his first computer -- a low-level NASA system -- at age 15 as a member of a cyberpunk gang called Force Hackers. Before long, he was devising electronic schemes to swipe cash from Western Union, phone service from the Baby Bells and valuable credit information wherever it could be found. "We once pulled the credit reports of a whole town in Oregon," Storm Shadow recalls...
While Storm Shadow is doing time, a bigger case involves five other young hackers, some of whom have had dealings with Rosenfeld. All five are allegedly members of a gang called Masters of Disaster. They are charged with breaking into computers at a host of companies and institutions, including the University of Washington, Bank of America, ITT and Martin Marietta. In one of its most damaging raids, the group allegedly wiped out most of the data on the Learning Link, a computer owned by a New York City public-TV station that provides educational information for hundreds of schools...
Could MOD have been stupid enough to leave behind such a confession? One member says the gang was framed by a rival hacker who liquidated the Learning Link himself. The defendants' court-appointed lawyers claim the feds have built an elaborate Mafia-like case against rebellious yet relatively harmless kids. "Being arrogant and obnoxious is not a crime," argues attorney Michael Godwin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that defends exploratory hacking. As for Masters of Disaster, he adds, "it's just a way-cool name. Teenagers aren't going to call themselves the Electronic Birdwatchers Society." While most...
...best known of the hackers accused in the MOD case, Mark Abene (alias Phiber Optik), insists that he's innocent and not a gang member. This acid- tongued media darling, featured in Esquire magazine and on the Geraldo show, offers weekly computer advice on a New York City radio program. A high school dropout, Abene, 20, still lives in the city with his parents, whose home has been raided twice by the Secret Service. In 1991 he pleaded guilty to stealing service off a 900 phone-sex line, but now denies the charge...
...called the police. Last Friday, Okiki and Marlena were charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated murder. Now parents, teachers and the 700 students at Irving Middle School in Lorain, Ohio, a racially mixed, economically strained town of 70,000, are looking for explanations. They are talking about the growing gang violence, the drug syndicates from New York City and Detroit that use Lorain as a drop point, the 11-year-old boy who held up a minimart at gunpoint last September and turned out to have had 46 previous encounters with the police. The townspeople, especially the young...