Word: rosenfelder
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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...
...Rosenfeld was arrested in 1991 after hatching a plot to build and sell IBM computers. He and some pals bought nearly $1 million worth of computer parts using credit-card numbers from strangers' credit reports. A Secret Service raid on Rosenfeld's Brooklyn, New York, home uncovered 176 credit reports stolen from TRW, a leading credit-rating company. He says he sold "thousands" of such reports to private investigators...
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...
...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 charges remain to be proved, in December two MOD members pleaded guilty to selling Rosenfeld passwords to TRW computers...
...Rosenfeld, the alleged MODsters and their ilk do not fit the standard image of a hacker: the wealthy, suburban geek who trespasses on computers just for fun. These cyberpunks are ethnically mixed (from blacks and Hispanics to Italians and Lithuanians), favor close-cropped hip-hop haircuts and live in urban, blue-collar neighborhoods. They fight rival gangs with cheap computers, not sticks or knives. Some are big drug users; most are simply addicted to what Rosenfeld calls the "adrenaline rush of computer power, which is better than sex, drugs or rock 'n' roll...