Collaborate Disseminate
The hackers of LOpht testified before Congress and went on to shape today’s cybersecurity industry. This is the story of how it started.
The post Phreaks and l33ts: Inside the early ‘90s tech scene that created L0pht, the legendary hackerspace appeared first on CyberScoop.
The government of Argentina has a national ID card system, and as a result maintains a database containing data on every citizen in the country. What could possibly go wrong? …read more Continue reading This Week in Security: Argentina, MysterySnail, and L0phtcrack
Facing some of the most persistent security challenges of its 14-year existence, Twitter has turned to Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a renowned computer security expert, and given him a broad mandate to bolster security at the social media platform. Zatko is the company’s new “head of security,” reporting directly to CEO Jack Dorsey, Reuters first reported Monday. The news comes after Twitter said in September it had hired Rinki Sethi as chief information security officer. Zatko gained recognition in the cybersecurity industry as a member of L0pht, a flamboyant Massachusetts-based hacking collective that famously warned Congress in 1998 about the insecurities of the internet. Zatko also oversaw high-profile cybersecurity projects at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research and Projects Agency, and did stints at Google and an independent lab for testing software integrity. Looks like the cat is out of the bag. I’m very excited to be joining the executive team at Twitter! I […]
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In recent years, the word “hacker” has shed some of its negative connotation in policy circles as lawmakers discover white hats who are trying to make the world a better place. That evolution – to see what was once considered destructive as constructive, and to use it to make software more secure – is an under-appreciated bright spot on today’s cybersecurity landscape. The hacking group that pushed the world furthest toward this paradigm shift is the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc). Its story is skillfully told in the new eponymously named book from Reuters journalist Joseph Menn. “In general, the public has become more accepting of hacking and hackers,” Menn, a veteran cybersecurity reporter, told CyberScoop. “One of my goals in writing the book was to push that forward.” Menn traces cDc from its humble origins in northwestern Texas to the conquests of its more famous members like Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who has […]
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20 Years Ago, Some Hackers Visited Congress… May 19th, 1998. I was just wrapping up my first year of college. My grades were terrible. Instead of going to classes, I had been huddled in my tiny dorm room with the computer my parents bought me. I … Continue reading The L0pht Legacy
CA Technologies Inc. announced Monday it had purchased the security firm Veracode for $614 million in cash. The move comes two years after Veracode reportedly came close to an IPO and was valued around $800 million. Veracode launched a decade ago to offer developers automated security analysis of applications. CA Technologies, based in New York City, is a $4.5 billion behemoth focused mostly on business-to-business deals, keeping it largely out of the public eye. Veracode made headlines recently when Cloudflare, fresh off a high-profile data leak, announced the Burlington, Mass.-based company would independently audit its code. Veracode co-founder Chris Wysopal was part the hacker think tank L0pht, which in 1998 told the U.S. Senate about the cybersecurity disasters looming as the internet approached ubiquity. The punkish group of hackers were the first — aside from members of federal witness protection programs — to go before Congress using psuedonyms (Wysopal was “Weld Pond”). The group […]
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Cris Thomas of Tenable Networks, aka Space Rogue of the L0pht, talks to Mike Mimoso during RSA Conference about the rhetoric and hype surrounding cyberwar, as well as a quick trip down memory lane with the L0pht and its famous 1998 testimony before Con… Continue reading Cris Thomas on Cyberwar Rhetoric