Talk:Great Hacker War

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There seems to be a lot of emotionally loaded language and first person perspective used here, it seems in need of a good editing. Josh Parris ✉ 00:09, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Masters of Deception not only deserves a seperate article, but the main article itself needs expanding. --70.240.225.29 22:03, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Masters of Deception has a separate article. You're right, though, this article needs work. --Myles Long 23:36, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I lied. Masters of Deception used to have its own article. It probably should again. --Myles Long 23:38, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I made some edits to this page based on conversation with those involved. Although quite factual, it could use another small pass to correct some grammar, tense, and perspective. --Netw1z 12:11, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to help bring this page up in quality. Any good sources out there? Maybe some old issues of Phrack or 2600 or something? --circuitloss 02:09, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

The condensed information here is quite factual. Phrack was a LOD-freindly publication that even resumed publication under Chris Goggans, which chose to censure MOD. Unforuantely some of the most intersting stories from the Hacker Underground are just that... underground. This particular story was documented on both sides in the book Masters of Deception — The Gang that Ruled Cyberspace (ISBN 0060926945) , and this has some additional information from sources involved or familiar with the conflict. --Netw1z 02:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I made the names of the hackers consistent, since it kept switching back and forth between given names and aliases. From an outsider's perspective, it gets confusing hearing that Erik Bloodaxe is doing one thing while Chris Goggans is doing another.--Miss Dark 18:31, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I added a link to Lex Luthor's lengthy letter about this topic, on the cypherpunks list and added a second paragraph to the opening. Please correct this if it's wrong, but in every account I have read about this "war" from both sides of the conflict, all of it seems to be Chris Goggans vs. the world. I see no comments from or about any other LOD member. Was this really LOD vs. MOD or Erik Bloodaxe vs. everybody he had problems with, which seems to be a lot of people. Or do you mean the "new LOD" which was Goggans company? Even there in the comments here, it reads like everyone had problems with what Goggans was doing and I can find no references online to anyone in the "new LOD" or otherwise, taking Goggans side. There are either negative comments or total silence, the closest anyone gets to defending Goggans is Lex Luthor who doesn't even do that, just spends many paragraphs distancing himself from all of it TrancedOut 01:53, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
I've deleted the link to Lex Luthor's post-Geat Hacker War rant on cypherpunk. The link didn't work, but I read it via a cache in google. The article in question is barely worthy of a link and it clearly can't be a basis for what happened in the War. His letter is ultimately about him and not the Great Hacker War - it seeks to minimize the War because he was not involved. He also admits to knowing nothing about the details of The Great Hacker War. He spends most of the time trying to clean up the image of LOD as ethical hackers, when in reality, they were doing the same actions as MOD or any other hackers of the time - just on a smaller scale. He also heaps praise on Mitnick for wiretapping while at the same time heaping scorn on MOD for having mastered the same ability at a magnitude greater than Mitnick. This also reveals his bias in that going over the indictments for MoD and Mitnick - Mitnick used hacking for personal gain unethnicall constantly - while MoD only was charged with conspiracy to wiretap (access devices). The only clear indictation is that Mitnick and MoD were hands on hackers - and Lex Luthor is the guy famous for manually typing in Bell System Documentation he found in the garbage into a text file and signing his name at the bottom. I would offer to you TrancedOut to replace the link if you can find a working one - but the mailing list post is more like a Swift Boat Attack than anything factual to base this article on.

[edit] POV?

This article appears to be heavily slanted against Chris Goggans with not a great deal backing it up. Habitually betraying underage hackers? Where's that documented? If he and the others he formed ComSec with had decided to "go legit", what were they going to do in response to MOD's alleged monitoring of their conversations? Write a ".annoy" script? Hack their local telephone switches and turn their handsets into payphones? In the context of LOD having "gone legit", their continued freedom as compared to MOD's criminal convictions puts a slightly different spin on the outcome which appears to have been reduced to "MOD wins cuz they owned LOD's PBX" even though LOD had stopped fighting a "war" that Lex Luthor believed never even existed (reference is linked in main article).

I'd also be interested to see evidence of MOD taking control of every POTS, X.25 or TCP/IP channel in or out of Texas. That's a mighty big claim.

While I have read Quittner and Slatalla's book, I don't actually have a copy. I certainly don't recall any of the above being covered but I might have forgotten. Thedangerouskitchen 07:31, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

If you don't have a copy handy, how can you dispute it? - it's listed as one of the sources for this article. At the time period Southwestern Bell Telephone(SWBT) provided service to Texas. This company was one of many RBOC's listed as having a complaint on MOD's legal indictment.
A complaint on the indictment doesn't mean they controlled every one of the communications channels mentioned. If you do have a copy handy, can you quote the relevant text? Thedangerouskitchen 14:57, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

And, I'd like to know where the idea that Nahshon Even-Chaim's bust "may have been directly caused by his association with Chris Goggans" came from. The weight of published evidence points to Even-Chaim being named (as Phoenix) in the Secret Service's investigation into a 1988 Citibank hack and Bill Apro's investigation into the Melbourne hacking scene as a whole (where Phoenix was reputed to be among the most prolific members) as the most direct causes. Thedangerouskitchen 12:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Please post a link or cite the published evidence where Chris Goggans is *not* involved in relaying information to the government about Nashon Evan-Chaim. Goggans was raided by the federal authorities and questioned, but then released. This only occurs if the subject becomes a "Queen For A Day" -- police parlance for turning evidence against the co-conspirators. Goggans role in actual hacking event was minimal - but as per his Wikipedia entry based on written evidence - He asked Phoenix on wiretap to commit hacking crimes against a specific company in Texas where he resided.
Okay. You want me to cite evidence about something not happening? I don't think so. I'm not the one making claims, I don't have to back them up. Unless you have actual wiretap transcripts, or court transcripts of the playback in court in which Goggans actually asks Even-Chaim to hack Execucom, you're on pretty shaky ground. Apro and Hammond make it pretty clear that Even-Chaim needed no encouragement for anything he did at Execucom, and make no mention of Goggans asking Even-Chaim to perform any hacking for him.
Furthermore, even if Goggans did rat on anyone, where is the evidence that he did so against Even-Chaim? And even if he did rat on Even-Chaim, where is the evidence to support the article's contention that this is may have been the direct cause of Even-Chaim's conviction? He was in deep trouble, with or without Execucom. Thedangerouskitchen 14:57, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I've tagged this article, if you dangerouskitchen have more facts or information about all of this, then please take a stab at fixing it up a little bit. I can't find any mention at all of any "LOD" and "MOD" "war", which is the same thing Lex Luthor says in that letter to cypherpunks from 1993. I see only pages and pages and pages and pages of Chris Goggans and MOD. 6Akira7 15:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

There is a book on the subject, but for the most part the war was surreptitious in nature. Even the journalism in the book can be suspect - but the book validates the event and the participants, victims, indictments papers leave enough of a paper trail to substantiate facts about the event.

Most of this article is taken from a single textfile, and yes it is a bit weighted, written only from the perspective of two groups, but to my memory pretty accurate. My main complaint is that the "great hacker war" is written to appear that only LoD and MoD were involved, when in fact there were many more groups (The reason it's called the GREAT hacker war).

this is total bullshit from the word go. Dates are wrong, and those groups did not dominate or own anything or exist for that fact.

www.irchelp.org.

Is the usage of hacker vs. cracker correct in this page? --Edlin2 01:17, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

This page seems to have a whole bunch of NPOV problems. As well, the statements made don't seem to be at all supported by the related citations... the only source I don't have access to is the full text of the book on the Masters of Deception. Does anyone have this? I'd like to take a look myself, because if it conforms significantly with its excerpt printed in Wired then I'd have to assume that most of this is unsupported opinion.

Secondarily Chris Goggans seems to claim that book is extraordinarily biased. If this writing is representative of the book I'm inclined to agree... Aside, I am not invested in this at all, as I have no idea who any of these people are and have nothing to bring to this but good faith. Chromancer 23:07, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Of course it's NPOV, it's written by former members of MoD trying to fire the last salvo in the Great War by writing history the way they want it to be remembered.Scalefree 03:09, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm getting ready to cut this article to pieces. It's chock-full of dubious and uncited material that's hung around Wikipedia long enough. If anyone with an interest would like to work with me on this, I'd be glad, especially someone with access to the sources that some people on this talk page claim to have. Chromancer (talk) 23:30, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The author of the book states that he interviewed Chris Goggans - mostly likely both sides probably feel the book is biased in the other's direction - just as the changes seem to be made by people partial to one side or the other, or sometimes by people and organizations who weren't. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sensible matters (talk • contribs) 15:50, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I've finally managed to again (it had been a few years) get my hands on Quittner and Slatalla's book on the MoD, from a library. The closest it comes to corroborating the claim that MoD controlled all POTS, X.25 and TCP/IP in Texas is a section in which it is alleged MoD, specifically John Lee, had access to C-SCANS, a computer system from which it was possible to to configure anything in Southwest Bell's network. While this is indeed a lot of power, it does not constitute control over all POTS, X.25 and TCP/IP in Texas. If someone doesn't come up with some kind of citation or reasonable explanation as to how the section of the book I described corroborates the claim, I am going to cut it. Thedangerouskitchen (talk) 10:27, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I ran the Fifth Amendment BBS, which was where this whole event started. For the record, I was never interviewed for the book. I share the same opinion as Chris. The book was biased, in favor of the members of MOD. According to the book, the key event of the book is that John hears a "racial slur" which drives him to start this "war". One point the book conveniently forgets to mention is that one of the members of MOD chose to go by the name "Supernigger". As someone who was on the phone bridge many nights, this person would be addressed by their handle on a frequent basis.

My opinion, MOD saw that the guys in LOD had the respect of the underground. Similar to the gang style tactics that we see in the movies, they chose to attempt to make a name for themselves in the underground by taking out the perceived "kings" of the underground. As the court records show, they failed miserably at this attempt.

Quittners book was their last hack.

You are friends with Chris Goggans so obviously you can't be objective.Considering you aren't in either MOD or LOD - it would stand that you wouldn't be interviewed for the book. You ran a BBS - probably the lowest rung in the hacker food chain. The book isn't biased, it's just difficult to write any book and truly be objective. Using the freely editable discussion area of Wikipedia to slight people probably robs you of whatever little credibility you had left. netw1z —Preceding comment was added at 15:08, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

The most recent edit of the epilogue has Chris Goggans described as a narc and a commentary on LOD's alleged deficiencies with X.25 and RBOC systems. Can we not stick to documented facts? Thedangerouskitchen (talk) 13:38, 8 May 2008 (UTC)