Not with a Bug, But with a Sticker

Chapter 7The Big One

Chairman Thompson: “I am informed that you think that within 30 minutes, the 7 of you could make the Internet unusable for the entire nation. Is that correct?”

Those seven in question were Mudge, Weld Pond, KingPin, John Tan, Space Rogue, Brian Oblivion, and Stefan Von Neuman.

You would be correct in thinking that those seem like made-up names. The seven were from a Boston–based hacker group called L0pht (pronounced “loft”) Heavy Industries. Their operations were conducted in a makeshift loft (hence the name) filled with gadgets, gizmos, and the quaint—a sort of geeky thrift store complete with mannequins wearing gas masks. It was their haven for breaking into everything from manual locks to computer desktops. The Washington Post described their lair aptly as a “computer fraternity-cum-high tech clubhouse.”

Renting a Dodge Ram 3500 15-passenger van and donning their borrowed or newly purchased suits, the hacker group took a road trip from Boston to the nation's capital to brief the U.S. Senate. The group used aliases instead of their real names because they all had regular day jobs and did not want their employers to know about their side hustle of hacking into computers. As hackers who operated near the law's boundary, they were skeptical of the government and, hence, did not want to broadcast their real names. L0pht even booked their hotel rooms in Washington, DC, using their aliases, much to the chagrin of the front desk.

But no one really cared about ...