Hackers Testifying at the United States Senate, May 19, 1998 (L0pht Heavy Industries)
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited as a historical reference when HN discusses L0pht, Mudge or Joe Grand, rather than recommended as a watch.
What it is
C-SPAN footage of the L0pht hacker collective testifying before the US Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on May 19, 1998. The members discuss internet and computer security weaknesses. The uploader says the media remembered only the claim that they could take down the internet in 30 minutes.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2015 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Cites WalterGR · 2015-06 · on “L0pht’s warnings about the Internet drew notice but little action”
Yeah, that's an amazing image. I thought it must be doctored... but in the intro to the recording of their testimony, the person speaking ("chairman"?) says: "Due to the sensitivity of the work done at the L0pht they'll be using their hacker names of Mudge, Weld, Brian Oblivion, Kingpin, Space Rogue, Tan, and Stefan." [this video]
Cites no_identd · 2019-12 · on “W3C recommends WebAssembly”
The reason behind 'the Web' resembling the mess unfortunately best exemplified by 'the Net' has a much simpler and trivial reason: We have globally networked local Networks of locally networkable Networks and most of us naively think that this Global Network of Local Networks networking Local Networks actually functions as a universally internetworking Internetwork of universally internetworkable Internetworks internetworking internetworkable Internetworks internetworking internetworkable Networks[([¹]1)], because we trust the people who've labeled both IPv4 and IPv6 as the "Internet Protocol" despite it not in any way, shape or form having the ability to perform what the people who came up
Cites SGML_ROCKSTAR · 2021-10 · on “L0phtCrack Is Now Open Source”
They testified in front of the U.S. Senate in 1998. That's more than a footnote might do, in my opinion. [this video]
Cites guiambros · 2022-06 · on “Hacking a Hardware Wallet to get $6M in Bitcoin”
Joe Grand (aka "Kingpin") is the real deal. If anyone is not aware, Joe is one of the original members of the famous L0pht hacker group from the 90s [1], and testified in the historical US Senate hearing in 1998 [2][3] (as the youngest member, with just 22 at the time). Besides being a brilliant electric engineer, he's also a great storyteller. Worth checking some of his other reverse engineering videos on YT. [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [this video]
Cites fragmede · 2022-08 · on “Mudge's redacted Twitter whistleblower disclosure [pdf]”
In Mr. Zatko's previous appearance before Congress* in 1998, he was addressed by his hacker nom-de-plume, Mudge. Perhaps they see fit to continue this practice. * [this video]
Cites omgCPhuture · 2024-04 · on “Cisco says hackers subverted its security devices to spy on governments”
OK, I am pretty sick of this, so excuse me for blogging a post, but decades of this crap is getting to me: Ok some bad actors abuse your bad crappy gear to pwn & spy, but you, Cisco, help your government spy on everyone, including allies, I would call this karma, but the scale you are aiding and abetting the US Gov do it on does not even compare. Frankly, nobody should be using any closed source networking gear, packet switching infrastructure has become way to important to rely on $corp and $bs sales line they are pushing. I get that you, Cisco, hav nobody to talk to about how you are being abused to aid your own government, that is how National Security Letters work: * Some alphabet soup p