LOD vs MOD▊
Two crews of teenage phone phreaks, one downtown-Texas old guard and one outer-borough New York upstart, spent three years trading boasts, cracking each other's boards, and pulling each other's credit reports — until the press rebranded a schoolyard rivalry as a "gang war in cyberspace," the feds turned it into the first hacker case built on wiretaps, and a Manhattan grand jury indicted five kids for conspiracy. The winners went to prison. The name went into a museum. And the man at the center of it, Phiber Optik, called the whole war "a complete fabrication."
LOD IS NOT COMING BACK. … We of the group decided to retire it for a number of reasons, and all involved wish it to stay that way.
Chris Goggans ("Erik Bloodaxe"), original Legion of Doom member, Usenet comp.org.eff.talk, May 27, 1993 — killing off a stranger's attempt to reboot the crew four years after the "war" supposedly began (see Erik Bloodaxe)
- WHO
- Legion of Doom (LOD) — the era's marquee phreak crew, publishers of the LOD/H Technical Journal — versus Masters of Deception (MOD), the New York upstarts (Phiber Optik, Acid Phreak, Scorpion, Corrupt, Outlaw) FACT
- THE DRAMA
- A voted-in member banished, a rival crew formed out of spite, dueling boards and credit-report pulls, a racial-epithet spark and "police informer" accusations — then the press cast it as "West Side Story" and the feds made it case law
- RECORD
- July 1992: a Manhattan federal grand jury returns an 11-count indictment of five MOD members — the first investigative use of court-authorized wiretaps against hackers. Guilty pleas and prison terms followed FACT
- STATUS
- DISPUTED — the intrusions were real; the "gang war" was, per its central figure, largely a story the media and prosecutors told
This file is not a verdict on which crew was "better," a question the scene has argued into the ground for three decades. It is a record of how an ordinary rivalry between two groups of gifted teenagers — the kind every subculture produces — got laundered through newspapers and a U.S. Attorney's office into a "cyber gang war," and how that story put children in federal prison. The through-line is the gap between the myth (drive-by hackings, ethnic gang warfare, a new criminal elite) and the paperwork (a conspiracy indictment, some cracked passwords, and a phone-phreak zine).
the drama timeline
ACT I — THE ELITE AND ITS JOURNAL (1984–1988)
Before the war there is only one name in the phreak underground, and it publishes its own magazine.
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1984–86
Legion of Doom becomes the name
Formed out of the early-1980s phone-phreak scene and named after a gang of comic-book villains, Legion of Doom becomes the most prestigious crew of the era — a rotating roster that at various points includes the Texas contingent of Chris Goggans (Erik Bloodaxe), Scott Chasin, and Kenyon Shulman. Membership is by invitation, and the invitation means something.
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JAN 1, 1987
The LOD/H Technical Journal
LOD publishes issue one of the LOD/H Technical Journal, a free soft-copy newsletter whose purpose is "to further the knowledge of those who are interested in topics such as: Telecommunications, Datacommunications, Computer & Physical Security/Insecurity and the various technical aspects of the phone system." The crew's status rests on genuine, published expertise — which is exactly what makes the coming schism sting.
ACT II — THE SCHISM (1988–1989)
A Queens kid good enough to be voted in, then voted out — and a rival crew born to spite the one that banished him.
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~1988–89
Abene is banished
By the account LOD members gave the New York Times, Mark Abene (Phiber Optik) "had been voted into the Legion at one point. But when he began to annoy others in the group with his New York braggadocio and refusal to share information, he was banished, Legion members said." The exact grievance depends on who is telling it — but the exile is where the rivalry starts.
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~1989
Masters of Deception, or Disaster
Abene and a New York circle — Acid Phreak (Elias Ladopoulos), Scorpion (Paul Stira), Corrupt (John Lee), Outlaw (Julio Fernandez) — form MOD. The name is a middle finger: "M" is one letter up from "L." The later federal indictment would note the letters "had various meanings, among them 'Masters Of Disaster' and 'Masters of Deception.'" They vowed, per the Times, to replace their Legion rivals as the "new elite."
ACT III — THE "WAR" THAT MAY NOT HAVE BEEN (1989–1991)
Dueling boards, pulled credit files, an ugly spark — and a press corps that turned a rivalry into ethnic gang warfare.
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1989–91
One-upmanship, with receipts
The conduct itself is documented and not flattering to anyone: the crews cracked each other's systems, and the Times summary describes them "trading boasts, tapping into telephone systems, even pulling up confidential credit reports to prove their derring-do and taunt other hackers." A hacker interviewed for NBC's Dateline put the scene's whole ethos plainly: "You want to make yourself unique. And one of the best ways of doing that is being forceful — being obnoxious."
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c. 1989–90
The spark, as reported
Part of the bad blood, per the Times, was ugly: "a hacker using a computer party line based in Texas had insulted Lee, who is black, with a racial epithet." The feud also spilled into dueling zines, including a mocking, dialect-parody "History of MOD" that circulated in Phrack — the kind of artifact that, read today, does more to indict the "war" than to justify it. This file quotes none of it.
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JUL 1992
"West Side Story" — the myth goes to print
The New York Times News Service ran the rivalry under the headline "Computer hackers put new twist on 'West Side Story,'" casting it as a "cybernetic version" of gang warfare with "class and ethnic overtones." Even the sympathetic Computer underground Digest editors flagged the move: the Times, they wrote, "has finally resorted to the sensationalism of other media that plays on public fears and stereotyped images of the terrifying hacker menace … a Bloods-'n-Crips scenario, complete with gang revenge and drive-by hackings." Abene's verdict on the whole "war" was blunter: "a complete fabrication."
ACT IV — COMSEC, THE SNITCH ACCUSATION, AND THE INDICTMENT (1990–1992)
The Texans go legit and get called cops for it; the state, uninterested in "war," charges conspiracy.
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JUN 1990
Comsec — and the informer charge
The Texas LOD veterans — Goggans, Chasin, and Shulman — founded Comsec Data Security, a legitimate firm "intended to help companies prevent break-ins by other hackers." In the scene's moral universe, going pro looked like going over: "Worried that the Texans were acting as police informers, the MOD members accused their rivals of defaming them on the network bulletin boards." The accusation is attributed to MOD; Comsec was a lawful business and the informer charge was never established. Why it landed so hard is context: informing was the underground's one unforgivable sin — the same year, Phrack was reporting how "DiCicco reported Mitnick to DEC officers" and how another hacker "told all that he ever knew about anyone to the FBI."
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JAN 1990 → JAN 1991
The first raid, the first plea
Federal agents raided Phiber Optik, Acid Phreak, and Scorpion in January 1990. The initial felony charges against Abene were "dropped in January, 1991, when he pled guilty to misdemeanor offenses" — a state case that ended in community service, not the phone-network apocalypse the headlines had promised.
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JUL 8–9, 1992
Indicted — and wiretapped
A Manhattan federal grand jury returned an 11-count indictment of five MOD members — Fernandez, Lee, Abene, Ladopoulos, and Stira — for conspiracy, wire fraud, and unauthorized access, describing MOD as "a closely knit group of computer hackers located primarily in the New York City area." U.S. Attorney Otto Obermaier flagged the milestone: it was "the first investigative use of court-authorized wiretaps to obtain conversations and data transmissions of computer hackers." The "war" was now case law — charged as a conspiracy, not a war.
ACT V — LOD IS NOT COMING BACK (1993–)
The war ends the way most scene wars end: not with a victor, but with prison terms and a retired name.
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1993–94
The convictions
The MOD defendants pleaded or were convicted. Phiber Optik drew the harshest sentence, serving roughly a year in federal prison and walking out in 1994 to a hero's welcome (see his file). The Texas LOD veterans had already gone corporate. Whatever the "war" had been, both sides finished it off the boards.
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MAY 1993
The failed revival
When a Canadian stranger, Cameron Smith, tried to reboot LOD under his own leadership, Goggans shut it down in public on Usenet: "LOD IS NOT COMING BACK … We of the group decided to retire it for a number of reasons, and all involved wish it to stay that way." The most feared name in the underground ended not in a firefight but in a cease-and-desist posted to a mailing list.
both sides, on the record
The war was real conduct: whatever you call it, the crews did break into each other's systems, pulled confidential credit reports, and taunted each other across boards and party lines — the Times summary and the federal indictment both describe genuine intrusions, and MOD members pleaded to conspiracy and unauthorized access. Romanticizing the feud does not un-crack the passwords.
The bad blood was documented: the banishment, the "new elite" vow, the Comsec informer accusations, the epithet on the Texas party line — these are in contemporaneous reporting, not invented later. Something happened between these crews, and it was ugly enough to leave a paper trail.
The "war" was a story: the man at its center, Mark Abene, called the "gang war in cyberspace" "a complete fabrication," and senior LOD figures have described the friction as one-upmanship, not combat. Even the sympathetic Computer underground Digest editors called the "West Side Story" framing press "sensationalism" that traded on "the terrifying hacker menace" [1].
The worst beats are accusations, not findings: the racial-epithet spark and the "police informer" charge against Comsec are attributed to their sources — the Times summary and MOD's own accusations — and neither was ever established in court. Comsec was a lawful security business [1].
The state didn't charge a war: the indictment charged conspiracy, wire fraud, and unauthorized access — not gang warfare. What actually got prosecuted was a handful of teenagers cracking phone-company systems, dressed up in press releases as an epochal criminal menace and used to justify the first hacker wiretaps [2].
YOU DECIDE
There was a rivalry, and it produced real intrusions, real credit-report pulls, and real bad blood — the receipts are not kind to either crew. But the "Great Hacker War," the ethnic-gang-warfare "West Side Story" of the headlines, was in large part a construction: of newspapers that needed a menace, and of a U.S. Attorney's office that needed a landmark. Strip the myth away and you are left with two groups of gifted kids who could not stand each other, one legitimate security startup accused of snitching, and a conspiracy indictment that turned a subculture's grudge into case law.
The archive does not pick a crew. It keeps the indictment — and the flame that said the name was never coming back.
evidence locker
PRIMARY / COURT & PERIODICAL RECORD
Computer underground Digest 4.33 — "MOD and 'West Side Story'" ATTRIBUTED — reprints the New York Times News Service summary (banishment, the "new elite" vow, the racial-epithet spark, Comsec and the "police informer" accusation) and the CuD editors' critique of the "sensationalism … terrifying hacker menace" framing.
textfiles.com/magazines/CUD/cud0433.txt Computer underground Digest 4.30 — MOD busts / Obermaier statement FACT — the 11-count indictment of five MOD members, the 1991 misdemeanor plea, and U.S. Attorney Obermaier's "first investigative use of court-authorized wiretaps" against hackers.
textfiles.com/magazines/CUD/cud0430.txt Computer underground Digest 4.31 — full MOD indictment text FACT — the complete July 1992 federal indictment: defendants, handles, the "Masters Of Disaster / Masters of Deception" naming, and the conspiracy counts.
textfiles.com/magazines/CUD/cud0431.txt
SCENE ARTIFACTS & CONTEXT
Chris Goggans ("Erik Bloodaxe"), Usenet comp.org.eff.talk ATTRIBUTED — the May 27, 1993 "LOD IS NOT COMING BACK" flame retiring the LOD name; first-party. Local research mirror.
textfiles/LOD/zooid1.txt
LOD/H Technical Journal, Issue 1 (Jan 1, 1987) FACT — the crew's own stated mission ("to further the knowledge of those … interested in … Telecommunications, Datacommunications, Computer & Physical Security/Insecurity").
textfiles.com/magazines/LOD/ Computer underground Digest 4.54 — Dateline NBC transcript ATTRIBUTED — a hacker on the scene's competitive ethos ("being forceful — being obnoxious"), context for the rivalry's temperature.
textfiles.com/magazines/CUD/cud0454.txt Phrack 30:11 & 38:13 — "informing" as the cardinal sin ATTRIBUTED — contemporaneous coverage of DiCicco cooperating against Mitnick and another hacker who "told all … to the FBI," context for why the Comsec "informer" charge cut so deep.
phrack.org/issues/30/11.html Wikipedia — Great Hacker War / Masters of Deception ATTRIBUTED — the disputed "war" framing, Abene's "complete fabrication," and the crews' later histories.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hacker_War
The standard. The principals are public figures; the indictment, wiretaps, pleas, and sentences are matters of public record and stated as fact. The two ugliest beats — the racial-epithet spark and the "police informer" accusation against Comsec — are given only as their sources reported them, attributed and never adopted, with no motive assigned to any named person and neither ever established in court. The "Great Hacker War" itself is presented as disputed, in the words of the man at its center. The racist dialect-parody that the feud produced is referenced but deliberately not quoted. If a line here couldn't survive scrutiny, it wouldn't be on the page.