Synopses & Reviews
The bestselling account of a band of kids from New York who fought an electronic turf war that ranged across some of the nation's most powerful computer systems. "An immensely fun and -- one cannot emphasize this enough -- accessible history of the first outlaws in cyberspace."--Glamour
Synopsis
In 1989, Phiber Optik (aka Mark Abene) fell out of favor with the infamous gang of wealthy computer whizzes from Texas called -The Legion of Doom' (LOD). He then teamed up with two other New York hackers, the Scorpion (aka Paul Stira)and Acid Phreak (aka Eli ), to form a rival gang called -The Masters of Deception' (MOD). The members of MOD quickly gained notoriety for their skill and daring. They downloaded confidential credit histories (including Geraldo Rivera's and David Duke's), broke into LOD files, jammed LOD's modems and stepped into the media spotlight to boast of their conquests. As these two groups competed to outdo each other in cyberspace, LOD, whose members had many more resources, retaliated in two ways: they started an antihacker security company catering to the very corporations whose computers MOD had broken into, such as TRW, Martin Marietta Missile Group, and New York Telephone; and they began to work with the FBI to bring down their archenemies. Written by reporters who followed the story for five years, until Phiber Optik was sent to jail, Masters of Deception is a page-turning read that explores the technological and moral issues surrounding the implementation of law in cyberspace.