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To pinpoint the start of the Great Hacker War, you'd probably have to go back to 1984, when a guy calling himself Lex Luthor founded the Legion of Doom. Named after a Saturday morning cartoon, the LOD had the reputation of attracting the best of the best -- until one of the gang's brightest young acolytes, a kid named Phiber , feuded with Legion of Doomer Erik Bloodaxe and got tossed out of the clubhouse. Phiber's friends formed a rival group, the Masters of Deception. Starting in 1990 LOD and MOD engaged in almost two years of online warfare --jamming phone lines, monitoring calls, trespassing in each other's private computers. Then the Feds cracked down. For Phiber and friends, that meant jail. End of an era. Crackdown (1986-present) With the government online, the fun ended. Just to show that they meant business, Congress passed a law enacted in 1986 called the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Translation-. A felony gets you five. Then along came Robert Morris with his Internet worm in 1988. Crashing 6,000 Net-linked computers earned Morris the distinction of being the first person convicted under the Act's computer-crime provision. Translation-. a $10,000 fine and too many hours of community service. Soon you needed a scorecard to keep up with the arrests. That same year Kevin Mitnick broke into the Digital Equipment Company's computer network; he was nabbed and sentenced to a year in jail. Then Kevin #2 -- Kevin Poulsen -was indicted on phone-tampering charges. Kevin #2 went on the lam and avoided the long arm of the law for 17 months. Operation Sundevil was the name the government gave to its ham-handed 1990 attempt to crack down on hackers across the country, including the Legion of Doom. It didn't work. But the following year Crackdown Redux resulted in jail sentences for four members of the Masters of Deception. Phiber Optik spent a year in federal prison. Some people just couldn't learn from their mistakes, though. In Feb. 1995 Kevin Mitnick was arrested again. This time the FBI accused him of stealing 20,000 credit card numbers. He sat in jail for more than a year before pleading guilty in April 1996 to illegal use of stolen cellular telephone numbers.
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