L0pht
LHI Logo
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| Formation | 1992 |
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| Extinction | 2000 |
| Purpose | Hacker think tank |
| Location |
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Origin
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Boston, Massachusetts |
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Founders
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Count Zero White Knight Brian Oblivion Golgo 13 |
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Products
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L0phtCrack |
| Affiliations | CULT OF THE DEAD COW |
| Website | Main Site |
L0pht Heavy Industries (pronounced "loft") was a hacker collective active between 1992 and 2000 and located in the Boston, Massachusetts area. The L0pht was one of the first viable hackerspaces in the US.
The second character in its name was originally a slashed zero, a symbol used by old teletypewriters and some character mode operating systems to mean zero. Its modern online name, including its domain name, is therefore "l0pht" (with a zero, not a letter O or Ø).
The origin of the name may be traced to the fact that Brian Oblivion and Count Zero, two of the founding members of L0pht, shared a common loft space in Boston with their wives, who ran a hat business on the other side. There they experimented with their own personal computers, equipment purchased from the Flea at MIT, and items obtained from dumpster diving local places of interest.
L0pht was founded in 1992 in the Boston area as a location for its members to store their computer hardware and work on various projects. In time, the members of L0pht quit their day jobs to start a business venture named L0pht Heavy Industries, a hacker think tank. The business released several security advisories and produced widely used software tools such as L0phtCrack, a password cracker for Windows NT. On May 19, 1998, all seven members of L0pht (Brian Oblivion, Kingpin, Mudge, Space Rogue, Stefan Von Neumann, John Tan, Weld Pond) famously testified before the Congress of the United States that they could shut down the entire Internet in 30 minutes. The Washington Post referred to the response as "a tragedy of missed opportunity".
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Wikipedia