My role has been to try to keep up morale and direction in the L0pht Heavy Industries Project. In the past, I have hand picked everyone that is now a present member of the L0pht. I am NOT the frontman, nor will I ever be. That task is delegated to someone with more of an outgoing personality. (enter Mudge!)
The function and direction of the L0pht has changed a bit since it was first founded in 1992. This change was brought on by the monetary expenses a group as large and as ambitious as we, incur. Real estate, electricity, telco lines, and connectivity fees are a few of the reoccuring fees we are presented with. This means that we must come up with some projects that will have the potential of bringing in needed capital to keep the organization afloat. The POCSAG project, the Whacked-Mac CD and the L0pht Archives CD help contribute to this fund. Web, ftp, and user accounts also contribute to the L0pht life-blood. Aside from the income generated from projects, each of us pay a monthly fee to keep the place alive. The ideal situation would be to have the L0pht completely finance itself.
My projects mainly revolve around some system administration and machine maintenance on L0pht and supporting machines, and the inexpensive WLAN project. I also maintain the MPP machine. It went online in June 1996 but needed to be shutdown due to overhe ating. If ANYONE out there can offer some advice on implementing a forced cooled air system on a shoestring budget please contact me! Once we get this machine online full time, we can add 14 Gigs of drive space to the archives and user directories.
The WLAN project is where I expend the bulk of my energy. I am currently working with Tom Icom and Dr.Who on an inexpensive WLAN for the underground hacker community. My now infamous work in the 10GHz band is still chugging along. The L0pht currently s two 2 meter rigs running at 1200bps, one 70cm rig running at 9600bps, and a 900MHz Wavelan running at 2Mbps. Work is underway on equipment for 2.3 GHz.
Tom, Kingpin, Weld, Dr.Who and I are liscenced Amateur Radio Operators that will use the Ham frequencies for proof of concept. All knowledge and conclusions will be shared with the Ham community as we publish it.
All work will eventually be moved into the freeband the FCC is opening up at .900, 2.1 and 5GHz. Hopefully we will regain some of our expenses incured by selling devices developed in kit form. Again, we will make the design information and test results available to the community.
Past Projects and Points of Interest
This collection of files is all that is left of the Black Crawling Systems BBS. For a more detailed description of where the files came from and where the archive is going, please read the FAQ. Note: The BCS/L0pht Archives CD is now available.
In my younger days, you could have called me a "goth" but the term used was "deathrocker" then. On the west coast (seattle area) the term was "Batcave". Now it's goth... I still like the music, but I feel the look has gotten a bit cheesy.. (ie. propaganda et al.. ick.) Maybe I'm just getting old.. Actually I enjoy any dark music, be it goth or industrial like old Skinny Puppy (and their last album The Process, was incredible!), Borghesia, Front Line Assembly, ClockDVA, and another absolute favorite, Die Form. But my favorite newer band right now has to be Covenant. A wonderful act out of Sweden that remind me of a blend between Coil, Front Line Assembly, and Death in June.
One of those bands that really touched my soul. So I decided to erect this website as a tribute to thier effect upon my life. I must admit I am not as touched with the current releases as I was with the past, but I still respect Douglas Pierce none-the- less. My favorite material in respectful order: "Brown Book", "The World that Summer...", and "Guilty Have No Pride". Sol Invictus and Sixth Comm are also favorites but I decided to keep closer to DIJ, even though I find myself listening to Tony's Dark Folk music quite often...
Finally, a survivalist group with a technological slant. I was active on the Runestone BBS for quite a while in the late eighties, early ninties. Met Tom Icom at summercon 1992. He and I are trying to get the WLAN stuff going in the boston scene first. Then it will spread westward (and south).
Libertarian
PartyI find myself most aligned with the ideals and code of this political group. Self-reliance is one of my most prized posessions. A lack of information can kill you. Self-reliant texts and utilities are made available through the BCS archives. However, no matter how self-reliant you think you are, no man is an island.
Recent events and reactionary tactics are being employed to put free encrypted speech under the same umbrella that firearms have been over the past two decades. Soon only criminals shall have the luxury of strong cryptography at thier disposal, while making every other law abiding citizen a federal offender. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that you will have Key Escrow encryption, so that the government can decrypt your private messages whenever they see fit. Everyone, the SAFE bill about to be proposed to the House of Representatives the amendments added to an otherwise pro-privacy bill, must be crushed NOW. Support the Internet Privacy Coalition and My Lock, My Key, who are making it thier personal business to see that our legislature becomes educated on the ramifications of Escrow crypto systems, the abolition of restrictive export controls on strong cryptography, and strong crypto for everyone.
Babylon 5
Babylon 5 is most definately the best Science Fiction series on Television this decade. It ranks right up there next to StarBlazers for its incredible story Arc. Those eriee ships are naturally attractive to me.. they are Black Crawling Starcruisers(those ships are shadow vessels, one of the First Ones). If you are not watching this show, you are missing out on a great experience. Fortunately the series will be moving from national syndication to the TNT network beginning on Jan 4th. You will be able to catch the entire series from beginning to end, so keep your that date close to heart.
Yes, an old-school hacker on the Wired team contacted us and wanted to see if we wanted to put a blurb about ourselves in the mag... we accepted. I followed this 'zine for it's first year, then the novelty wore off.. But I'll flip through it at the news stand to see whats going on in the digital mainstream.
Emmanuel runs a pretty good zine and has quite a cult following. Count Zero and I assited him during the HOPE conference. Yes, we were partially responsible for the badge disaster at the con. BUT IT WASN'T OUR IDEA!!! Someone dropped the ball and Zero and I had to come up with a software/hardware solution in 24 hours. It worked, but it went a bit slow. Hey, it had to be half decent because we could easily train other people to do it. (then we scuttled away..)
I want to send out my absolute congratulations and goodwill to all of those at NASA who participated in the MARS Pathfinder Mission!!! Job well done!!! Keep the dream of NASA alive with more and more exploration of our Solar System and beyond. If man lays stagnant on this rock, dwelling on petty social ills and stops dreaming, our race is sure to fail.
I hope the administration today and future administrations realize when it invests in ARPA and NASA, it invests in the wellbeing of everyone on the planet by contributing to the knowledge pool of our race. As a member of a NASA Advanced Communications Contract, I feel especially proud to see years of research come to fruition through a highly visible, successful mission.
Distributed.Net has got to be one of the coolest ideas to hit the net in a while. Parallel Virtual Machine in motion... Well, not quite, but it's the next best thing! Join the fight to bring weak crypto to it's knees. Help the l0pht crack crypto by joining our team. We are team #5534.
I am the last surviving founding member of L0pht. What started as a storage space for all my electronic and excess computer junk as turned into quite a presence. The current members of L0pht are: Brian Oblivion, Weld Pond, Kingpin, Mudge, Space Rogue, Tan, and Stefan von Neumann. You can read all about it in the FAQ. (When it's finished...)
