Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc)
termhackingsecurity
The oldest continuously active hacker group in the United States, formed in Lubbock, Texas in 1984 - equal parts security research, absurdist zine and political theatre. It coined the word hacktivism and shipped the remote-administration tool Back Orifice at DEF CON in 1998 to humiliate Microsoft into taking Windows security seriously.
The Back Orifice launch is the template every provocative disclosure has followed since: a working tool, a stage, a press corps, and a vendor with no good answer. cDc later spun off Hacktivismo, focused on circumvention tools for censored networks. Its alumni turn up everywhere in the field - and in 2019 a journalist revealed that a young member writing as Psychedelic Warlord had grown up to be a US presidential candidate, Beto O'Rourke.
Also known as: cdc, cdc communications, back orifice