Phiber Optik (Mark Abene)
termhackingISP & telecom
The New York phone-switch specialist who left the Legion of Doom to found Masters of Deception, became the most visible hacker of the early 1990s, and served a year in federal prison in 1994 for conspiracy.
Abene mattered because he argued in public. He taught, gave interviews, and insisted that exploring systems was not the same as damaging them, at a moment when prosecutors were making the opposite case. New York magazine named him one of the city's hundred smartest people the year he went in; the city threw him a party when he came out. His case, more than any other, is why the field still distinguishes curiosity from harm when it writes its own history.
Also known as: mark abene, mod founder