Chris Lamprecht (known as ''MinorThreat'' or ''mthreat'') is an American software developer based in

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

. Lamprecht was the original author of ToneLoc, a

wardialing Wardialing (or war dialing) is a technique to automatically scan a list of telephone numbers, usually dialing every number in a local area code to search for modems, computers, bulletin board systems (computer servers) and fax machines. Hacker ...

program written in the C programming language for the

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

operating system. He was the first employee and lead software architect for indeed.com, a metasearch engine for job listings. Lamprecht is regarded as the first person to be banned from accessing the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, in 1995. After being sentenced to 70 months in prison for money laundering, Lamprecht was also given a punishment of no access to the Internet until 2004. Christopher Matthew Lamprecht had the

Federal Bureau of Prisons The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Justice that is responsible for the care, custody, and control of incarcerated individuals who have committed federal crimes; that i ...

ID# 61153-080 and was released on March 3, 2000. Under the order of Judge Sam Sparks of the

US District Court The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district cou ...

in 1995, Lamprecht was ordered to 70 months in the

Federal Correctional Institution, Bastrop The Federal Correctional Institution, Bastrop (FCI Bastrop) is an administrative-low-security United States federal prison for male inmates in Camp Swift, Texas. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Depa ...

. Though a known computer

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

, the 24-year-old was never tried, nor pleaded guilty for computer related crimes, making it the more unusual that he was not allowed to access the Internet. In 1997 Lamprecht co-authored an article in '' Phrack Magazine'' issue #52 while incarcerated in a federal penitentiary, and the issue was published in 1998 with portions appearing in ''

2600 Magazine ''2600: The Hacker Quarterly'' is an American seasonal publication of technical information and articles, many of which are written and submitted by the readership, on a variety of subjects including hacking, telephone switching systems, Intern ...

''; and "prophiled" in ''Phrack'' issue #46 (1994). In 2002 Judge Sam Sparks released Lamprecht from his term of supervised release, effectively lifting his Internet ban as well. Lamprecht authored the computer wardialer program ToneLoc in the 1990s. After losing the original

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

, it was re-written with the assistance of Mucho Maas. Lamprecht presented a talk detailing ToneLoc in 1993 at the SummerCon conference. Lamprecht founded and worked for Searchify, a

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend ...

offering an

Internet hosting service An Internet hosting service is a service that runs servers connected to the Internet, allowing organizations and individuals to serve content or host services connected to the Internet. A common kind of hosting is web hosting. Most hosting provi ...

for searches, marketed with a

software as a service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is con ...

, which is based upon the

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...

IndexTank. IndexTank was acquired by

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...

and open sourced in 2011.

References

External links

Chris Lamprecht's personal home page

Interview with Lamprecht, ToneLoc's author
part of '' BBS: The Documentary'' American white-collar criminals American cybercriminals Living people American people convicted of money laundering Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people) {{crime-bio-stub

References

Further reading

External links