Dave Buchwald (; born September 4, 1970), is a filmmaker and former

phone phreak Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term ''phreak'' is a ...

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 ...

, and leader of the

Legion of Doom The Legion of Doom is a group of supervillains who originated in ''Challenge of the Super Friends'', an animated series from Hanna-Barbera based on DC Comics' Justice League. The Legion of Doom has since been incorporated into the main DC Univers ...

in the mid-1980s, then known as Bill From RNOC.

Hacker

In the late 1980s, as a teenager, Buchwald was a social engineer, known for manipulating phone system employees anywhere in the United States into performing tasks that gave him access to systems. He used the handle Bill From RNOC with Arnock being short for the town IBM is based out of. He was also known for hacking

Bell A bell is a directly struck idiophone percussion instrument. Most bells have the shape of a hollow cup that when struck vibrates in a single strong strike tone, with its sides forming an efficient resonator. The strike may be made by an inter ...

and

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

systems (specifically

COSMOS The cosmos (, ) is another name for the Universe. Using the word ''cosmos'' implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity. The cosmos, and understandings of the reasons for its existence and significance, are studied in ...

, SCCS, and LMOS), which allowed him virtually unrestricted access to phone lines, including the ability to monitor conversations, throughout the United States. He was the lead author of the popular PENIX suite of hacking tools. Many of his techniques are outdated but some of his original ideas are still in use by social engineers and security professionals today. In 1995, Dave was introduced to film making when he served as a technical consultant to the movie ''

Hackers 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 ...

'', editing the screenplay and personally coaching many members of the principal cast.

Security career

In 1997, Buchwald co-founded Crossbar Security with

Mark Abene Mark Abene (born February 23, 1972) is an American information security expert and entrepreneur, originally from New York City. Better known by his pseudonym Phiber Optik, he was once a member of the hacker groups Legion of Doom and Masters of ...

(a.k.a. Phiber Optik) and Andrew Brown. Crossbar provided information security services for a number of large corporations, but became a casualty of the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

. Crossbar Security went defunct in 2002, largely due to cuts in corporate security spending and an increase in the cost of corporate computer security advertising.

Arts career

Buchwald works as a film editor, freelance photographer, and graphic designer in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. He has been regularly producing cover art for ''

2600: The Hacker Quarterly ''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 ...

'' since 2000 using the pseudonym Dabu Ch'wald. In August 2006, he completed his first feature film, '' Urchin''. He has recently produced and edited the independent film ''

Love Simple ''Love Simple'' is a 2009 American romantic comedy film written and directed by Mark von Sternberg and starring Francisco Solorzano, Patrizia Hernandez, John Harlacher, Caitlin FitzGerald and Israel Horovitz. The film is currently available on D ...

'' and is in pre-production on the film ''Kuru'', the second movie by the production company The Enemy. A short he edited entitled Floating Sunflowers won the Gold Remi award for Best Comedy Short at the 47th Worldfest-Houston International Film and Video Festival in April 2014. In August, 2018, Dave and his collaborator, Michael Lee Nirenberg, presented sample scenes from a documentary series they are producing, ''Reverse Engineering'' at the DEF CON annual hacking conference in Las Vegas.DEF CON speakers program
/ref> He currently resides in the

Bay Ridge Bay Ridge is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bounded by Sunset Park to the north, Dyker Heights to the east, the Narrows and the Belt Parkway to the west, and Fort Hamilton Army Base and ...

area of

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York.

References

External links

*
Official site
for ''

Urchin (film) ''Urchin'' is a 2007 film directed by John Harlacher and starring Sebastian Montoya, Rick Poli, Larry Swansen, Donald Silva, and Barbara King. The screenplay concerns a homeless boy living in a New York City underground mole people Mole peopl ...

''
Profile in Forbes Magazine

Love Simple website

Dave Buchwald's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Buchwald, Dave Living people American film editors RNOC, Bill from 1970 births People from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn