The Legion of Doom (LOD) was 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 ...

group founded by the hacker Lex Luthor (Raavan) after a rift with his previous group called the Knights of Shadow. LOD was active from the 1980s to the early 2000s, but was most active from 1984–1991 and at the time was considered to be the most capable hacking group in the world. Today, Legion of Doom ranks as one of the more influential hacking groups in the history of technology, appearing to be a reference to the antagonists of ''

Challenge of the Super Friends ''Challenge of the Superfriends'' is an American animated television series about a team of superheroes which ran from September 9, 1978, to December 23, 1978, on ABC. The complete series (16 episodes) was produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and ...

''. At different points in the group's history, LOD was split into LOD and LOD/LOH (Legion of Doom/Legion of Hackers) for the members that were more skilled at hacking than pure

phreaking 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 ...

. There was a second hacking group at the time, called MOD, short for the

Masters of Deception Masters of Deception (MOD) was a New York–based group of hackers, most widely known in media for their exploits of telephone company infrastructure and later prosecution. Origin of Masters of Deception MOD's initial membership grew from m ...

. The overall beliefs of LOD and MOD were different, but it can be difficult to untangle the actions of the members since there was a cross-over between the two groups. Unlike the hacking group MOD, there were different opinions regarding what the Legion of Doom was. LOD published the ''Legion of Doom Technical Journals'' and contributed to the overall pool of hacking knowledge. They were not causing any direct harm to the phone systems and computer networks they took over. Still, at the time, any tampering with the phone systems was considered damaging, and many LOD members were raided and prosecuted for causing alleged damage to systems (Grant, Darden and Riggs, etc.).

History

During the summer of 1984, a year after the movie ''

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'' was released, an idea was formulated that would ultimately change the face of the computer underground forever. This particular summer, a huge surge of interest in computer telecommunications placed an incredibly large number of new enthusiasts on the national computer scene. This crowd of people all seeking to learn as much as possible began to put a strain on the bulletin board (FIDO) scene, as the novices stormed the phonelines in search of knowledge. From out of this chaos came a need for knowledgeable instructors to teach information to the new users. In 1984, one of the most popular bulletin boards of the day was a system in New York state called Plover-NET, which was run by a person who called himself Quasi-Moto. This BBS was so heavily trafficked that a major long-distance company began blocking all calls to its number (516-935-2481). The co-sysop of Plover-NET was a person known as Lex Luthor. At the time there were a few hacking groups in existence, such as Fargo 4A and Knights of Shadow, but the Legion of Doom was considered the most technically adept. Lex joined KOS in early 1984, but after a few suggestions about new members were rejected, Lex decided to put up an invitation-only BBS and form a new group. Lex contacted those people who he had seen on BBSes such as Plover-NET and the people that he knew personally who possessed the necessary knowledge that the group he envisioned should have, starting around May 1984. After a number of Alliance Teleconferences, Lex Luthor, Karl Marx, Mark Tabas, Agrajag the Prolonged, King Blotto, Blue Archer, EBA, The Dragyn, and Unknown Soldier became the original Legion of Doom members.

Members of LOD

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As of 2012 what has happened to each individual member of the Legion of Doom is unknown. A small handful of the higher-profile LOD members who are accounted for includes: "Lex Luthor", "

Erik Bloodaxe Eric Haraldsson ( non, Eiríkr Haraldsson , no, Eirik Haraldsson; died 954), nicknamed Bloodaxe ( non, blóðøx , no, Blodøks) and Brother-Slayer ( la, fratrum interfector), was a 10th-century Norwegian king. He ruled as King of Norway from ...

", "Mark Tabas", "Karl Marx", "Agrajag the Prolonged", "Automatic Jack", " Bill From RNOC", " Lord Digital", " The Mentor", "Doctor Who", " Dead Lord", "

Phiber Optik 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 ...

", who was a member of both LOD and

(MOD), and "

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Internal and external battles of LOD

LOD was against wanton destruction of computers which had been hacked. Gary Cohen "Terminal Man" was dismissed from the group for this reason. Other disagreements led to bad blood between Erik Bloodaxe and Mark Tabas. A war with MOD was undertaken, and Erik Bloodaxe led as LOD's general. While Bloodaxe was active in this regard, other LOD members were less so.

Projects of LOD

In 1992, several members of LOD came together and founded LODCOM, Inc., which collected old hacker bulletin board messages for an archive, which was to be sold. Most, if not all, of this material later ended up on textfiles.com. Marauder formed LOD.COM as a consulting company, and several ex-LOD members had accounts on the system. In the late 1990s, a root DNS server had an illicit new

TLD A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...

of .LOD for over a year. The business name "LOD Communications" arose sometime in the late 80s when Frank Carson (aka Basketball Jones - one of the few "Unknown to the public" LOD Members) registered the name & applied for a CT Tax ID to enable Marauder to get on the Bellcore technical document mailing list.

References

Public access legal records and transcripts