Legion of Doom
One of the best-known hacker groups of the 1980s, named after the villains in a Saturday-morning cartoon.
A hacker calling himself Lex Luthor founded the group in 1984, borrowing the name from the supervillain club in Super Friends. LOD was less an organisation than a loose network of phreakers and hackers swapping knowledge of telephone switches and minicomputers over BBSes and conference calls. Members produced the Legion of Doom Technical Journal, and several wrote for Phrack. Loyd Blankenship — The Mentor, author of The Hacker Manifesto — moved in the same circle.
In 1989–90, members in Atlanta got into BellSouth's systems. An internal document about the 911 emergency service was copied and ended up in Phrack, which set off a federal investigation and several prison sentences. Meanwhile a feud with the New York crew Masters of Deception was running hot. Some of the remaining members went on to start security consultancies — a career path that would become very familiar.