Masters of Deception
A New York hacker group whose feud with the Legion of Doom ended in a federal prosecution in 1992.
MOD grew out of Queens and Brooklyn in the late 1980s. Its best-known member was Mark Abene, alias Phiber Optik, a teenager who understood the phone network's switching systems better than many who worked on them and was happy to explain them on the radio. The name is often read as a dig at the Legion of Doom, which Abene had briefly belonged to. The group roamed telco networks and mainframes reached through packet networks such as Tymnet.
Around 1990–91 came "The Great Hacker War" between MOD and LOD, a run of threats, eavesdropped conference calls and accusations traded on BBSes. How big the war really was is disputed; several participants have since called it overblown. In 1992 five members were indicted federally, and Abene got a year in prison — a sentence that turned him into a martyr on the scene. Journalists Michelle Slatalla and Joshua Quittner told the story in the 1995 book Masters of Deception.