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 se ...

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals and solves problems by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hackersomeone with knowledge of bug (computing), bugs or exp ...

, and leader of the

Legion of Doom The Legion of Doom is a group of supervillains who originated in '' Challenge of the Superfriends'', 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 /ˈbɛl/ () 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 m ...

and

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

systems (specifically

COSMOS The cosmos (, ; ) is an alternative name for the universe or its nature or order. Usage of the word ''cosmos'' implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity. The cosmos is studied in cosmologya broad discipline covering ...

, 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 Many of his techniques are outdated but some of his original ideas are still in use by social engineers and security professionals today.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 achieves goals and solves problems by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hackersomeone with knowledge of bugs or exploits to break ...

'', 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 Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorized or inappropriate access to data ...

services for a number of large corporations, but became a casualty of the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...

. Crossbar Security went defunct in 2002, largely due to cuts in

corporate security A chief security officer (CSO) is an organization's most senior executive accountable for the development and oversight of policies and programs intended for the mitigation and/or reduction of compliance, operational, strategic, financial and re ...

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 (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. 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'' 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 an ...

area of

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

, New York.

References

External links

*
Official site
for '' Urchin (film)''
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 Hackers