Craig Neidorf (born 1969), Knight Lightning, is an American editor. He was one of the founding editors of ''

Phrack ''Phrack'' is an e-zine written by and for Hacker (computer security), hackers, first published November 17, 1985. It had a wide circulation which included both hackers and computer security professionals. Originally covering subjects related to ...

'' Magazine, an

ezine An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to an online only magazine was the computer ...

. In 1990, he was charged for fraud, though later the charges were dropped. The case was a catalyst in the founding of the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an American international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties. It provides funds for legal defense in court, ...

. Prophet, a witness, admitted that he had never known Neidorf to break in to any computer. Also that no one in 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 ...

considered Craig a hacker.

Biography

Craig Neidorf studied at

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou or MU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri, United States. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Univers ...

. In 1985, Craig, along with Randy Tischler (aka Taran King), came up with the concept of ''Phrack'' and started publishing it since then. In February 1990, Neidorf was arrested and was charged with fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property for stealing a confidential document, the E911 document, from the Bell South telephone company and with publicly distributing it in february 1989. BellSouth described the document, on the subject of the inner workings of the

Enhanced 911 Enhanced 911 (E-911 or E911) is a system used in North America to automatically provide the caller's location to 911 dispatchers. 911 is the universal emergency telephone number in the region. In the European Union, a similar system exists known ...

system, as being worth US$79,449. The case became a controversial issue for the digital underground and Neidorf's defence was organised, not funded, by the fledgling

. On 27 July 1990, the fourth day of trial, the case was dismissed. The charges were dropped when it was revealed that the document was not a

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

but rather a

memorandum A memorandum (: memorandums or memoranda; from the Latin ''memorandum'', "(that) which is to be remembered"), also known as a briefing note, is a Writing, written message that is typically used in a professional setting. Commonly abbreviation, ...

and that it could be ordered from BellSouth by phone for $13.50. The proceedings are formally known as '' United States v. Riggs''. He was not found innocent though the trial was dropped. On September 9, 1991, he was granted motion for the "expungement and sealing" of his indictment record. Craig became determined to become a lawyer. In 2020, he was working as a researcher at Electronic Frontier Foundation.

References

External links

Transcript of the opening statements at Neidorf's trial
1969 births Living people {{US-compu-bio-stub