Leonard Rose (born 1959 in

Elkton, Maryland Elkton is a town in and the county seat of Cecil County, Maryland, United States. The population was 15,443 at the 2010 census. It was formerly called Head of Elk because it sits at the head of navigation on the Elk River, which flows into the n ...

), aka Terminus, is an American

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 ...

who in 1991 accepted a

plea bargain A plea bargain (also plea agreement or plea deal) is an agreement in criminal law proceedings, whereby the prosecutor provides a concession to the defendant in exchange for a plea of guilt or '' nolo contendere.'' This may mean that the defend ...

that convicted him of two counts of

wire fraud Mail fraud and wire fraud are terms used in the United States to describe the use of a physical or electronic mail system to defraud another, and are federal crimes there. Jurisdiction is claimed by the federal government if the illegal activit ...

stemming from publishing an article in '' Phrack'' magazine. He wrote an article for ''Phrack'' explaining how

trojan horse The Trojan Horse was a wooden horse said to have been used by the Greeks during the Trojan War to enter the city of Troy and win the war. The Trojan Horse is not mentioned in Homer's ''Iliad'', with the poem ending before the war is concluded, ...

s worked and excerpted 21 lines of the

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

SVR3.2 "login.c" source code. This prompted both AT&T and the

United States Secret Service The United States Secret Service (USSS or Secret Service) is a Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Homeland Security, Department of Homeland Security charged with co ...

to raid his home and seize a moving truck full of computers, books, electronics and paperwork from his home office in Middletown, MD. The two counts of wire fraud stemmed from him sending two pieces of email (the actual article containing excerpts of login.c to the publishers of ''Phrack'' on two occasions, as

Craig Neidorf Craig Neidorf (born 1969), Knight Lightning, was one of the two founding editors of ''Phrack'' Magazine, an online, text-based ezine that defined the hacker mentality of the mid 1980s. Craig, along with ''Phrack'' co-founder Randy Tischler (aka ...

(aka Knight Lightning; then the co-publisher of ''Phrack'') had accidentally deleted the original mail. Other counts in the original indictment were from writing a brute force password decryption program using a dictionary attack, which the US Federal Government considered "burglary tools", and tried to approach much like a burglar carrying something to break into a physical residence during the commission of a crime. During this period, Rose was also accused of being the "mastermind" of the

Legion of Doom The Legion of Doom is a group of supervillains who originated in '' Challenge of the Super Friends'', an animated series from Hanna-Barbera based on DC Comics' Justice League. The Legion of Doom has since been incorporated into the main DC Uni ...

. Many newspaper articles referred to him as being somehow involved with the LoD, which was never the case. John Gilmore,

Mitch Kapor Mitchell David Kapor ( ; born November 1, 1950) is an American entrepreneur best known for his work as an application developer in the early days of the personal computer software industry, later founding Lotus, where he was instrumental in devel ...

John Perry Barlow John Perry Barlow (October 3, 1947February 7, 2018) was an American poet, essayist, cattle rancher, and cyberlibertarian political activist who had been associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties. He was also a lyricist for th ...

and many others came to Rose's aid and helped pay for his defense.

Mike Godwin Michael Wayne Godwin (born October 26, 1956) is an American attorney and author. He was the first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and he created the Internet adage Godwin's law and the notion of an Internet meme, as rep ...

was instrumental in coordinating his defense efforts until the capitulation and plea bargain. The

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ...

was founded on the cases of Terminus, Knight Lightning, Taran King,

Steve Jackson Games Steve Jackson Games (SJGames) is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and (until 2019) the gaming magazine ''Pyramid''. History Founded in 1980, six years after the c ...

and everyone else scooped up in Operation Sundevil, which was covered in

Bruce Sterling Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author known for his novels and short fiction and editorship of the '' Mirrorshades'' anthology. In particular, he is linked to the cyberpunk subgenre. Sterling's firs ...

's non-fiction book ''The Hacker Crackdown''.

References

External links

United States District Court Search Warrant"Legion of Doom" Indictment
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rose, Leonard 1959 births Living people American computer criminals People from Elkton, Maryland

See also

References

External links