
Tracking down the teenage hackers of the Inner Circle (2016) - walterbell
https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/the-untold-story-of-the-teen-hackers-who-transformed-th-1770977586/
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elahieh
_[John] Maxfield always tried to stay off the radar, but after he was exposed
as an FBI informant in late 1983, he became the most loathed man on the
internet._

Well ... the ARPAnet? Until RTM came along?

The word Internet was first used in RFC 675, in December 1974. But I think the
author _actually_ means "the Inner Circle and their friends and supporters".
The man had his day as a vigilante until about 1990, then faded into
obscurity.

~~~
CWuestefeld
I met Maxfield briefly, at a talk he was doing at my college, probably
sometime around '87 or '88\. He certainly wasn't trying to stay off the radar
then, he was inflating his role in all of this quite a lot.

As it happens, I was attending that talk along with one member of the Inner
Circle (not named in this article), as well as one other even more respected
hacker, BIOC Agent 003. Not that I'm an uber-hacker myself - my association
with them was mostly a matter of coincidence.

Maxfield told a number of anecdotes about famous hacks and takedowns, like the
famous Fargo 4A phone switch thing. Having some knowledge of these events from
my friends, it was clear that he was stretching the truth to inflate his own
importance. My friends called him out on this, and I remember much of the rest
of the talk being Q&A with the audience directing questions mostly at my
friends rather than to Maxfield.

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codezero
I was excited for a second because this was the name of my EverQuest guild.

Different inner circle. Though to our credit we did wake the sleeper on
Xegony. ;)

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HNLurker2
He reminds me of Terry Davis , hope it won't end the same?

