Mark Abene aka Phiber Optik is a hacker originally from NYC. He was a member of the hacking groups Masters of Deception and Legion of Doom. One of the hacks involved MOD members accessing celebrities’ credit reports that they stole from the computers of TRW. The reports included those of Geraldo Rivera, Richard Gere and Tony Randall. They also sold some reports. Though Mark maintains that he broke into computers only to gain an understanding of how they worked. In the 1990’s Mark was in legal trouble several times, finally culminating in a year sentence in federal prison. In passing sentence, the judge didn’t dispute Phiber Optik’s claim to have never damaged any system he broke into, but he insisted that Mark’s celebrity status required him to come down harder than he otherwise might have.
He has appeared as a speaker at both hacker and security conferences worldwide and frequently visits universities to speak to students about information security. After some years as a security consultant, he teamed up with a couple of former Legion of Doom members to create his own security consulting firm. Mark was also an important figure in the 1995 nonfiction book Masters of Deception – The Gang that Ruled
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