Masters of Deception - Origin of Masters of Deception

Origin of Masters of Deception

MOD's initial membership grew from meetings on Loop-Around Test Lines that led to legendary collaborations to hack RBOC phone switches and the various minicomputers and mainframes used to administer the telephone network. They successfully remained underground using alternative handles to hide even their true cracker identities.

Acid Phreak founded the Masters of Deception with Scorpion and HAC. The name itself was, among other things, a mockery of LoD, as 'M' is one letter up in the alphabet from 'L', although the name originally was a flexible acronym that could be used to identify membership in situations where anonymity would be the best course of action. It could stand for "Millions of Dollars" just as easily as "Masters of Deception."

It is claimed that the mockery of the LOD name was a statement to the underground that LOD had lost its direction. Several LOD members were close friends of MOD who had been raided and indicted by the government, causing the majority of those who remained to drop out of the underground for safety reasons. In their absence, LOD largely fell into disarray causing the disagreement and disillusionment that led Phiber Optik to align himself with MOD in an effort to restore the direction of the spirit of underground hacking.