Craig Neidorf

Who is Craig Neidorf?

Craig Neidorf, aka 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, came up with the concept of Phrack and published it from 1985 onwards. The Phrack newsletters were recognized for providing very informative updates of the national scene considering their oblique sources and served as a bible to the hackers of the day.

In 1990, Neidorf was facing 31 years in jail after being arrested and charged with receiving a document stolen from Bell South, and with publicly distributing it online. Bell described the document, which described the inner workings of the Enhanced 911 system, as being worth US$79,449. The charges were dropped when it was revealed that the document was not, as initially described, source code, but rather a memorandum, and that more detailed documents could be ordered from Bell for $13. The proceedings are formally known as United States v. Riggs.

The case was a catalyst in the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.