Hi and welcome to Sabir reasons malicious life. I'm Ren Levy. ran levy. Thee. The panel, if you'll, the gentleman would come forward.

We're joined today by the seven members of The Loft hacker think tank in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

On May 19th, 1998, a group of young guys who called themselves the loft, walked into a chamber on Capitol Hill

to testify before the United States Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs.

They were all dressed for the occasion, suits, ties and all the rest.

But right away, it was pretty obvious that these weren't the type of guys you'd usually find in such a room before such a committee.

Due to the sensitivity of the work done at the loft, they'll be using their hacker names of Mudge, weld, Brian Oblivion, kingpin, Space Rogue, Tan, and Stephan.

Everybody in the room seems to be on the same page.

Whatever is going on here, it's a little funny.

I hope my grandkids don't ask me who my witnesses were today and say space rogue. says,

say Space Rogue.

The kids who called themselves Space Rogue and the kingpin were not fooling around,

however.

I'm informed that you think that within 30 minutes the seven of you could make the internet

unusable for the entire nation. Is that correct?

That's correct, actually one of us with just a few packets.

Since 1998, a story of how a ragtag bunch of hackers made it into the Senate and said in front of

cameras that they could take down the entire United States in the time it takes to listen to a malicious life

podcast has become rather famous. It's been told in numerous magazine articles and

television interviews and it's actually quite funny.

Like in how the laughed guys drove to DC with a van full of electronic surveillance equipment took the wrong turn and drove straight into the NSA headquarters.

If you're not familiar with that story, don't worry.

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