Member-only story
My Life as a Member of the Cult of the Dead Cow
A peek into one of the oldest hactivist groups
As a kid in Atlanta, I was busted for hacking. A friend of mine showed me how to get into VAX machines, and we happily owned everything we could in 1986-era Atlanta until one day, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Secret Service knocked on my dad’s door. We had violated a server installed to manage the Democratic National Convention of 1988 in Atlanta—and they don’t like things like that.
We were made an example of, and I decided I wanted to write instead of do computer work. I forget if this made the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) notice me or not, but somehow I was invited to write for them. The year was 1990 or so.
On March 15 this year, news broke that presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke operated as “Psychedelic Warlord” with the cDc. I don’t doubt that he did; there were so many members of the cDc that I am not sure a comprehensive membership list actually exists unless you go by the handles on the text files they published. That’s what we did—we published funny stories and poems, and sometimes we published hacking instructions or announcements about tools that some member had written.
At any rate, shortly after I got involved with them, I attended a hacker “convention” in Austin. (I use “convention”…
