Mark Abene

Mark Abene was one of the most notorious phone hackers. His hacker handle was Phiber Optik. His preferred hacking activity was breaking into telephone systems using a normal phone receiver.

Mark was a member of the Legion of Doom hacker group, and then founded the hacker group Masters of Deception (MOD). When the AT&T telephone system crashed in 1990, he was blamed and raided by the Secret Service, but the crash later turned out be caused by a computer bug.

In December 1991, Abene was raided again, and later indicted and served ten months in Pennsylvania's Schuylkill Prison for his phone hacking exploits with Southwestern Bell, New York Telephone, Pacific Bell, US West, and Martin Marietta Electronics Information and Missile Group. He was visited by so many journalists while in prison that the other inmates called him "CNN".

Abene was president of Crossbar Security until 2004.