Cult of the Dead Cow and Back Orifice
When the Cult of the Dead Cow released Back Orifice at DEF CON 6 in 1998, they called it a legitimate remote administration tool. Microsoft called it malware. The truth was more complicated, and more important.
Cult of the Dead Cow and Back Orifice
Article draft pending. This piece will cover the Cult of the Dead Cow's release of Back Orifice at DEF CON 6 in August 1998, detailing the tool's technical capabilities (remote registry editing, process control, file system access, and keystroke logging on Windows 98 machines). Sections will cover the founding of cDc in Lubbock, Texas in 1984, their evolution from a BBS text file group to one of the most influential hacker collectives in history, the deliberate framing of Back Orifice as a "remote administration tool" to highlight that Microsoft's own tools offered no better security, Microsoft's furious response and attempts to classify it as malware, the release of Back Orifice 2000 (which targeted Windows NT and 2000), the group's broader philosophy of hacktivism and their later involvement in projects like Hacktivismo and the Tor network, and the argument that cDc's confrontational approach to disclosure ultimately forced the industry to take Windows security seriously.