Chaos Computer Club

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Chaos Computer Club
CCC Logo
CCC Logo
Origin Berlin
Country Germany
Years active 1981–present
Category Hacking
Founder(s) Wau Holland
Product(s) Datenschleuder
Chaos Communication Congress
Chaos Communication Camp
Chaosradio
Project Blinkenlights
Website(s) CCC homepage
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The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) is one of the biggest and most influential hacker organizations. The CCC is based in Germany and other German-speaking countries and currently has about 2,000 members.

The CCC describes itself as "a galactic community of life's beings, independent of age, sex, race or societal orientation, which strives across borders for freedom of information…." In general, the CCC struggles for more transparency in governments, freedom of information and a human right to communication. Supporting the principles of the hacker ethic, the club also fights for free access to computers and technological infrastructure for everybody.

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[edit] History

The CCC was founded in Berlin on September 12, 1981 on a table from the Kommune 1 in the rooms of the newspaper Die Tageszeitung by Wau Holland and others in anticipation of the prominent role that information technology would play in the way people live and communicate.

The CCC became world famous when they hacked the German Bildschirmtext computer network and succeeded in getting a bank in Hamburg to debit the online account with DM 134,000 in favor of the club. The money was returned the next day in front of the press.

In 1989, the CCC was peripherally involved in the first cyberespionage case to make international headlines. A group of German hackers led by Karl Koch (who was loosely affiliated with the CCC) was arrested for breaking into US government and corporate computers and selling operating-system source code to the Soviet KGB.

Several of the CCC's early exploits are also documented in a paper[1], written by Digital Equipment Corporation's lead European Investigator of the CCC's activities in the 1980s and 1990s. These include the CCC protests against French nuclear tests and members of the CCC invovled with the German Green Party.

The CCC is more widely known for its public demonstrations of security risks. In 1996, CCC members demonstrated an attack against Microsoft's ActiveX technology, changing personal data in a Quicken database from the outside. In April 1998, the CCC successfully demonstrated the cloning of a GSM customer card, breaking the COMP128 encryption algorithm, at that time used by many GSM SIMs.[2]

In 2001, the CCC celebrated its twentieth birthday with an interactive light installation dubbed Project Blinkenlights that turned the building Haus des Lehrers in Berlin into a giant computer screen. A follow up installation (dubbed "Arcade") at the Bibliothèque nationale de France was the world's biggest light installation ever.

In March 2008. the CCC acquired and published the fingerprints of German Secretary of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble. This was done to protest the use of biometric data in German identity devices such as e-passports. [3]

[edit] Events

CCC 2003 camp near Berlin
CCC 2003 camp near Berlin

The CCC hosts the annual Chaos Communication Congress, Europe's biggest hacker congress, with up to 4,500 participants. Every four years, the Chaos Communication Camp is the outdoor alternative for hackers worldwide.

Members of the CCC also participate in various technological and political conferences around the planet.

[edit] Publications

The CCC publishes the quarterly magazine Datenschleuder ("data catapult"), and the CCC in Berlin also produces a monthly radio show called Chaosradio which picks up various technical and political topics in a two-hour talk radio show. The program is aired on a local radio station named Fritz. There is also a podcast spin-off named "Chaosradio Express," an international podcast called "Chaosradio International," and other radio programs offered by some regional Chaos Groups.

As a protest against the increasing use of biometric data, the club published a fingerprint of German Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble in the March 2008 edition of Datenschleuder. The magazine also included the fingerprint on a film that readers could use to fool fingerprint readers.[4]

[edit] Members

Famous members are co-founder Wau Holland and Andy Müller-Maguhn, who was a member of the ICANN board of directors for Europe until 2002.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Anderson, Kent (2006), Hacktivism and Politically Motivated Computer Crime, <http://www.aracnet.com/~kea/Papers/Politically%20Motivated%20Computer%20Crime.pdf>. Retrieved on 14 May 2008 
  2. ^ CCC | CCC klont D2 Kundenkarte
  3. ^ CCC publiziert die Fingerabdrücke von Wolfgang Schäuble [Update] - heise Security
  4. ^ CCC publishes fingerprints of Wolfgang Schäuble, the German Home Secretary, Heise Online, published 2008-03-31, accessed 2008-04-17