l, and criminal
activity. There are Satanist boards. Nazi boards. Pornographic
boards. Pedophile boards. Drug-dealing boards. Anarchist boards.
Communist boards. Gay and Lesbian boards (these exist in great
profusion, many of them quite lively with well-established histories).
Religious cult boards. Evangelical boards. Witchcraft boards, hippie
boards, punk boards, skateboarder boards. Boards for UFO believers.
There may well be boards for serial killers, airline terrorists and
professional assassins. There is simply no way to tell. Boards spring
up, flourish, and disappear in large numbers, in most every corner of
the developed world. Even apparently innocuous public boards can, and
sometimes do, harbor secret areas known only to a few. And even on the
vast, public, commercial services, private mail is very private--and
quite possibly criminal.

Boards cover most every topic imaginable and some that are hard to
imagine. They cover a vast spectrum of social activity. However, all
board users do have something in common: their possession of computers
and phones. Naturally, computers and phones are primary topics of
conversation on almost every board.

And hackers and phone phreaks, those utter devotees of computers and
phones, live by boards. They swarm by boards. They are bred by
boards. By the late 1980s, phone-phreak groups and hacker groups,
united by boards, had proliferated fantastically.

As evidence, here is a list of hacker groups compiled by the editors of
Phrack on August 8, 1988.

The Administration.
Advanced Telecommunications, Inc.
ALIAS.
American Tone Travelers.
Anarchy Inc.
Apple Mafia.
The Association.
Atlantic Pirates Guild.

Bad Ass Mother Fuckers.
Bellcore.
Bell Shock Force.
Black Bag.

Camorra.
C&M Productions.
Catholics Anonymous.
Chaos Computer Club.
Chief Executive Officers.
Circle Of Death.
Circle Of Deneb.
Club X.
Coalition of Hi-Tech Pirates.
Coast-To-Coast.
Corrupt Computing.
Cult Of The Dead Cow.
Custom Retaliations.

Damage Inc.
D&B Communications.
The Danger Gang.
Dec Hunters.
Digital Gang.
DPAK.

Eastern Alliance.
The Elite Hackers Guild.
Elite Phreakers and Hackers Club.
The Elite Society Of America.
EPG.
Executives Of Crime.
Extasyy Elite.

Fargo 4A.
Farmers Of Doom.
The Federation.
Feds R Us.
First Class.
Five O.
Five Star.
Force H