Global kOS
were a grey hat

Grey hat

A grey hat, in the hacking community, refers to a skilled hacker whose activities fall somewhere between white and black hat hackers on a variety of spectra. It may relate to whether they sometimes arguably act illegally, though in good will, or to show how they disclose vulnerabilities...

 (leaning black hat

Black hat

A black hat is the villain or bad guy, especially in a western movie in which such a character would stereotypically wear a black hat in contrast to the hero's white hat, especially in black and white movies....

) computer hacker

Hacker (computer security)

In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...

 group active from 1996 through 2000, considered a highly influential group who were involved in multiple high profile security breaches and defacements as well as a releasing notable network security and intrusion tools. Global kOS were involved with the media heavily and were interviewed and profiled by journalist Jon Newton in his blog titled "On The Road in Cyberspace" (OTRiCS). The group were reported multiple times to the FBI by Carolyn Meinel

Carolyn Meinel

Carolyn P. Meinel was notable in the hacking scene during the 1990s. Her books and website, called The Happy Hacker, are dedicated to a style known as script kiddie hacking...

 who attempted to bring the group to justice while members of Global kOS openly mocked her..

Overview

Global kOS were a loose collective of members of other hacking groups active in 1996 who released network and security tools for Windows and Linux. The group did not release exploit code as other groups did, each member maintained their own webpage and often acted individually or with their original group. Global kOS continually reiterated that their goal was entirely about rampaging across the internet and creating as much chaos as they could by releasing automated denial of service tools. The group was humorous and irreverent in interviews and press releases, they and affiliates openly taunted webmasters through website defacements. The groups members hacked and defaced a large number of websites in the nightly hacking contests over IRC on EFNet

EFnet

EFnet or Eris Free network is a major IRC network, with more than 35,000 users. It is the modern-day descendant of the original IRC network.- History :...

.

Releases

• Up Yours! denial of service tool
• Digital destruction suite collection of hacker tools
• Panther modern denial of service tool
• kOS Crack password cracking utilities
• BattlePong IRC flooding utility

Up Yours!

Up Yours! the flagship release for Global kOS was an early point and click denial of service tool which helped to spawn the term 'script kiddie'. Up Yours! first appeared in 1996 and updated versions were released three times. Up Yours! was the denial of service tool used in the well documented Nizkor attack.. It is believed that the hacker 'johnny xchaotic' aka 'Angry Johnny' used Up Yours! to take down the websites of 40 politicians, MTV, Rush Limbaugh the Ku Klux Klan and multiple others. The author claims he came up with the name Up Yours! because he wanted to hear Dan Rather

Dan Rather

Daniel Irvin "Dan" Rather, Jr. is an American journalist and the former news anchor for the CBS Evening News. He is now managing editor and anchor of the television news magazine Dan Rather Reports on the cable channel HDNet. Rather was anchor of the CBS Evening News for 24 years, from March 9,...

 say it on national television.

In print: , , and

Members

Membership between Global kOS and other hacking groups of the time is difficult to determine as most members were involved in multiple groups, crossover appears between Global kOS, Technophoria, SiN and GlobalHell

Globalhell

globalHell was a group of hackers, composed of about 60 individuals. The group disbanded in 1999, when 12 members were prosecuted for computer intrusion and 30 for lesser offences...

(gH).

• AcidAngel - Author of the denial of service tools 'Up Yours!' and 'Panther modern'.
• Materva
• Glitch
• The Assassin
• NaCHoMaN - cracker
• The Raven - author of 'kOS Crack'
• Shadow Hunter
• Silicon Toad
• Spidey
• That Guy
• Zaven

Affiliated members

• Modify
• BroncBuster
• Banshee - author of bitchslap
• The Messiah
• Deprave

External links

• http://gkos.org
• http://web.textfiles.com/hacking/globlkos.nfo
• http://web.archive.org/web/19971015025943/http://www.otrics.com/hackr8.html