Chaos Computer Club
Encyclopedia
The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) is an organization of hackers
. The CCC is based in Germany
and other German
-speaking countries.
The CCC describes itself as "a galactic community of life forms, independent of age, sex, race or societal orientation, which strives across borders for freedom of information...." In general, the CCC advocates more transparency in government, freedom of information, and the human right
to communication
. Supporting the principles of the hacker ethic
, the club also fights for free universal access to computers and technological infrastructure.
on September 12, 1981 at the Kommune 1
's table 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 drew public attention to the security flaws of the German Bildschirmtext
computer network by causing it to debit a bank in Hamburg DM 134,000 in favor of the club. The money was returned the next day in front of the press. Prior to the incident, the system provider had failed to react to proof of the security flaw provided by the CCC, claiming to the public that their system was safe. Bildschirmtext was the biggest commercially available online system targeted at the general public in its region at that time, run and heavily advertised by the German telecommunications agency (Deutsche Bundespost
) which also strove to keep up-to-date alternatives out of the market.
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 documented in a paper, 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 involved 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. In April 1998, the CCC successfully demonstrated the cloning of a GSM customer card, breaking the COMP128 encryption
algorithm used at that time by many GSM SIM
s.
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 Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble
. The magazine also included the fingerprint on a film that readers could use to fool fingerprint readers. This was done to protest the use of biometric data in German identity devices such as e-passports
.
Later in October 2008, CCC's Project Blinkenlights
went to Toronto
, Canada
with project Stereoscope.
) is a computer surveillance
program installed secretly on a suspect's computer, which the German police uses to wiretap Internet telephony. This "source wiretapping" is necessary, since Internet telephony programs will usually encrypt
the data when it leaves the computer. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
has ruled that the police may only use such programs for telephony wiretapping, and for no other purpose, and that this restriction should be enforced through technical and legal means.
On October 8, 2011, the CCC published an analysis of the Bundestrojaner software. The software was found to have the ability to remote control the target computer, to capture screenshots, and to fetch and run arbitrary extra code. The CCC says that having this functionality built in is in direct contradiction to the ruling of the constitutional court.
In addition, there were a number of security problems with the implementation. The software was controllable over the Internet, but the commands were sent completely unencrypted, with no checks for authentication or integrity. This leaves any computer under surveillance using this software vulnerable to attack. The captured screenshots and audio files were encrypted, but so incompetently that the encryption was ineffective. All captured data was sent over a proxy server in the United States, which is problematic since the data is then temporarily outside the German jurisdiction.
The CCC's findings were widely reported in the German press.
, 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.
The CCC started a new yearly conference called SIGINT in May 2009 in Cologne
, Germany.
Another yearly CCC event taking place on the Easter weekend is the Easterhegg
, which is more workshop oriented than the other events.
Members of the CCC also participate in various technological and political conferences around the planet.
(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 (which has been inactive for a couple of years now), and other radio programs offered by some regional Chaos Groups.
and Andy Müller-Maguhn
, who was a member of the ICANN
board of directors for Europe until 2002. Former WikiLeaks
spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg
was expelled from CCC in August 2011, during its annual camp.
(France) by Jean-Bernard Condat, under the commandment of Jean-Luc Delacour, an agent of the Direction de la surveillance du territoire
governmental agency. The primary goal of the CCCF was to watch and to gather information about the French hacker community. Journalist Jean Guisnel said that this organization also worked with the French National Gendarmerie
.
The name of the organization is directly inspired by the name of the German Chaos Computer Club organization, which in contrast is a real hacker organization.
The CCCF had a electronic magazine called Chaos Digest (ChaosD). Between January 4, 1993 and August 5, 1993, 73 issues were published .
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...
. The CCC is based in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and other German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
-speaking countries.
The CCC describes itself as "a galactic community of life forms, independent of age, sex, race or societal orientation, which strives across borders for freedom of information...." In general, the CCC advocates more transparency in government, freedom of information, and the human right
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
to communication
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
. Supporting the principles of the hacker ethic
Hacker ethic
Hacker ethic is the generic phrase which describes the moral values and philosophy that are standard in the hacker community. The early hacker culture and resulting philosophy originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s and 1960s...
, the club also fights for free universal access to computers and technological infrastructure.
History
The CCC was founded in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
on September 12, 1981 at the Kommune 1
Kommune 1
Kommune 1 or K1 was the first politically-motivated commune in Germany. It was created on January 12, 1967, in West Berlin and finally dissolved in November 1969....
's table in the rooms of the newspaper Die Tageszeitung
Die tageszeitung
die tageszeitung , was founded in 1978 in Berlin. It is a cooperative-owned German daily newspaper which is administrated by a workers' self-management...
by Wau Holland
Wau Holland
Herwart Holland-Moritz, known as Wau Holland, cofounded the Chaos Computer Club in 1981, one of the world's oldest hacking clubs. The CCC became world famous when its members exposed security flaws in Germany's "Bildschirmtext" online television service by getting a bank to send them DM 134,000...
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 drew public attention to the security flaws of the German Bildschirmtext
Bildschirmtext
Bildschirmtext was a V.23 online service launched in West Germany in 1983 by the Deutsche Bundespost, the German postal service. Btx originally required special hardware, which had to be bought or rented from the post office...
computer network by causing it to debit a bank in Hamburg DM 134,000 in favor of the club. The money was returned the next day in front of the press. Prior to the incident, the system provider had failed to react to proof of the security flaw provided by the CCC, claiming to the public that their system was safe. Bildschirmtext was the biggest commercially available online system targeted at the general public in its region at that time, run and heavily advertised by the German telecommunications agency (Deutsche Bundespost
Deutsche Bundespost
The Deutsche Bundespost was created in 1947 as a successor to the Reichspost . Between 1947 and 1950 the enterprise was called Deutsche Post...
) which also strove to keep up-to-date alternatives out of the market.
In 1989, the CCC was peripherally involved in the first cyberespionage case to make international headlines. A group of German
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
hackers led by Karl Koch
Hagbard (Karl Koch)
Karl Werner Lothar Koch was a German hacker in the 1980s, who called himself "hagbard", after Hagbard Celine. He was involved in a Cold War computer espionage incident.-Biography:...
, 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
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
.
Several of the CCC's early exploits are documented in a paper, written by Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
'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 involved 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
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's ActiveX
ActiveX
ActiveX is a framework for defining reusable software components in a programming language-independent way. Software applications can then be composed from one or more of these components in order to provide their functionality....
technology, changing personal data in a Quicken
Quicken
Quicken is a personal finance management tool developed by Intuit, Inc.Quicken runs on Windows and Macintosh systems. Previous versions ran on DOS. An online version is also available. The last version of Quicken for Macintosh computers was Quicken Essentials for Mac released in February 2010...
database. In April 1998, the CCC successfully demonstrated the cloning of a GSM customer card, breaking the COMP128 encryption
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
algorithm used at that time by many GSM SIM
Subscriber Identity Module
A subscriber identity module or subscriber identification module is an integrated circuit that securely stores the International Mobile Subscriber Identity and the related key used to identify and authenticate subscriber on mobile telephony devices .A SIM is held on a removable SIM card, which...
s.
In 2001, the CCC celebrated its twentieth birthday with an interactive light installation dubbed Project Blinkenlights
Project Blinkenlights
Project Blinkenlights was a light installation in the Haus des Lehrers building at the Alexanderplatz in Berlin that transformed the building front into a giant low-resolution monochrome computer screen. The installation was created by the German Chaos Computer Club and went online on September...
that turned the building Haus des Lehrers in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
into a giant computer screen. A follow up installation (dubbed "Arcade
Video arcade
An amusement arcade or video arcade is a venue where people play arcade games such as video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers , or coin-operated billiards or air hockey tables...
") at the Bibliothèque nationale de France
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
was the world's biggest light installation ever.
In March 2008, the CCC acquired and published the fingerprints of German Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble
Wolfgang Schäuble
Wolfgang Schäuble is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union , currently serving as the Federal Minister of Finance in the Second Cabinet Merkel....
. The magazine also included the fingerprint on a film that readers could use to fool fingerprint readers. This was done to protest the use of biometric data in German identity devices such as e-passports
Biometric passport
A biometric passport, also known as an e-passport or ePassport, is a combined paper and electronic passport that contains biometric information that can be used to authenticate the identity of travelers...
.
Later in October 2008, CCC's Project Blinkenlights
Project Blinkenlights
Project Blinkenlights was a light installation in the Haus des Lehrers building at the Alexanderplatz in Berlin that transformed the building front into a giant low-resolution monochrome computer screen. The installation was created by the German Chaos Computer Club and went online on September...
went to Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
with project Stereoscope.
Bundestrojaner
The Bundestrojaner (Federal Trojan horseTrojan horse (computing)
A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is software that appears to perform a desirable function for the user prior to run or install, but steals information or harms the system. The term is derived from the Trojan Horse story in Greek mythology.-Malware:A destructive program that masquerades as a benign...
) is a computer surveillance
Computer surveillance
Computer surveillance is the act of performing surveillance of computer activity, and of data stored on a hard drive or being transferred over the Internet....
program installed secretly on a suspect's computer, which the German police uses to wiretap Internet telephony. This "source wiretapping" is necessary, since Internet telephony programs will usually encrypt
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
the data when it leaves the computer. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
The Federal Constitutional Court is a special court established by the Grundgesetz, the German basic law...
has ruled that the police may only use such programs for telephony wiretapping, and for no other purpose, and that this restriction should be enforced through technical and legal means.
On October 8, 2011, the CCC published an analysis of the Bundestrojaner software. The software was found to have the ability to remote control the target computer, to capture screenshots, and to fetch and run arbitrary extra code. The CCC says that having this functionality built in is in direct contradiction to the ruling of the constitutional court.
In addition, there were a number of security problems with the implementation. The software was controllable over the Internet, but the commands were sent completely unencrypted, with no checks for authentication or integrity. This leaves any computer under surveillance using this software vulnerable to attack. The captured screenshots and audio files were encrypted, but so incompetently that the encryption was ineffective. All captured data was sent over a proxy server in the United States, which is problematic since the data is then temporarily outside the German jurisdiction.
The CCC's findings were widely reported in the German press.
Events
The CCC hosts the annual Chaos Communication CongressChaos Communication Congress
The Chaos Communication Congress is an annual meeting of the international hacker scene, organized by the Chaos Computer Club. The congress features a variety of lectures and workshops on technical and political issues....
, Europe's biggest hacker congress, with up to 4,500 participants. Every four years, the Chaos Communication Camp
Chaos Communication Camp
The Chaos Communication Camp is an international meeting of hackers that takes place every four years, organized by the Chaos Computer Club ....
is the outdoor alternative for hackers worldwide.
The CCC started a new yearly conference called SIGINT in May 2009 in Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
, Germany.
Another yearly CCC event taking place on the Easter weekend is the Easterhegg
Easterhegg
The Easterhegg is an annual hacker event, called into live by the German Chaos Computer Club. Since 2001 the Easterhegg takes place during the Easter celebrations....
, which is more workshop oriented than the other events.
Members of the CCC also participate in various technological and political conferences around the planet.
Publications
The CCC publishes the quarterly magazine DatenschleuderDatenschleuder
, literally translated as The Data Slingshot: The scientific trade journal for data voyagers, is a German hacker magazine that is released in irregular intervals by the Chaos Computer Club ....
(data catapult), and the CCC in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
also produces a monthly radio show called Chaosradio which picks up various technical and political topics in a two-hour talk radio
Talk radio
Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often feature interviews with a number of different guests. Talk radio typically includes an element of listener participation, usually by broadcasting live...
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 (which has been inactive for a couple of years now), and other radio programs offered by some regional Chaos Groups.
Members
Famous members are co-founder Wau HollandWau Holland
Herwart Holland-Moritz, known as Wau Holland, cofounded the Chaos Computer Club in 1981, one of the world's oldest hacking clubs. The CCC became world famous when its members exposed security flaws in Germany's "Bildschirmtext" online television service by getting a bank to send them DM 134,000...
and Andy Müller-Maguhn
Andy Müller-Maguhn
Andy Müller-Maguhn is a member of the German hacker association the Chaos Computer Club. He had been a member since 1986, and in 1990 was appointed as a spokesman for the club....
, who was a member of the ICANN
ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a non-profit corporation headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, United States, that was created on September 18, 1998, and incorporated on September 30, 1998 to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly...
board of directors for Europe until 2002. Former WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg
Daniel Domscheit-Berg
-External links:*, the whistleblower website started by Domscheit-Berg* collected news and commentary at Der Spiegel...
was expelled from CCC in August 2011, during its annual camp.
Chaos Computer Club France
The Chaos Computer Club France (CCCF) was a fake hacker organization created in 1989 in LyonLyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
(France) by Jean-Bernard Condat, under the commandment of Jean-Luc Delacour, an agent of the Direction de la surveillance du territoire
Direction de la surveillance du territoire
The Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire was a directorate of the French National Police operating as a domestic intelligence agency. It was responsible for counterespionage, counterterrorism and more generally the security of France against foreign threats and interference...
governmental agency. The primary goal of the CCCF was to watch and to gather information about the French hacker community. Journalist Jean Guisnel said that this organization also worked with the French National Gendarmerie
Gendarmerie Nationale (France)
In France, the National Gendarmerie is a branch of the French Armed Forces, in charge of public safety, with police duties among the civilian population. It also contains a military police force and a special forces component . It has a strength of more than 105,975 persons...
.
The name of the organization is directly inspired by the name of the German Chaos Computer Club organization, which in contrast is a real hacker organization.
The CCCF had a electronic magazine called Chaos Digest (ChaosD). Between January 4, 1993 and August 5, 1993, 73 issues were published .
See also
- 23 (film)23 (film)23 is a 1998 German drama thriller film about a young hacker Karl Koch, who died on 23 May 1989, a presumed suicide. It was directed by Hans-Christian Schmid, who also participated in screenwriting. The title derives from the protagonist's obsession with the number 23, a phenomenon often described...
- 2600: The Hacker Quarterly2600: The Hacker Quarterly2600: The Hacker Quarterly is an American publication that specializes in publishing technical information on a variety of subjects including telephone switching systems, Internet protocols and services, as well as general news concerning the computer "underground" and left wing, and sometimes ,...
- Cult of the Dead CowCult of the Dead CowCult of the Dead Cow, also known as cDc or cDc Communications, is a computer hacker and DIY media organization founded in 1984 in Lubbock, Texas. The group maintains a weblog on its site, also titled "Cult of the Dead Cow"...
- The Hacker's ChoiceThe Hacker's ChoiceThe Hacker's Choice, also known as THC, is a non-commercialgroup of international security researchers andhackers.- About :THC was founded in 1995 in Germany and has published over 70 software...
- Hack-TicHack-TicHack-Tic was a Dutch hacker magazine published between 1989 and 1993. Throughout its existence, Hack-Tic obtained a cult following and upset the authorities beyond the Dutch borders.- History :...
- L0phtL0phtL0pht Heavy Industries was a hacker collective active between 1992 and 2000 and located in the Boston, Massachusetts area.-Name:The second character in its name was originally a slashed zero, a symbol used by old teletypewriters and some character mode operating systems to mean zero...
- HackathonHackathonA hackathon, a hacker neologism, is an event when programmers meet to do collaborative computer programming. The spirit of a hackathon is to collaboratively build programs and applications. Hackathons are typically between several days and a week in length...
- HackerspaceHackerspaceA hackerspace or hackspace is a location where people with common interests, often in computers, technology, science, or digital or electronic art can meet, socialise and/or collaborate...
- PhrackPhrackPhrack is an ezine written by and for hackers first published November 17, 1985. Described by Fyodor as "the best, and by far the longest running hacker zine," the magazine is open for contributions by anyone who desires to publish remarkable works or express original ideas on the topics of interest...
External links
- CCC Events Blog
- Chaosradio Podcast Network
- Chaos Computer Club hackers 'have a conscience', BBC NewsBBC NewsBBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
, 11 February 2011