Joe Grand identifies Kingpin as his hacker name.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 155 Details
“Joe’s hacker name is Kingpin”
Episode
04 March 2025 Official episode · Official transcript
research cybercrime
An interview with hardware hacker Joe Grand covering his early phone phreaking activities, Renegade Legion, L0pht, responsible disclosure, DefCon electronic badges, engineering work, and a fault-injection recovery of a Trezor hardware wallet.
Topics: L0pht and early hacker-space culture, Vulnerability research and responsible/coordinated disclosure, TEMPEST electromagnetic eavesdropping, Phone phreaking and war dialing, POCSAG pager interception, Electronic conference badges and Badgelife, Hardware hacking and embedded systems, Voltage fault injection against a Trezor hardware wallet, PIN retry limits, memory protection, and debug-mode access, Cryptocurrency recovery and social-media impersonation scams
Links published on the Darknet Diaries episode page. Not LLM output.
Qualified statements from this episode, not graph facts.
Joe Grand identifies Kingpin as his hacker name.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 155 Details
“Joe’s hacker name is Kingpin”
Joe Grand MEMBER_OF Renegade Legion
Joe says he was part of a group called Renegade Legion.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Joe Grand EP 155 Details
“was part of a group called Renegade Legion”
Renegade Legion USES phone phreaking
Renegade Legion members wrote text files about phone phreaking and conducted phone-system activity.
Explicit Confidence 94% · Joe Grand EP 155 Details
“We wrote some early text files on some phone phreaking”
Renegade Legion USES credit card fraud
Joe explicitly associates the group’s early text files and activity with credit card fraud.
Explicit Confidence 94% · Joe Grand EP 155 Details
“credit card fraud, how to break into the CBI credit bureau”
Renegade Legion USES War dialing
Joe describes the group’s earlier exploratory activity as war dialing.
Explicit Confidence 91% · Joe Grand EP 155 Details
“The earlier days, there was a lot of this curious exploration because we would war dial.”
Joe joined L0pht after the Renegade Legion incident and describes his participation in the space.
Explicit Confidence 96% · Jack Rhysider EP 155 Details
“which is how he got to join the L0pht”
L0pht SAME_AS L0pht Heavy Industries
Joe explicitly presents L0pht and L0pht Heavy Industries as the same organization.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Joe Grand EP 155 Details
“So, L0pht or L0pht Heavy Industries was really just a safe space”
L0phtCrack DEVELOPED_BY L0pht
Jack says L0pht released tools including L0phtCrack, which can crack Windows passwords.
Derived Confidence 88% · Jack Rhysider EP 155 Details
“they released such tools like L0phtCrack, which can sometimes crack Windows passwords”
L0pht USES responsible disclosure
The episode describes L0pht as pioneering what is now called responsible disclosure.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 155 Details
“One of the things L0pht became known for is pioneering responsible disclosure.”
Joe Grand USES TEMPEST monitoring
Joe’s Senate testimony says his research involved experimenting with TEMPEST monitoring.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Joe Grand EP 155 Details
“My current research project involves experimentation with the monitoring and eavesdropping of stray electromagnetic fields”
“otherwise known as TEMPEST monitoring”
Joe says the L0pht hardware group worked with POCSAG pager transmissions.
Explicit Confidence 95% · Joe Grand EP 155 Details
“At the L0pht at the time it was POCSAG”
L0pht USES pager-text interception
The L0pht built and sold a device for capturing and decoding pager text messages.
Explicit Confidence 96% · Jack Rhysider EP 155 Details
“Joe built a little device that lets you snag pager text messages out of the air”
“This was something that the L0pht was actually selling”
Count Zero MEMBER_OF L0pht
The Senate testimony identifies Count Zero as one of the seven L0pht members.
Explicit Confidence 93% · Senate EP 155 Details
“the seven members of the L0pht hacker thinktank”
“Mudge, Weld, Brian Oblivion, Kingpin, Space Rogue, Tan, and Stefan”
The Senate testimony identifies Mudge as one of the seven L0pht members.
Explicit Confidence 93% · Senate EP 155 Details
“Mudge, Weld, Brian Oblivion, Kingpin, Space Rogue, Tan, and Stefan”
The Senate testimony identifies Weld as one of the seven L0pht members.
Explicit Confidence 93% · Senate EP 155 Details
“Mudge, Weld, Brian Oblivion, Kingpin, Space Rogue, Tan, and Stefan”
Brian Oblivion MEMBER_OF L0pht
The Senate testimony identifies Brian Oblivion as one of the seven L0pht members.
Explicit Confidence 93% · Senate EP 155 Details
“Mudge, Weld, Brian Oblivion, Kingpin, Space Rogue, Tan, and Stefan”
Space Rogue MEMBER_OF L0pht
The Senate testimony identifies Space Rogue as one of the seven L0pht members.
Explicit Confidence 93% · Senate EP 155 Details
“Mudge, Weld, Brian Oblivion, Kingpin, Space Rogue, Tan, and Stefan”
electronic conference badge DEVELOPED_BY Joe Grand
Joe says he created the first known electronic conference badge for Defcon 14.
Explicit Confidence 96% · Joe Grand EP 155 Details
“Defcon 14 was the first electronic badge at a conference that we know of”
Defcon USES electronic conference badge
Defcon used an electronic badge as the conference entry pass.
Explicit Confidence 97% · Jack Rhysider EP 155 Details
“The badge to get into Defcon was an electronic device”
PIC10F202 PART_OF electronic conference badge
The Defcon 14 electronic badge contained a PIC10F202 microcontroller.
Explicit Direction flagged Confidence 97% · Joe Grand EP 155 Details
“It had a really tiny microcontroller, a PIC10F202”
Badgelife ASSOCIATED_WITH electronic conference badge
The episode links the later Badgelife community to the electronic badges introduced at Defcon.
Derived Confidence 90% · Jack Rhysider EP 155 Details
“What came next was Badgelife, which is now a huge community at Defcon”
“In my opinion, all this started with Joe’s wonderful badges and designs at Defcon.”
Meshtastic ASSOCIATED_WITH electronic conference badge
Jack describes Meshtastic as functionality on an electronic badge that created a mesh network.
Explicit Confidence 94% · Jack Rhysider EP 155 Details
“It’s called Meshtastic”
“it created a mesh network across all of Las Vegas”
Joe Grand USES fault injection
Joe investigated fault injection to access a Trezor wallet as part of a cryptocurrency-recovery project.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Joe Grand EP 155 Details
“the Trezor can be hacked in different ways using fault injection”
Joe Grand USES voltage fault injection
Joe used voltage fault injection to glitch the Trezor’s CPU execution.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Joe Grand EP 155 Details
“the technique that was being used at the time, which was voltage fault injection”
Joe Grand USES debug mode
Joe attempted to glitch the Trezor during startup so it would enter debug mode.
Explicit Confidence 97% · Jack Rhysider EP 155 Details
“He’s got hope that he can glitch this device just as it turns on to get it to go into debug mode”
Works mentioned in the transcript. Distinct from show-note sources.
Model gpt-5.6-luna · prompt 1.5.19 · schema 1.5.19 · 2026-09-13T08:35:20.268958+00:00