Loyd blankenship biography

Manifesto from 1986 by Loyd Blankenship

Not to be confused with A Hacker Manifesto, a 2004 philosophical text.

The Conscience of a Hacker (also known as The Hacker Manifesto) is a short essay written on march 18, 1986 by Loyd Blankenship, a computer security hacker who went by the handle The Mentor, and belonged to the second-generation hacker group Legion of Doom.^[1]

It was written after the author's arrest, and first published in the underground hacker ezinePhrack.^[2] It can be found on many websites, as well as on T-shirts and in films.^[3]

Considered a cornerstone of hacker culture,^[4] the Manifesto asserts that there is a point to hacking that supersedes selfish desires to exploit or harm other people, and that technology should be used to expand our horizons and try to keep the world free.

When asked about his motivation for writing the article, Blankenship said,

I was going through hacking withdr