LØpht (pronounced "loft") was a famous hacker collective located in the Boston, Massachusetts area between 1992 and 2000. Some of the LØpht's members, including two of its original founders, were also members of CULT OF THE DEAD COW.
In time, the LØpht members quit their day jobs to form a business venture, named LØpht Heavy Industries. This hacker think tank released several security advisories and produced some widely-used software tools, like L0phtCrack (a password cracker for Windows NT).
In 1998 representatives from the LØpht famously testified before the Congress of the United States that they could shut down the entire internet in 30 minutes. Eventually, in January 2000, LØpht Heavy Industries merged with the startup @stake, completing the LØpht's slow transition from an underground organization of dubious legality into a licit ("whitehat") computer security company.
Symantec announced its acquisition of @stake on September 16, 2004, and completed the transaction on October 9 of that year.
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