TESO (Austrian hacker group)

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TESO was a famous hacker group, which originated in Austria and quickly became international. They were active from 1998 to 2004, and during their peak around 2000, they were responsible for a significant share of the exploits on the BUGTRAQ Mailinglist.

Name

The Name originally was an acronym of the nicknames of the original founders, but as many of the most skilled members joined later, this interpretation quickly became meaningless.

History

In 1998, Teso was founded, and quickly grew to 6 people, which first met in 1999 at the CCC Camp near Berlin. By 2000 the group was at their peak, and started speaking on various conferences, wrote articles for Phrack and releasing security tools and exploits at a very high pace. In 2003 the group informally disbanded, and in 2004 the Website went down.

Members

While Teso originally and during their peak was a small and tightly-knit group, it is estimated that Teso had more than 15 members before disbanding.

Achievements

• In 2000, developed hellkit, the first shellcode generator.
• In 2000 wrote TesoGCC, the first format string vulnerability scanner, and the first comprehensive guide on format string exploitation.

Quotes

ADM and TESO made almost inapproprietly large spashes
in the community when they were active. Almost all their exploits were
beyond the standard, and at times it seemed they were the ones finding
all the new bug-classes. But at their peak, they couldn't have been very
large groups. Certainly smaller than the reverse engineering and
security group at a good sized IDS/IPS company these days. 
  -- Dave Aitel, CEO and Founder of Immunity, Inc

External Links

• Dave Aitel on TESO
• Packetstorm TESO Archive