The Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) & The Application Framework VEILID

Read on and learn a bit about these interesting cult and what are they up to!

Jan 15, 2025

Who is the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc)?

A known USA based hacktivist group. According to the record in Wikipedia, it was started in 1984 at the Farm Pac slaughterhouse by Grandmaster Ratte' (aka Swamp Ratte'), Franken Gibe, Sid Vicious, and three BBS SysOps

You can check their member list in their web site

Things of the cDc group I found quite interesting:

Group member Drunkfux (Jesse Dryden) is the grand nephew of Charlie Chaplin
In 1991, the group began distributing music in the form of cassette tape albums
In November 1994, the group claimed responsibility for giving President Ronald Reagan Alzheimer's disease, claiming to have done so in 1986 with a blowgun
In 1995, the group declared war on the Church of Scientology stating "We believe that El Ron Hubbard is actually none other than Heinrich Himmler of the SS, who fled to Argentina and is now responsible for the stealing of babies from hospitals and raising them as 'super-soldiers' for the purpose of overthrowing the U.S. Fed. Govt. in a bloody revolution. We fear plans for a 'Fourth Reich' to be established on our home soil under the vise-like grip of oppression known as Scientology!"
On January 7, 1999, the group joined with an international coalition of hackers to denounce a call to cyber-war against the governments of China and Iraq
In February 2000, the group was the subject of an 11 minute documentary short titled "Disinformation".
In February 2000, a member of the group by the code-name Mudge briefed President Bill Clinton on "Internet security".
In 2003 the tool created by the group by the name of Six/Four System became the first product of a hacker group to receive approval from the United States Department of Commerce for export of strong encryption
Member by the name of "Psychedelic Warlord" is congressman Beto O'Rourke, an American politician who served as the U.S. representative for Texas's 16th congressional district from 2013 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, party's nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2018, candidate for the presidential nomination in 2020, and the party's nominee for the 2022 Texas gubernatorial election.

Do they have a political affiliation?

From the previous section we could at least assume that they sympathize with the USA Democratic party, they supported President Bill Clinton and claimed responsibility for doing serious harm to President Ronald Reagan, I could not find any information if the government opened an investigation about this allegation or not.

Their latest contribution?

Recently, they have developed an application framework by the name of Veilid, described as "like TOR" but for apps.

This application framework, if adopted by many developers will improve privacy by default for applications developed under that framework. The web site claim that it is open source

You can review the information and project at the web site: VEILID

In their Web site the group describe it as follows:

"Veilid allows anyone to build a distributed, private app. Veilid gives users the privacy to opt out of data collection and online tracking. Veilid is being built with user experience, privacy, and safety as our top priorities. It is open source and available to everyone to use and build upon."

"Veilid goes above and beyond existing privacy technologies and has the potential to completely change the way people use the Internet. Veilid has no profit motive, which puts us in a unique position to promote ideals without the compromise of capitalism."

Final Thoughts

Veilid seems to be exactly what is needed at the moment to bring privacy to the masses, even though TOR is doing a very good job and with the improved throughput its usage experience has improved, having a native privacy oriented FOSS application framework is paramount.

Most people is not technically savvy and therefore, not skilled in cyber security, they are constantly victims of cyber crime in many forms and shapes. eliminating one vector of attack by making the applications to opt out of data collection and online tracking from the get go is a step in the right direction,

The question is, Would developers in general use the framework?
Consider that any project that uses this framework will not be able to monetize from advertising or selling your metadata, which is currently the business model of many applications and “free” services like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc… Remember, if it is a free service, most probably you are the product and your data is being sold to anyone willing to pay for it…

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