PODCAST

155: Kingpin

2025-03-04 · 08:00 UTC ·62 min read

Brief

Joe Grant — known in the scene as Kingpin — walked the host through a wired, parts‑filled workshop and a life shaped by hardware hacking, punk youth culture and a willingness to push systems beyond their intended uses. He traced a continuous arc from Atari‑era curiosity (getting hardware in 1982 and an early modem), to teenage Bulletin Board System groups like Renegade Legion and phone‑freaking in the early 1990s, to co‑founding the Loft hacker collective. Joe acknowledged his arrest and the legal fallout within his cohort — including felonies for some members and a suicide — as formative; those events also helped push Loft toward more public engagement and a stance of responsible disclosure when they began notifying vendors about bugs rather than hoarding exploits.

At Loft Joe focused on low‑level electronics and surveillance research: he described Tempest monitoring work (capturing CRT/monitor emissions at distances >200 meters), building pager‑sniffer kits (POCSAG decoding) to raise money for the space, and contributing hardware skillsets that complemented Loft’s software researchers. Loft’s notoriety culminated in a 1998 Senate appearance where the seven members testified under their handles (Mudge, Weld, Brian Oblivion, Kingpin, Space Rogue, Tan, Stefan) about systemic internet insecurity. The conversation then followed Joe’s public career: he pioneered the exploitable, hackable DEF CON electronic badges (first piloted at DEF CON 14 using a PIC10F202 MCU and later adding capacitive touch, IR transfers and audio), which seeded a global badge‑making community. He also spent about 18 months on Discovery’s Prototype This, describing the practical limits and production pressures of two‑week builds for projects ranging from an endless waterslide to 14‑ft boxing robots and an ultimately unsuccessful 6x6 biomimetic walker. Throughout the episode the host and Joe agreed on the value of curiosity and sharing knowledge — Loft’s communal ethic of “open the kimono” runs as a throughline — while also acknowledging the ethical and legal costs that can come with living on the technological frontier.

Cleaned source text

title: "155: Kingpin"

author: "Darknet Diaries"

source_type: podcast

content_hash: c132b71d90a742cbb95c6f364ddabcdfc615cb3dd0b96c1571604ff90d4d9875

extraction_method: podscripts

Sometimes the people I want to talk to on this show are so cool that I want to be friends with them.

Okay, I'm recording.

Cool.

Alright, let me get to it.

Where are we going?

Um, let's go to the lair.

Where the magic happens.

And Joe Grant is someone who, because we have so much in common, I wanted to visit him in person to try to make that extra connection.

Alright, here we go.

Oh my.

What a place.

Yeah.

You've got a display case here, and then you've got a table here with a ton of projects working on.

Yeah. So this is the main table that people probably see in videos.

I have my computer, my oscilloscope,

that is my one piece of test equipment that I'm always using,

power supply, and a couple of different projects.

Some fault injection setup here.

All these circuit boards are for a class I'm teaching in a couple weeks.

I have to get those prepared.

Showed me around his office.

I think a better description for his office would be a workshop.

It's really a place that sparks creativity wherever you look.

It's full of gadgets and tools that just beckon you to pick something up

and start building something.

Workbench with various pieces of

circuitry and yeah, a lot of display stuff also. Got your YouTube plaque on the wall.

Got the YouTube plaque on the wall. Yeah. We found some comfy spots to plop down on

and have a chat for a while because I wanted to hear all the stories that Joe had. How

many books have you written? Um, that's a good question.

These are true stories from the dark side of the internet.

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Hi. Hey.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com. their 40s. I think we all rebel as teenagers. We have a lot of that youthful energy and are waking up to the world for the first time.

And we start ignoring the advice of our parents and listen to music which talks about the

problems of the world and we resonate with it.

And we come of age listening to that stuff.

And we either want change or to fight the system.

For me and for Joe, our teenage rebelliousness began as skateboarders.

Back then there was a sense that skaters were counterculture,

not abiding by the rules or the norms of society.

I remember the first time I fell in love with skaters.