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CyberArmy was founded in mid 1998 by Pengo, who became the first Commander in Chief. The site was initially just a collection of hacker web tools on a free Xoom webpage. During that year, it was used primarily by Pengo (then known as Overlord) and blackhats from the Midnight BBS. After it soon generated 1000 hits a day, the page was closed down by Xoom. Alternate server space was donated by arctik.com and electronicarmy.com. The cyberarmy.com domain was registered about a month later (late 1998), and hosting was bought at hosting2000.com. Pengo added the discussion forum, a top 50 list, and some search engines. By the end of 1998, the site received around 10 000 hits a day.
The focus of the site came to change from being aimed at a blackhat hacker audience into becoming a Netizen's Union organization. In 1999, the net was buzzing with complaints from government regulation and control being placed on the internet. Many undesirables, notably spammers, were abusing and destroying the internet. Those who were until that time solely interested in hacking computer systems began to look at the web anew. The World Wide Web had been created with freedom in mind, and that freedom was now being threatened by national governments or abused by money hungry corporations. So, in the beginning of the new year, Pengo penned the first CyberArmy statement of purpose:
"CyberArmy is a group of netizens who believe in a deregulated Internet, which is free from external control. We believe in providing tools to assist others who believe in a free Internet - we support Open Source. We campaign against those who abuse the free nature of the Internet. We believe that spammers, child pornographers, web based scammers, and malicious hackers are enemies of the Internet. We believe that the Internet can be self-regulated, and that we, as equipped and knowledgeable netizens, can control and suppress abusers of the Internet, with legal methods, by consolidating together as a united CyberArmy."
In early-mid 1999 Pengo leased a RedHat? Linux server and co-located it at Digital Nation. Free webpage hosting was added, and the wildly popular "Zebulun Challenge" followed shortly afterwards. The site's visitors could then be ranked according to success at these challenges and awarded a level of control over the administration of the site according to this rank. In a sense, the site became self-regulating. CyberArmy very gradually began to evolve from a "hacker" site to a more Internet-centric community, taking responsibility for a number of ongoing projects and ideological aims.
A brigade system was set up whereby higher ranking officers, who could rise to power through the Zebulun Challenges, gave direction to subordinates in order to accomplish tasks that helped to achieve CyberArmy's mission. At this stage there was a lot of discussion the nature of the system and how ranks should be awarded. Some took the view that ranks should be awarded on completion of the Zebulun Challenges (skill based promotion); others felt brigade participation should earn rank elevation (effort based promotion). Yet another group believed in a system wherein points be awarded on completion of challenges and for doing various brigade tasks, ranks elevations occurring once a soldier attains the appropriate number of points. A dual ranking system was trialed for some time which gave soldiers separate Zebulun and brigade ranks. It was deemed unsuccessful due to confusion and complexity. A brigade based ranking system won out, and Zebulun was shut down. There are still many who dispute methodologies in determining the how the organization's hierarchy is structured to this day.
The CyberArmy Brigades were wildly successful soon after they were formed. One team, the CAPF (CyberArmy Pedophilia Fighters), shut down almost 100 child pornography websites. Spammer companies were wardialed in a group effort until their telephone systems stopped working. Several thousand petitions were sent to the US Congress on issues that concerned the Echelon project. As of mid 2000, MSNBC, CNN, and ZDNet had articles on CyberArmy. CinC Pengo was regularly interviewed on the radio and became a popular conference speaker in Australia. CyberArmy was receiving, at some stages, 260 000 hits a day (not including the approximately 3000 hosted websites totalling 20 000 hits per day) and had achieved over 100 000 registrations.
Pengo eventually stepped down due to work commitments and handed operations over to Chawmp in 2001. MrYowler? had to step down due to serious health issues after serving as CinC for only several months. The torch was then passed to Scanjack, who was a Marshal at the time.
In May of 2001 the websites were relocated to a private LAN and connection provided by former Marshal ion6ix.
CyberArmy originally maintained an IRC channel on various networks for real time communication, but as the demand productivity increased, CyberArmy created its own. The new network was set up by Chawmp, Enstyne and The 11th Angel, and has been maintained since then by a small team of operators and server donors. The network runs IRC server and services software based on Unreal and ircservices, but customized somewhat and maintained by Chawmp.
Around the beginning of 2002, CyberArmy's host suddenly lost its connection to the Internet. New hosting possibilities were being discussed, and since a redesign of the site was being considered, it was decided to take the CyberArmy website offline, along with Zebulun, until the new site was complete. A temporary forum was placed online during the downtime, and our IRC network remained up and running. The brigades also continued their work in the absence of the main CyberArmy site on their own domains, and via IRC.
Former ViceCinC marchon provided the solution by contributing hosting for CyberArmy from then until May 2004.
In September 2002, thanks to ViceCinC wa1800z's new backend code, CyberArmy came back online. Within the first week the site had received over 1,000,000 hits. CyberArmy has since brought a host of new services to its members, and is always continuing to develop more.
Since May 2004, CyberArmy has moved to a paid server thanks to the financial contributors on staff, who offered to pay for the hosting as a group. This move will hopefully mark a new era of stability in the future of CyberArmy.
In 2004, following some internal disagreements, the cyberarmy.com domain name was purchased by former CinC MrYowler?. Other staff, along with then-CinC scanjack, moved the current site to the cyberarmy.net domain name, preserving the content. The original cyberarmy.com domain is now no longer operational. There have been several attempts to purchase back the cyberarmy.com domain name, and many look forward to a re-unification of the domains.
From 28 October 2003 to 12 October 2005, snarkles served as the Commander-in-Chief of CyberArmy.net.
On 12 October 2005, Condor191 became the current Commander-in-Chief of CyberArmy.net.
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