Modem Master, a.k.a. Napoleon Solo
Est. 1988
Found the hard ascii art here: https://www.asciiart.eu/people/famous/napoleon
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Napoleon Solo, aka Modem Master, was a true old-school
phreaker from the early days of hacking. His journey kicked
off in 1983 when he got his hands on a 300 baud Networker
modem and started dialing into the tiny but thriving BBS
scene. Eager to learn, he connected with
the right people—most notably Simon Templar—who handed him
his first 800-number code and pointed him toward legendary
boards like IC's Socket, AT&T Phone Center, and Sherwood
Forest.
From there, Solo took off, diving deep into exchange
scanning, sniffing out PBXes, and even stumbling upon a
hidden Sprint indial. The real game-changer, though, was
Beandial, a Diversi-Dial system packed with top-tier phreaks.
That’s where he built solid connections with
names like Lord Kahz and even got a personal invite to King
Blotto’s board—definitely a badge of honor back in the day.
Despite being all-in on the phreaking scene, Solo eventually
got fed up with the wave of clueless kids who thought knowing
a few codes made them elite. He stepped away for a while, but
Taran King and Knight Lightning pulled him back in, proving
that true phreaking wasn’t
dead yet.
Outside of hacking, Solo was just a regular dude—grinding
through computer engineering at North Dakota State while
flipping burgers at McDonald’s. He had strong opinions,
especially about credit card fraud, which he saw as lame and
damaging to the real hacking community.
Napoleon Solo represents the essence of classic phreaking:
curiosity, skill, and a passion for pushing tech to its
limits. His story is a reminder of the days when hacking
wasn’t about clout—it was about knowledge, connection, and a
whole lot of late-night phone calls.
Unfortunately, there were not too many references to this guy
outside of the main Phrack prophile. But I liked his name and
thought he had a funny personality, so I decided to write on
him anyways.