To much pressure from the goverment to keep hacking alive like it was. In the days of MOD/LOD, no one really knew what would happen if you got caught. Plus, it was extreamly hard to get caught. Especially if you knew the phone systems. Now, with IDS, Firewalls, and hacking being Terrorism, things have really changed.

Hacking hasn't died, its changed faces. L0pht is now @stake. Dark Dante is now a cyber crime reporter. Bronc Buster makes big bucks at Cicso. cDc is still crazy, but thats beside the point A lot of the old people are still around, but their entire outlook has changed. It used to be cool to see how many servers you could 0wn. Then again, people didn't care about defacing websites until recently either. Now, the same people think it is more cool to see how many sites they can protect. With the wave of scripts and script kiddies, security is more of a challange then defacing a web site, or hacking hotmail.