Gary McKinnon
USA declared him as the biggest military
computer hacker ever. He whacked the
security system of NASA and Pentagon.
This made him one of the great black hat
hacker celebrities and got his name into
the hacker's community.
The nerd is now facing 70 years of
imprisonment and is deprived from
accessing internet. He has illegally
accessed 97 computers and has caused
around $700,000 damage to the economy.
Kevin Mitnick: Known worldwide as the
“most famous hacker” and for having been
the first to serve a prison sentence for
infiltrating computer systems. He started
dabbling when he was a minor, using the
practice known as phone phreaking.
Although he has never worked in
programming, Mitnick is totally convinced
that you can cause severe damage with a
telephone and some calls. These days,
totally distanced from his old hobbies and
after passing many years behind bars, he
works as a security consultant for
multinational companies
through his company “Mitnick Security.”
Vladimir Levin: This Russian biochemist and
mathematician was accused of having
committed one of the biggest bank
robberies of all times by means of the
cracking technique. From Saint Petersburg,
Levin managed to transfer funds estimated
at approximately 10 million dollars from
Citibank in New York to accounts he had
opened in distant parts of the world. He
was arrested by INTERPOL in 1995 at
Heathrow airport (England). Although he
managed to rob more than 10 million
dollars, he was only sentenced to three
years in prison. Currently he is free.
Kevin Poulsen: Today he may be a
journalist and collaborates with authorities
to track
paedophiles on the Internet, but Poulsen
has a dark past as a cracker and phreaker.
The event that brought him the most
notoriety was taking over Los Angeles
phone lines in 1990. A radio station was
offering a Porsche as a prize for whoever
managed to be caller number 102. It goes
without saying that Poulsen was the
winner of the contest.
Timothy Lloyd: In 1996, information
services company Omega, provider of NASA
and the United States Navy, suffered
losses of around 10 million dollars. And it
was none other than Tim Lloyd, an x-
employee fired some weeks earlier, who
was the cause of this financial disaster.
Lloyd left a virtually activated information
bomb in the company’s codes, which finally
detonated July 31 of that same year.
Robert Morris: Son of one of the
forerunners in the creation of the virus, in
1988 Morris managed to infect no fewer
than 6,000 computers connected to the
ArpaNet network (one of the precursors to
the internet) He did it from the prestigious
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) and for his criminal activities he
earned a four year prison sentence, which
was finally reduced to community service.
David Smith: Not all hackers can boast of
creating the virus that spread the fastest
to computers the width and breadth of the
globe – David Smith can. In 1999, the
father of the Melissa virus managed to
infect and crash 100,000 email accounts
with his malicious creation. Smith, who
was thirty years old at the
time, was sentenced and freed on bail.
MafiaBoy: In February of 2000, many of
the most important online companies in
the US, such as eBay, Yahoo and Amazon,
suffered a technical glitch called Denial of
Service, which caused a total of 1700
million dollars in losses. But did these sites
know that the perpetrator of the attack
was a 16 year-old Canadian who
responded to the alias MafiaBoy? Surely
not, although it didn’t take them long to
find out, thanks to his bragging about his
bad deed to his classmates at school.
Masters of Deception (MoD): MoD was a
New York cyber-gang that reached its
apogee in the early 90s. Under the cover
of different aliases, its biggest attacks
involved taking over
telephone lines and centres of the
Internet, then still in its infancy. During
this time McD starred in the historic
“battles of the hackers,” along with other
groups like the Legion of Doom (LoD), as
they sought to destroy each other until the
computers couldn’t take it anymore.
Richard Stallman: Since the early 80s when
he was a hacker specializing in artificial
intelligence, this hippie-looking New Yorker
has been one of the most active militants
in favor of free software. At MIT he firmly
opposed the privatization of the software
used by the institute’s laboratory, so much
so they he created what today is known as
GNU and the concept of CopyLeft. Popular
systems like Linux utilize the GNU mode
and Stallman is currently
one of the gurus of software
democratization.
No 1. Kevin Mitnick
Born in 1963, Kevin Mitnick was the most-wanted computer criminal in the UnitedStates at the time of his arrest. Mitnick also known as “Condor” was arrested in 1995for countless acts of computerfraud. Quite apt in the art of social engineering, Condor, at the age of 12, bypassed the card system used in the L.A. transit system. Mitnick just forthe sake of “intellectual curiosity” hacked into Digital Equipment Corporation systems, Nokia, Motorola, Fujitsu Siemens, and many others. He published a book entitled The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security in 2002, in which he talks of his experiences with hacking.
USA declared him as the biggest military
computer hacker ever. He whacked the
security system of NASA and Pentagon.
This made him one of the great black hat
hacker celebrities and got his name into
the hacker's community.
The nerd is now facing 70 years of
imprisonment and is deprived from
accessing internet. He has illegally
accessed 97 computers and has caused
around $700,000 damage to the economy.
Kevin Mitnick: Known worldwide as the
“most famous hacker” and for having been
the first to serve a prison sentence for
infiltrating computer systems. He started
dabbling when he was a minor, using the
practice known as phone phreaking.
Although he has never worked in
programming, Mitnick is totally convinced
that you can cause severe damage with a
telephone and some calls. These days,
totally distanced from his old hobbies and
after passing many years behind bars, he
works as a security consultant for
multinational companies
through his company “Mitnick Security.”
Vladimir Levin: This Russian biochemist and
mathematician was accused of having
committed one of the biggest bank
robberies of all times by means of the
cracking technique. From Saint Petersburg,
Levin managed to transfer funds estimated
at approximately 10 million dollars from
Citibank in New York to accounts he had
opened in distant parts of the world. He
was arrested by INTERPOL in 1995 at
Heathrow airport (England). Although he
managed to rob more than 10 million
dollars, he was only sentenced to three
years in prison. Currently he is free.
Kevin Poulsen: Today he may be a
journalist and collaborates with authorities
to track
paedophiles on the Internet, but Poulsen
has a dark past as a cracker and phreaker.
The event that brought him the most
notoriety was taking over Los Angeles
phone lines in 1990. A radio station was
offering a Porsche as a prize for whoever
managed to be caller number 102. It goes
without saying that Poulsen was the
winner of the contest.
Timothy Lloyd: In 1996, information
services company Omega, provider of NASA
and the United States Navy, suffered
losses of around 10 million dollars. And it
was none other than Tim Lloyd, an x-
employee fired some weeks earlier, who
was the cause of this financial disaster.
Lloyd left a virtually activated information
bomb in the company’s codes, which finally
detonated July 31 of that same year.
Robert Morris: Son of one of the
forerunners in the creation of the virus, in
1988 Morris managed to infect no fewer
than 6,000 computers connected to the
ArpaNet network (one of the precursors to
the internet) He did it from the prestigious
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) and for his criminal activities he
earned a four year prison sentence, which
was finally reduced to community service.
David Smith: Not all hackers can boast of
creating the virus that spread the fastest
to computers the width and breadth of the
globe – David Smith can. In 1999, the
father of the Melissa virus managed to
infect and crash 100,000 email accounts
with his malicious creation. Smith, who
was thirty years old at the
time, was sentenced and freed on bail.
MafiaBoy: In February of 2000, many of
the most important online companies in
the US, such as eBay, Yahoo and Amazon,
suffered a technical glitch called Denial of
Service, which caused a total of 1700
million dollars in losses. But did these sites
know that the perpetrator of the attack
was a 16 year-old Canadian who
responded to the alias MafiaBoy? Surely
not, although it didn’t take them long to
find out, thanks to his bragging about his
bad deed to his classmates at school.
Masters of Deception (MoD): MoD was a
New York cyber-gang that reached its
apogee in the early 90s. Under the cover
of different aliases, its biggest attacks
involved taking over
telephone lines and centres of the
Internet, then still in its infancy. During
this time McD starred in the historic
“battles of the hackers,” along with other
groups like the Legion of Doom (LoD), as
they sought to destroy each other until the
computers couldn’t take it anymore.
Richard Stallman: Since the early 80s when
he was a hacker specializing in artificial
intelligence, this hippie-looking New Yorker
has been one of the most active militants
in favor of free software. At MIT he firmly
opposed the privatization of the software
used by the institute’s laboratory, so much
so they he created what today is known as
GNU and the concept of CopyLeft. Popular
systems like Linux utilize the GNU mode
and Stallman is currently
one of the gurus of software
democratization.
No 1. Kevin Mitnick
Born in 1963, Kevin Mitnick was the most-wanted computer criminal in the UnitedStates at the time of his arrest. Mitnick also known as “Condor” was arrested in 1995for countless acts of computerfraud. Quite apt in the art of social engineering, Condor, at the age of 12, bypassed the card system used in the L.A. transit system. Mitnick just forthe sake of “intellectual curiosity” hacked into Digital Equipment Corporation systems, Nokia, Motorola, Fujitsu Siemens, and many others. He published a book entitled The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security in 2002, in which he talks of his experiences with hacking.
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