Top Five Most Notorious Hackers
On the Internet, theres so much to gain: new knowledge
, work opportunities, even new friends and connections from all over the world.
But theres also much to lose, given that hackers are just around the corner. These hackers steal confidential data, make unauthorised transactions on our behalf, crash our servers, and bring down Web sites.
In the years that have passed, several hackers have been caught and convicted. Here are the top five most notorious ones:
1. Kevin Mitnick. The Department of Justice once called Mitnick the most wanted computer criminal in United States history.
Mitnick started his career when he hacked the computer system of his very own high school, the Los Angeles Unified School District.
He also ventured into phone breaking.
When he hacked the Digital Equipment Corporation and stole more than a million dollars worth of software, he was finally arrested and convicted.
After he was released, he seemed to follow the straight and narrow for some time, but two years later, he fell back into his old way and became a hunted man again.
He was finally caught when he hacked the home computer of security expert Tsutomu Shimomura, who then joined the hunt and became instrumental in finally bringing the notorious hacker down.
Mitnicks hacking experiences were made into two movies: Freedom Downtime and Takedown.
2. Kevin Poulsen, a.k.a. Dark Dante, first became famous when broke into one of the phone lines of Los Angeles radio station KIIS-FM, which resulted in his gaining a new Porsche car.
Although most of Poulsens hacking activities focused on phone hacking, he got himself in really hot water when he decided to hack into a federal database. After this, the FBIs eye was upon him, and he was dubbed the Hannibal Lecter of computer crime.
While Poulsen was a fugitive, he was featured in a US television program Unsolved Mysteries.
After the episode, the programs phone lines crashed.
Poulsen was eventually arrested at a supermarket and given a five-year sentence.
After he was released, he changed his ways and became a journalist. He has since become the senior editor of Wired News. One of his greatest accomplishments has been the identification 744 sex offenders on MySpace.
3. Robert Tappan Morris was the creator of the very first computer worm in Internet history the Morris Worm.
He was quoted as saying that he wanted to use it to see how big the Internet was. Unfortunately, the worms self-replication went out of control, and it ended up that the affected computers slowed down so much, they became unusable.
Although the exact number of affected computers is not know, experts estimate that around 6,000 machines had been infected and damaged by Morris invention.
This resulted in Morris becoming the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He received a sentence of 400 hours of community service, three years probation, and a fine of $10,500.
4. Jonathan James became famous because, at 16 years old, he was the first US juvenile to be convicted and sentenced for hacking.
One of his biggest offences was breaking into the Defence Threat Reduction Agency server (under the US Department of Defence), viewing confidential e mails, and harvesting the usernames and passwords of the employees.
He also hacked into NASA computers, stealing $1.7m worth of software. Incidentally, this was the software used to control the humidity, temperature, and other environmental factors which allowed the astronauts in the International Space Station to survive.
For his crimes, James could have received a ten-year sentence had he been an adult. Instead, he was sentenced to a six-month house arrest which eventually turned to six months in prison because he violated his parole. He was also banned from using the computer for recreation purposes.
5. Adrian Lamo hacked into the computer systems of Microsoft, Yahoo!, Bank of America, Citigroup, and several other high-profile companies. In most of his activities, what he did was find cracks in the systems security, and then he informed the company of these cracks.
It was something companies actually hired people to do but since Lamo was not hired by the companies, what he did was considered illegal.
He was called the Homeless Hacker because he hacked using Internet connections at coffee shops and Internet cafes.
When he broke into the New York Times system, he was convicted and sentenced to home detention for six months, plus two years probation. He also had to pay The New York Times $65,000 in restitution.
Today, Lamo seems to have changed his ways. He is currently known as a public speaker and an award-winning journalist.
Being vigilant about
internet security will help to protect you and your computer from unwanted attacks by hackers.
by: Evean Sharon
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