The top 10 hackers of all time

Hacking is not a recent invention. In fact, it has been around since the 1930s, although not always associated with computers. Here's a rundown of some of the most noteworthy hackers in history.

1: Kevin Mitnick

Kevin David Mitnick (born August 6, 1963) is an American computer security consultant, author and hacker, best known for his high-profile 1995 arrest and later five years in prison for various computer and communications-related crimes.

Born	August 6, 1963 (age 52) Los Angeles
Other names	The Condor, The Darkside Hacker
Occupation	Computer Consultant (before, Hacker) Author
Religion	Judaism
Criminal penalty	1999: 46 months prison plus 3 years' probation[2] 1988: One year prison.[3]
Website	mitnicksecurity.com

Kevin Mitnick, once considered the most-wanted cybercriminal in the United States, is often touted as the poster child of computer hacking. Kevin mastered an early form of social engineering (scamming operators) and computer hacking to gain access to and modify telephony switching systems. After a very public two-year chase, arrest ,and incarceration, the hacker community collectively rose in protest against what they viewed as a witch hunt.

2: Gary McKinnon

Gary McKinnon (born 10 February 1966) is a Scottish^[1] systems administrator and hacker who was accused in 2002 of perpetrating the "biggest military computer hack of all time,"^[2] although McKinnon himself states that he was merely looking for evidence of free energy suppression and a cover-up ofUFO activity and other technologies potentially useful to the public. On 16 October 2012, after a series of legal proceedings in Britain, Home Secretary Theresa May withdrew her extradition order to the United States.
In 2002, a decidedly odd message appeared on a U.S. Army computer: "Your security system is crap," it read. "I am Solo. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels." It was later found to be the work of Gary McKinnon, a Scottish system administrator. Gary has been accused of mounting the largest ever hack of U.S. government computer networks — including Army, Air Force, Navy, and NASA systems. The court has recommended that McKinnon be extradited to the United States to face charges of illegally accessing 97 computers, causing $700,000 in damage. Adding even more interest to McKinnon's actions is his insistence that much of his hacking was in search of information on UFOs, information he believed the U.S. government was hiding in its military computers.

3: Adrian Lamo

Adrian Lamo (born February 20, 1981^[1]) is a Colombian-American threat analyst^[2] and formerhacker.

Born	February 20, 1981 (age 34) Boston, Massachusetts
Other names	Adrián Lamo, R. Adrián Lamo
Occupation	Threat analyst
Parent(s)	Mario Lamo-Jiménez and Mary Lamo-Atwood
Website	adrian.lamo.org

Lamo first gained media attention for breaking into several high-profile computer networks, including those of The New York Times, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, culminating in his 2003 arrest.^[4] In 2010, Lamo reported U.S. soldier PFC Bradley Manning (now known as Chelsea Manning) to federal authorities, claiming that Manning had leaked hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. government documents toWikiLeaks. Manning was arrested and incarcerated in the U.S. military justice system and later sentenced to 35 years in confinement.

4: Michael Calce

Also known as MafiaBoy, was arrested in February 2000 for launching a denial-of-service attack that brought down many of the Internet's largest sites, including Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo. Yan's lawyer claimed, "If [MafiaBoy] had used all his powers, he could have done unimaginable damage." It is widely believed that Romanowski is no more than a script kiddie. His attacks, however successful, were implemented using computer scripts that clogged networks full of garbage data.

5: Kevin Poulsen

Kevin Lee Poulsen (born November 30, 1965) is an American former black hat hacker and a current digital security journalist.

Born	Kevin Lee Poulsen November 30, 1965 (age 49) Pasadena, California, United States
Other names	Dark Dante
Occupation	Senior editor at Wired
Website	http://www.kevinpoulsen.com

Kevin Poulsen, known as Dark Dante in the hacker community, specialized in hacking phone systems, particularly radio stations. This talent allowed only calls originating from his house to make it through to the station, assuring him of wins in listener radio contests. His iconic 1991 hack was a takeover of all of the telephone lines for the Los Angeles KIIS-FM radio station, guaranteeing that he would be the 102nd caller and win the prize of a Porsche 944 S2. The bold Poulsen was wanted by the FBI for federal computer hacking at the same time he was winning the Porsche and $20,000 in prize money at a separate station. Poulsen spent 51 months in a federal prison, the longest sentence of a cybercriminal at that time.

6: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak

The now-famous founders of Apple Computer spent part of their youth as hackers. They spent their pre-Apple days (circa 1971) building Blue Box devices (an early phreaking tool allowing users to make long distance calls without the financial charges) and selling them to fellow students at the University of California, Berkeley.

7: David Smith

Smith's fame comes from being the author of the infamous email virus known as Melissa. According to Smith, the Melissa virus was never meant to cause harm, but its simple means of propagation (each infected computer sent out multiple infected emails) overloaded computer systems and servers around the world. Smith's virus was unusual in that it was originally hidden in a file containing passwords to 80 well-known pornography Web sites. Even though more than 60,000 email viruses have been discovered, Smith is the only person to go to federal prison in the United States for sending one.

8: Jonathan James

James gained notoriety when he became the first juvenile, at age 16, to be sent to prison for hacking. James specialized in hacking high-profile government systems, such as NASA and the Department of Defense. He was reported to have stolen software worth more than $1.7 million.

9: George Hotz

While George Hotz may be a renowned jailbreak artist, he's best known for being named as the primary reason for the April 2011 PlayStation breach. As one of the first hackers to jailbreak the Sony PlayStation 3.

Born	George Francis Hotz Jr. October 2, 1989 (age 26) Glen Rock, New Jersey, USA
Nationality	American
Other names	geohot
Education	Bergen County Academies
Alma mater	Carnegie Mellon University
Website	www.geohot.com

Hotz found himself in the middle of a very mean, public, and messy court battle with Sony — perhaps because of his public release of his jailbreaking methods. In stated retaliation, the hacker group Anonymous attacked Sony in what has been the most costly security break of all time. Hotz denied any responsibility for the attack and said, "Running homebrew and exploring security on your devices is cool; hacking into someone else's server and stealing databases of user info is not cool."

10: Robert Tappan Morris

Robert Tappan Morris (born November 8, 1965) is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is best known^[3] for creating the Morris Worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet,^[4] and later for companies he has founded.

Born	Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. November 8, 1965 (age 49) United States
Residence	United States
Nationality	American
Other names	RTM
Occupation	Professor, entrepreneur,Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Partner, Y Combinator,[1]
Known for	Morris Worm, Viaweb, Y Combinator
Criminal penalty	three years of probation, 400 hours of community service, a fine of $10,050, and the costs of his supervision[2]
Criminal status	fulfilled
Parent(s)	Robert Morris, Anne Farlow Morris
Motive	"to demonstrate the inadequacies of current security measures on computer networks by exploiting the security defects that Morris had discovered."[2]
Conviction(s)	United States Code: Title 18 (18 U.S.C. § 1030, theComputer Fraud and Abuse Act, March 7, 1991.[2]

On November 2, 1988, Robert Morris released a worm that brought down one-tenth of the Internet. With the need for social acceptance that seems to infect many young hackers, Morris made the mistake of chatting about his worm for months before he actually released it on the Internet, so it didn't take long for the police to track him down. Morris said it was just a stunt and added that he truly regretted wreaking $15 million worth of damage, the estimated amount of carnage caused by his worm.