NOTORIOUS HACKERS

JEANSON JAMES ANCHETA

A dropout of Downey High School in California,

Jeanson James Ancheta became a hacker in 2004 after he

started to work with software robots called “botnets.”

His hacking practice began when he discovered rxbot,

a computer worm that has the capacity to infect and destroy

computer networks. He became the first person to have ever

been charged for controlling a huge number of hijacked

computers in the United States.

KEVIN POULSEN

A news editor at Wired.com, Kevin Lee Poulsen is a former

hacker whose most remarkable hack was when he took over the

telephone lines of the entire Los Angeles-based radio station

KIIS-FM as he intended to make sure that he would be the

102nd caller in order to win a Porsche 944 S2.  

After he was released from prison, he decided to leave the

computer programming world and become a journalist to

distance himself from his criminal past.

ALBERT GONZALEZ

A computer criminal best known for having masterminded

and orchestrated a string of credit card thefts in the

United States that brought in 170 million US dollars to his

personal account, Albert Gonzalez is a computer hacker who

is said to have committed the biggest and most controversial

fraud in history. He used SQL injections in his operations to

steal computer data from private computer networks and launch

ARP spoofing attacks, a technique that sends fake messages

to local area networks.

GEORGE HOTZ

An alumnus of the John Hopkins Centre for Talented Youth program,

George Francis Hotz is known for unlocking the iPhone to allow

it to be used with other wireless carriers. He was also the one who

developed the limera1n jailbreak tool, the tool that could remove the

limitations of Apple devices such as iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and

Apple TV. He was also sued by Sony for hacking the PlayStation3.

KEVIN MITNICK

An American computer security consultant, Kevin David Mitnick

is one of the most notorious hackers of the 20th century.

He got involved in several computer and communications-related

crimes and even became one of the most wanted computer

criminals in the United States. At a very young age of 12,

Kevin Mitnick  begun to use his social engineering skills to

circumvent the punch card system used in Los Angeles buses.

GARY MCKINNON

Convicted for having hacked a total of 97 US-based military

and NASA computer systems, Gary McKinnon is a systems

administrator based in Scotland. In 2002, he was known for having

perpetrated the largest military computer hack of all time after

shutting down a network of 2,000 computers in the US military and

deleting critical files such as weapons logs in just a matter of 24 hours.

This rendered the US military network inoperable for days.

ADRIAN LAMO

Adrian Lamo first caught the attention of the media after he

broke into several high-profile computer networks such as

The New York Times, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. He also became

known for operating Inside-AOL.com, an AOL watchdog website.

He has performed several authorized and unauthorized security

checks for high-profile networks and yet never asked for a fee.

Lamo was complimented for fortifying the corporate

security of Worldcom.

JONATHAN JAMES

A hacker who was imprisoned at a juvenile age for

violating the cybercrime law, Jonathan James was known for

committing several unauthorized intrusions in computer

networks and systems including those of Bellsouth and

the Miami-Dade School. In his early 20’s, he admitted to the

authorities that he had installed an illegal backdoor in a

computer server in Virginia to access the usernames and

passwords of some 300 internet users, particularly DRTA

employees and military men.

OWEN WALKER

A hacker based in New Zealand, Owen Walker was a ringleader

of a notorious international hacking organization that was

estimated to have caused about $27 million worth of damages to

several groups. He did not receive formal training in computer

programming since he dropped out of school because of bullying.

He masterminded the attack of the computer network of the

University of Pennsylvania through the use of unauthorized botnets

which he established himself.