How Most Famous Hackers Pushed Computing To Limits

Today, computers hacking & ransomware are common. Only this week US manage to get $6 million paid in legal attacks against many companies. However, there was a time before organized groups of hackers operated out-of windowless offices around world need financial or political gains. It is time when the most stolen of young people are in the bedrooms available in the bedrooms that are the only goal to get the information.

The next look more popular – or all the time will depend on your point of view, in-famous hackers of all time. But first let’s get the history of hacking a little bit.

You can say that in the 1950s and 60s of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when term “hack” is used for elegant or inspired solutions to problems. Most of these “hacks” are really practical jokes. One of the most extravagant saw a duplicate of campus police car erected on top of Institute Great Dome. Over-time, term became associated with early computer programming scene, at MIT & elsewhere.

Hacking, as we all know, began in the early 1970s with the increasing use of mainframe computers and distributors. The first to use these techniques were governments and military organizations, and the Air Force first experienced its intervention in the system in 1971, using what became known as the Tigers Teams.

In the 1980s, the New York Times described hackers as “technically intelligent programmers, often young, computer programmers, who almost always seek the defenses of computer systems by exploring the limitations and capabilities of machines.” The early hackers involved the 414s, a group of 6 Milwaukee teenagers who hacked US institutions ranging from the Los Alamos National Library to the Pacific Security Bank, between 1982 and 1983 using cheap computers, analog modems, and simple passwords Hacking technique.

In 1982, groups such as Legion of Doom, Masters of Deception and Cult of the Dead Cow hacking became a subculture that spread throughout their magazines worldwide. In 1983, John Beatham War Games science fiction thriller introduced this hacker as a smart, rebellious and funny man.

During the 1980s, increasing case of hacking with the increase in the number of personal computers. In response, the U.S. Congress passed the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act in 1986, and same year first computer hackers were brought to trail. However, it was with the introduction & development of the World Wide Web that began in the early 1990s that cybercrime became more prevalent.

Hackers examine not only the technical system but also legal and ethical systems. Hackers are widespread in the so-called “white hat hackers” and “black hat hackers”, the difference is that white hat hackers hack for the greater good. They detect system vulnerabilities and inform owners, usually not destroying data, but sometimes even hacking, to make profits, in a legal fashion.

Next are black hat hackers, who do not steal and destroy data. Profit and loss are at the top of their to-do list, and they are often proud of their online achievements. Although they come from different backgrounds, the best hackers are united by the fact that they love technology from a young age. Currently, our list of known hackers includes only men, but we are not sure they are women hackers who have wicked skills.

7. Aaron Swartz

Born in Highland Park, Illinois in 1986, Swartz first demonstrated his programming talent. By 1999, Swartz founded the Info Network, a user-created encyclopedia for which he received the ArsDigita Award.

At age 14, Swartz was part of a team that authored RSS 1.0 web synication specification. RSS stands for really simple syndication that allows both applications & users to access updates on the web. This allows for news aggregators that constantly monitors the availability of new content on the site.

After a year at Stanford College, Schwartz was accepted into Y Combinators, the first Summer Founders Program, where he initially worked at Infogami, that is used to support the Internet Archive Open Library project, and was the creator of Reddit. When reddit was purchased by Conde Nast, Swartz became millionaire.

Using his hacking features, Swartz downloaded 2.7 million federal court files in 2008 that were stored in public access to court electronic records (PACER) database. Although technically free, PACER charges $ 0.10 per download for download & Swartz makes free download available online..

In 2010, Swartz became a research fellow at Harvard University Safra Research Lab on Institutional Corruption. This position gave Swartz access to the JSTOR Digital Library, which includes digital information and current issues of academic journals & books.

In September 2010, JSTOR was affected by many download request from an IP address from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This request comes from a laptop connected to the network switch in the open wiring closet. University officials installed a video camera in closet which recorded swartz.

When JSTOR negotiated with Swartz allowed him to return downloaded documents, a lawsuit was filed against the U.S. Attorney’s Office & MIT, and he was arrested near the Harvard campus on the night of January 6, 2011.

Swartz has been indicted on a dozen charges, including breaking & entering with intent, & grand larceny. Swartz was sentenced to 35 years in prison and fined $ 1 million, while plea negotiations prosecutors offer Swartz to six months in prison with a lower degree of security.

Swartz, who says his career would end if he pleaded guilty, denied the deal but committed suicide on January 11, 2013. At his memorial service, Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web, delivered a eulogy. The publication of the documents following Swartz death shows that both MIT & JSTOR have asked prosecutors to drop all charges against Swartz.

6. Kevin Poulsen

June 1, 1990 was right in middle of radio giveaway craze. The Los Angeles radio station KISS-FM giving away the Porsche 44 S2 Roadster to a 102-person caller, The young Kevin Poulsen became, not only won the Polson Fair, he hacked radio station phone lines.

Paulson took control of 25 radio stations, blocked all calls and made the 101st call to caller number 102. In addition to hacking radio stations, Paulson also hacking into telephone provider Pacific Bell, public and military computer providers, and state contractor SRI, Rand Corp. And the Navy Research Laboratory in Washington, DC.

Paulson was only 17 when he was arrested and the only punishment was the loss of a radio shack computer. SRI also hired Paulson for $ 35,000 a year to test the computer system.

Everything went well for Paulson until someone named “John Anderson” failed to pay bill on his storage unit. The owner of the storage-facility opened the lock & immediately called the police. Inside storage unit, it is possible to block false IDs & birth certificates & phone company communication devices, manuals & tools.

Paulson disappeared into the under-ground and in October 1990, his case appeared on the television program “Unsolved Secrets“. When the operator took advice on hundreds of phones, suddenly all phones went dead.

When the FBI showed up at the Paulson family home in Los Angeles, the phone rang and it was Paulson on-the-line who offended G-men. When they traced the call, it seems to be from the Pacific Bell itself.

Found in 1991 and convicted, the poulsen was in prison for five years. When he release, he became journalist, and became senior editor at Wired News In 2005. In 2019, Paulson took responsibility for posting a fake video in which showed house speaker nancy pelosi slurring her words. Previously, his work found 744 registered sexual abusers for child sex seekers registered on MySpace. Poulsen, Aaron Schwartz and James Dolan have designed & built SecureDrop, which is used by journalists around the world to communicate securely with their sources.

5. Michael Calce

Calls, known as Mafia Boy, got his first computer at the age of 6. On February 7, 2000, at the age of 14, Kelsey launched a distributed denial of service (DDS) attack against Yahoo! Which was the biggest search engine on the site at the time.

Calce did not stop there, he also brought-down eBay, CNN & Amazon next week. The attacks against Dell was initially failed, but the subsequent attacks succeeded, and when Calce took charge, he caught the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

On September 12, 2001, a Montreal Youth Court sentenced him to eight months under house arrest, one year probation, and restrictions on Internet use. Some analysts estimate the cost of Calce attack is worth $ 1.2 billion, while a Canadian court estimates the figure at $ 7.5 million.

The Calces attack partly contributed to the collapse of Web 1.0 in the early 2000s. Nowadays, Calce works as a white hat hacker, helping companies identify security flaws in their systems and develop better security features. In 2008, Calce wrote to Mafiaboy: How the Internet was hacked and why it is still Broken.

4. Mathew Bevan & Richard Pryce

Not everyone, who can say they almost started World War III, but Bevan & Pryce certainly can. Both were teenagers when they connected to each other on the BBS (Bulletin Board System) in their native Great Britain.

By hacking UFO documents, government premises and conspiracy theories into hacker websites, Bevan went on a mission to find the hidden truth about UFOs.

April 1994, Pryce conducted repeated computer breaks-in at Pentagon, the Roman Laboratory, the Griffith Air Force Base in New York, NASA, and the Wright Peterson Air Force Base, which was repository for military UFO files.

From a lab in Rome, Pryce accessed computers from the Korean Atomic Research Institute & downloaded their database on a computer at griffiss. If North Korea detects an attack from US military bases, the result could be catastrophic, but the facility is actually in South Korea.

When Pryce was arrested in London in 1994, it took two years before Bevan was tracked down in Cardiff, Wales. In March 1996, the costs were fined £1200 and the charges against Bevan were dropped. Bevan became a software developer at Nintendo and later started his own software company.

3. Albert Gonzalez

The model defination of black hat hacker was almost exclusively in his teens when he founded the ShadowCrew Hacker Group, which traffick-ed more than 1.5 million stolen credit card numbers and stolen ATMs.

In addition to Gonzalez, hackers from the United States were attacked, as well as from Bulgaria, Belarus, Canada, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine and the Netherlands. However, Gonzalez was released from prison and provide evidence to Secret Service.

Just when he had to work with the authorities, Gonzalez hacked into TJX, the parent company of TJMaxx and Marshalls, as well as DSW, Office Max, Barnes & Noble and the sports authorities. From TJX comapnies alone, More than 45.6 million credit & debit card numbers were stolen.

Authorities seized more than $ 1.6 million in cash from Gonzalez. On March 25, 2010, Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in prison & ordered to seize $ 1.65 million from his Miami apartment and BMW 330i. He is scheduled for release on December 4, 2025.

2. Jonathan James

Between August 1999 and October of that year, authorities discovered computer malfunctions in the Bell South Computer System, the Miami Dade School District, and the Department of Defense’s Risk Reduction Agency (DTRA).

The information includes the source code for the International Space Station, which controls, inter alia, the temperature and humidity in the living space.

Authorities discovered an intrusion in Pinecrest, Florida, and on January 26, 2000, they searched the home & arrested James. After reaching an agreement, James was sentenced to seven months of house arrest and probation. When the drug was included in routine tests on James’s system, his trial was canceled and he spent six months in an Alabama jail.

In January 2008, when TJX and other companies were in operation, authorities approved J.J. It is part of the plan. Although James swore he was not involved in the crime, he feared he would be charged with negligence. This is suicide. “I do not believe in the legal system,” he said in a death note.

1. Kevin Mitnick

As a child, Kevin Mitnick, a Los Angeles resident, wondered how everything worked. His curiosity led him to become a high school radio enthusiast, after which Mitnick became interested in the Los Angeles bus system. This after the bus driver had run the transfer letter over his head and told the driver where he could buy it and told him it was for a school project.

Then Mitnian bus crashes on the craft garage, unused money on the use of money, and soon they can ride everywhere. Incomplete by the next Matkin Pacific Provacity system, and he sat in symptoms of publication of the publication, one was left. Norwhaha has been added to a law of Sharma’s nose) that has been rejected that an inspired 1983.

In 1979, when Customs was 16 years old, he hacked into Digital Goods Corporation, where he replicated his RSTS / E operating system. In 1988 he was sentenced to 12 months in prison with three years probation. Before his three-year sentence expired, customs dug into a computer in the Pacific Bells and issued an arrest warrant.

After living for eight and a half years, the customs officer escaped, during which he hacked a dozen computers from the company using cloned cell phones. On February 15, 1995, the FBI arrested Matnik at his rally, an apartment in North Carolina, and charged him with fraud, eavesdropping, and unauthorized access to federal computers.

In an interview with CNN, Mitnick said he was accused of hacking “NORAD tax deductions in connection with real-time events, such as when I got the code from Motorola and Nokia when I was hacked to see this source code.” It’s true … but there are many charges for which I have not been charged. If I hack NORAD or the FBI, I will take the blame. But because of media reports, I was considered “Osama Bin Mitnick”.

Released from prison in January 2000, Mitnik became a computer security consultant and founded Mitnik Security Advisor LLC. In 2002, Mitnick wrote a book about his actions, The Art of Deception. In addition, New York Times author John Markov and security researcher Tsutomu Shimomura have written a book, TechDown, which describes Mitnik’s research. The book was turned into a 2000 film “The Track”.

Learn more about hacking

If you want to learn more about hackers and hackers, some of the best books are Stephen Levy’s Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Cuneo Matanik’s Ghost in the Wire: My Adventures as a world most wanted hacker by Kevin Mitnick. & uckoo’s Egg by Cliff stoll.