World's Best Hackers
BLACK HAT Hacker
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Black-hat is a term in computing for someone who compromises the security of asystem without permission from an authorized party, usually with the intent ofaccessing computers connected to the network. The term white hat is used for aperson who is ethically opposed to the abuse of computer systems. The termcracker was coined by Richard Stallman to provide an alternative to using theexisting word hacker for this meaning. The somewhat similar activity ofdefeating copy prevention devices in software which may or may not be legal ina country’s laws is actually software cracking.
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1-KevinMitnick:
A self-proclaimed “hacker poster boy,” Mitnick went through a highly publicizedpursuit by authorities. His mischief was hyped by the media but his actualoffenses may be less notable than his notoriety suggests. The Department ofJustice describes him as “the most wanted computer criminal in United Stateshistory.” His exploits were detailed in two movies: Freedom Downtime andTakedown.
Mitnick had a bit of hacking experience before committing the offenses thatmade him famous. He started out exploiting the Los Angeles bus punch cardsystem to get free rides. Then, like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, dabbled inphone phreaking. Although there were numerous offenses, Mitnick was ultimatelyconvicted for breaking into the Digital Equipment Corporation’s computernetwork and stealing software.
Mitnick’s mischief got serious when he went on a two and a half year“coast-to-coast hacking spree.” The CNN article, “Legendary computer hackerreleased from prison,” explains that “he hacked into computers, stole corporatesecrets, scrambled phone networks and broke into the national defense warningsystem.” He then hacked into computer expert and fellow hacker TsutomuShimomura’s home computer, which led to his undoing.
Today, Mitnick has been able to move past his role as a black hat hacker andbecome a productive member of society. He served five years, about 8 months ofit in solitary confinement, and is now a computer security consultant, authorand speaker.
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2-JonathanJames:
James gained notoriety when he became the first juvenile to be sent to prisonfor hacking. He was sentenced at 16 years old. In an anonymous PBS interview,he professes, “I was just looking around, playing around. What was fun for mewas a challenge to see what I could pull off.”
James’ major intrusions targeted high-profile organizations. He installed abackdoor into a Defense Threat Reduction Agency server. The DTRA is an agencyof the Department of Defense charged with reducing the threat to the U.S. andits allies from nuclear, biological, chemical, conventional and specialweapons. The backdoor he created enabled him to view sensitive e-mails andcapture employee usernames and passwords.
James also cracked into NASA computers, stealing software worth approximately$1.7 million. According to the Department of Justice, “The software supportedthe International Space Station’s physical environment, including control ofthe temperature and humidity within the living space.” NASA was forced to shutdown its computer systems, ultimately racking up a $41,000 cost. James explainedthat he downloaded the code to supplement his studies on C programming, butcontended, “The code itself was crappy . . .certainly not worth $1.7 millionlike they claimed.”
Given the extent of his intrusions, if James, also known as “c0mrade,” had beenan adult he likely would have served at least ten years. Instead, he was bannedfrom recreational computer use and was slated to serve a six-month sentenceunder house arrest with probation. However, he served six months in prison forviolation of parole. Today, James asserts that he’s learned his lesson andmight start a computer security company.
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3-AdrianLamo:
Lamo’s claim to fame is his break-ins at major organizations like The New YorkTimes and Microsoft. Dubbed the “homeless hacker,” he used Internet connectionsat Kinko’s, coffee shops and libraries to do his intrusions. In a profilearticle, “He Hacks by Day, Squats by Night,” Lamo reflects, “I have a laptop inPittsburgh, a change of clothes in D.C. It kind of redefines the term multi-jurisdictional.”
Lamo’s intrusions consisted mainly of penetration testing, in which he foundflaws in security, exploited them and then informed companies of theirshortcomings. His hits include Yahoo!, Bank of America, Citigroup and Cingular.When white hat hackers are hired by companies to do penetration testing, it’slegal. What Lamo did is not.
When he broke into The New York Times’ intranet, things got serious. He addedhimself to a list of experts and viewed personal information on contributors,including Social Security numbers. Lamo also hacked into The Times’ LexisNexisaccount to research high-profile subject matter.
For his intrusion at The New York Times, Lamo was ordered to pay approximately$65,000 in restitution. He was also sentenced to six months of home confinementand two years of probation, which expired January 16, 2007. Lamo is currentlyworking as an award-winning journalist and public speaker.
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4-KevinPoulsen:
Also known as Dark Dante, Poulsen gained recognition for his hack of LA radio’sKIIS-FM phone lines, which earned him a brand new Porsche, among other items.Law enforcement dubbed him “the Hannibal Lecter of computer crime.”
Authorities began to pursue Poulsen after he hacked into a federalinvestigation database. During this pursuit, he further drew the ire of the FBIby hacking into federal computers for wiretap information.
His hacking specialty, however, revolved around telephones. Poulsen’s mostfamous hack, KIIS-FM, was accomplished by taking over all of the station’s phonelines. In a related feat, Poulsen also “reactivated old Yellow Page escorttelephone numbers for an acquaintance who then ran a virtual escort agency.”Later, when his photo came up on the show Unsolved Mysteries, 1-800 phone linesfor the program crashed. Ultimately, Poulsen was captured in a supermarket andserved a sentence of five years.
Since serving time, Poulsen has worked as a journalist. He is now a senioreditor for Wired News. His most prominent article details his work onidentifying 744 sex offenders with MySpace profiles.
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5-RobertTappan Morris:
Morris, son of former National Security Agency scientist Robert Morris, isknown as the creator of the Morris Worm, the first computer worm to beunleashed on the Internet. As a result of this crime, he was the first personprosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Morris wrote the code for the worm while he was a student at Cornell. Heasserts that he intended to use it to see how large the Internet was. The worm,however, replicated itself excessively, slowing computers down so that theywere no longer usable. It is not possible to know exactly how many computerswere affected, but experts estimate an impact of 6,000 machines. He wassentenced to three years’ probation, 400 hours of community service and a fined$10,500.
Morris is currently working as a tenured professor at the MIT Computer Scienceand Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He principally researches computernetwork architectures including distributed hash tables such as Chord andwireless mesh networks such as Roofnet.
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6-VladimirLevin:
Mass media claimed at the time he was a mathematician and had a degree inbiochemistry from Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology.According tothe coverage, in 1994 Levin accessed the accounts of several large corporatecustomers of Citibank via their dial-up wire transfer service (FinancialInstitutions Citibank Cash Manager) and transferred funds to accounts set up byaccomplices in Finland, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany andIsrael.In 2005 an alleged member of the former St. Petersburg hacker group,claiming to be one of the original Citibank penetrators, published under thename ArkanoiD a memorandum on popular Provider.net.ru website dedicated totelecom market. According to him, Levin was not actually a scientist(mathematician, biologist or the like) but a kind of ordinary systemadministrator who managed to get hands on the ready data about how to penetratein Citibank machines and then exploit them.ArkanoiD emphasized all thecommunications were carried over X.25 network and the Internet was notinvolved. ArkanoiD’s group in 1994 found out Citibank systems were unprotectedand it spent several weeks examining the structure of the bank’s USA-basednetworks remotely. Members of the group played around with systems’ tools (e.g.were installing and running games) and were unnoticed by the bank’s staff.Penetrators did not plan to conduct a robbery for their personal safety and stoppedtheir activities at some time. Someone of them later handed over the crucialaccess data to Levin (reportedly for the stated $100).
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7-DonaldLloyd:
In human terms, it’s a case of a trusted, 11-year employee gone bad. Lloydbuilt the Novell NetWare computer network at Omega South and then blew it upwith a software time bomb after he fell from corporate grace and was ultimatelyfired for performance and behavioral problems. Today, he faces a sentence of upto five years in prison.
In a business sense, the loss of its key manufacturing programs cost Omega,which builds measurement and instrumentation devices for customers like NASAand the U.S. Navy, more than $10 million, dislodged its footing in the industryand eventually led to 80 layoffs.
The 1996 incident set off an intense investigation that brought together theU.S. Secret Service and one of the world’s top data recovery and forensicsexperts to piece together the evidence that would ultimately lead to Lloyd’sarrest and conviction.
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8-DavidSmith:
David Smith, the author of the Melissa virus, was facing nearly 40 years injail when he decided to cooperate with the FBI. Facing jail time, public wrathand a fortune in potential fines, the 30-year-old sender of the fast-spreadingMelissa computer virus did what hundreds of criminals have done before. Heagreed to go undercover. Federal court documents unsealed at the request of theAssociated Press show that for almost two years, Smith – then out on bail –worked mostly full time cruising the dark recesses of the Internet while theFBI paid his tab.
What did the FBI get? A windfall of information about malicious code senders,leading directly to two major international arrests and pre-empting otherattacks, according to federal prosecutors.
What did Smith get? Just 20 months in federal prison, which was about two yearsless than the minimum sentencing requirement, and about 38 years less than hefaced when initially charged.
Sometimes it takes a thief to catch a thief, said former federal prosecutorElliot Turrini, who handled Smith’s case and agreed to the reduced sentence.
About 63,000 viruses have rolled through the Internet, causing an estimated $65billion in damage, but Smith is the only person to go to federal prison in theUnited States for sending one.
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9-MichaelCalce:
The computer hacker known as “Mafiaboy,” who crippled several major Internetsites including CNN, arrives in court Thursday, Jan. 18, 2001 in Montreal,Canada. He pleaded guilty on Thursday to 55 charges of mischief. The trial ofthe 16-year-old Montrealer, who can not be identified under Canadian law, wasset to begin Thursday on 66 charges relating to attacks last year on severalmajor Web sites, as well as security breaches of other sites at institutionssuch as Yale and Harvard.
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10-MarkAbene:
Mark Abene (born 1972), better known by his pseudonym Phiber Optik, is acomputer security hacker from New York City. Phiber Optik was once a member ofthe Hacker Groups Legion of Doom and Masters of Deception. In 1994, he served aone-year prison sentence for conspiracy and unauthorized access to computer andtelephone systems.
Phiber Optik was a high-profile hacker in the early 1990s, appearing in The NewYork Times, Harper’s, Esquire, in debates and on television. Phiber Optik is animportant figure in the 1995 non-fiction book Masters of Deception — The Gangthat Ruled Cyberspace.
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WHITEHAT HACKER
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Hackers that use their skills for good are classified as "white hat."These white hats often work as certified "Ethical Hackers," hired bycompanies to test the integrity of their systems. Others, operate withoutcompany permission by bending but not breaking laws and in the process havecreated some really cool stuff. In this section we profile five white hathackers and the technologies they have developed.
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1-StephenWozniak:
"Woz" is famous for being the "other Steve" of Apple.Wozniak, along with current Apple CEO Steve Jobs, co-founded Apple Computer. Hehas been awarded with the National Medal of Technology as well as honorarydoctorates from Kettering University and Nova Southeastern University.Additionally, Woz was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame inSeptember 2000.
Woz got his start in hacking making blue boxes, devices that bypasstelephone-switching mechanisms to make free long-distance calls. After readingan article about phone phreaking in Esquire, Wozniak called up his buddy Jobs.The pair did research on frequencies, then built and sold blue boxes to theirclassmates in college. Wozniak even used a blue box to call the Pope whilepretending to be Henry Kissinger.
Wozniak dropped out of college and came up with the computer that eventuallymade him famous. Jobs had the bright idea to sell the computer as a fullyassembled PC board. The Steves sold Wozniak's cherished scientific calculatorand Jobs' VW van for capital and got to work assembling prototypes in Jobs'garage. Wozniak designed the hardware and most of the software. In the Letterssection of Woz.org, he recalls doing "what Ed Roberts and Bill Gates andPaul Allen did and tons more, with no help." Wozniak and Jobs sold thefirst 100 of the Apple I to a local dealer for $666.66 each.
Woz no longer works full time for Apple, focusing primarily on philanthropyinstead. Most notable is his function as fairy godfather to the Los Gatos,Calif. School District. "Wozniak 'adopted' the Los Gatos School District,providing students and teachers with hands-on teaching and donations ofstate-of-the-art technology equipment."
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2-TimBerners-Lee:
Berners-Lee is famed as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the system that weuse to access sites, documents and files on the Internet. He has receivednumerous recognitions, most notably the Millennium Technology Prize.
While a student at Oxford University, Berners-Lee was caught hacking accesswith a friend and subsequently banned from University computers. w3.orgreports, "Whilst [at Oxford], he built his first computer with a solderingiron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television." Technologicalinnovation seems to have run in his genes, as Berners-Lee's parents weremathematicians who worked on the Manchester Mark1, one of the earliestelectronic computers.
While working with CERN, a European nuclear research organization, Berners-Leecreated a hypertext prototype system that helped researchers share and updateinformation easily. He later realized that hypertext could be joined with theInternet. Berners-Lee recounts how he put them together: "I just had totake the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and - ta-da! -the World Wide Web."
Since his creation of the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee founded the World WideWeb Consortium at MIT. The W3C describes itself as "an internationalconsortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff and the public worktogether to develop Web standards." Berners-Lee's World Wide Web idea, aswell as standards from the W3C, is distributed freely with no patent orroyalties due.
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3-LinusTorvalds:
Torvalds fathered Linux, the very popular Unix-based operating system. He callshimself "an engineer," and has said that his aspirations are simple,"I just want to have fun making the best damn operating system Ican."
Torvalds got his start in computers with a Commodore VIC-20, an 8-bit homecomputer. He then moved on to a Sinclair QL. Wikipedia reports that he modifiedthe Sinclair "extensively, especially its operating system."Specifically, Torvalds hacks included "an assembler and a text editor…aswell as a few games."
Torvalds created the Linux kernel in 1991, using the Minix operating system asinspiration. He started with a task switcher in Intel 80386 assembly and aterminal driver. After that, he put out a call for others to contribute code,which they did. Currently, only about 2 percent of the current Linux kernel iswritten by Torvalds himself. The success of this public invitation tocontribute code for Linux is touted as one of the most prominent examples offree/open source software.
Currently, Torvalds serves as the Linux ringleader, coordinating the code thatvolunteer programmers contribute to the kernel. He has had an asteroid namedafter him and received honorary doctorates from Stockholm University andUniversity of Helsinki. He was also featured in Time Magazine's "60 Yearsof Heroes."
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4-RichardStallman:
Stallman's fame derives from the GNU Project, which he founded to develop afree operating system. For this, he's known as the father of free software. His"Serious Bio" asserts, "Non-free software keeps users dividedand helpless, forbidden to share it and unable to change it. A free operatingsystem is essential for people to be able to use computers in freedom."
Stallman, who prefers to be called rms, got his start hacking at MIT. He workedas a "staff hacker" on the Emacs project and others. He was a criticof restricted computer access in the lab. When a password system was installed,Stallman broke it down, resetting passwords to null strings, then sent usersmessages informing them of the removal of the password system.
Stallman's crusade for free software started with a printer. At the MIT lab, heand other hackers were allowed to modify code on printers so that they sentconvenient alert messages. However, a new printer came along - one that theywere not allowed to modify. It was located away from the lab and the absence ofthe alerts presented an inconvenience. It was at this point that he was"convinced…of the ethical need to require free software."
With this inspiration, he began work on GNU. Stallman wrote an essay, "TheGNU Project," in which he recalls choosing to work on an operating systembecause it's a foundation, "the crucial software to use a computer."At this time, the GNU/Linux version of the operating system uses the Linuxkernel started by Torvalds. GNU is distributed under "copyleft," amethod that employs copyright law to allow users to use, modify, copy anddistribute the software.
Stallman's life continues to revolve around the promotion of free software. Heworks against movements like Digital Rights Management (or as he prefers,Digital Restrictions Management) through organizations like Free SoftwareFoundation and League for Programming Freedom. He has received extensiverecognition for his work, including awards, fellowships and four honorarydoctorates.
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5-TsutomuShimomura:
Shimomura reached fame in an unfortunate manner: he was hacked by KevinMitnick. Following this personal attack, he made it his cause to help the FBIcapture him.
Shimomura's work to catch Mitnick is commendable, but he is not without his owndark side. Author Bruce Sterling recalls: "He pulls out this AT&Tcellphone, pulls it out of the shrinkwrap, finger-hacks it, and startsmonitoring phone calls going up and down Capitol Hill while an FBI agent isstanding at his shoulder, listening to him."
Shimomura out-hacked Mitnick to bring him down. Shortly after finding out aboutthe intrusion, he rallied a team and got to work finding Mitnick. UsingMitnick's cell phone, they tracked him near Raleigh-Durham InternationalAirport. The article, "SDSC Computer Experts Help FBI Capture ComputerTerrorist" recounts how Shimomura pinpointed Mitnick's location. Armedwith a technician from the phone company, Shimomura "used a cellularfrequency direction-finding antenna hooked up to a laptop to narrow the searchto an apartment complex." Mitnick was arrested shortly thereafter.Following the pursuit, Shimomura wrote a book about the incident withjournalist John Markoff, which was later turned into a movie.
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