1. Kevin Mitnick.
Was one of the most wanted hackers of our time in the United States. Kevin Mitnick is essentially a hacker icon. Kevin had skills in social engineering (by tricking operators) and computer hacking. With this, he accessed and was able to modify telephone switching systems. He was most interested in telephony. He hacked into the computer network of a major telephone company, Pacific Bell. He was caught and released until one day he hacked into the computer of computer security expert Shimomura Tsutomu.
Catching Kevin Mitnick was his main goal and a matter of honor. Thanks to the competent actions of the Japanese - in 1995, Kevin Mitnick was caught and taken into custody for a long time. Mitnick was banned from using the telephone and the Internet until 2003. After his release and his restrictions were lifted, Kevin started his own computer security firm. He co-authored several books with William Simon. All of them are about hacking in one way or another.
2. Robert Morris.
In 1988, he developed the first computer worm which paralyzed one-tenth of the Internet (over six thousand computers in the US). He was the first person to be indicted for computer fraud. However, Robert is not only known for this "prank", for which, by the way, he was fined a considerable sum. Together with Paul Graham, he developed the Viaweb platform, where users could create and manage their own online store. This platform was later bought out by Yahoo for an estimated value of $49 million. Robert and Paul Graham also developed the Arc programming language.
3. Vladimir Levin.
Our compatriot, from St. Petersburg, was arrested in 1995 in London. In 1994, he had stolen $10 million from Citibank customers, transferring the sums to his accounts around the world. However, bank employees noticed in time and managed to return 9.6 million dollars. It is believed that 400 thousand dollars were never found.
4. Jan Romanowski.
He was arrested in 2000 for organizing an attack on the largest websites such as Amazon, Yahoo and Ebay. Jan's lawyer (also known by the alias MafiaBoy) stated that if Jan had used all of his skills, he could have done catastrophic damage.
5. Kevin Paulsen.
Kevin, also known in hacking circles as Dark Dante specialized in hacking telephone networks and radio stations. This allowed him to win various contests on the radio airwaves. In 1991, in order to be the 102nd caller to win a Porsche 944 and $20,000, he paralyzed all telephone networks. He was wanted by the FBI and arrested. Kevin Paulsen was sentenced to 51 months in prison and at the time it was the harshest sentence in the cybercrime world.
6. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
The world-famous Apple founders managed to be hackers in their youth. They created the Blue Box device, which allowed them to make long distance calls for free. They sold their device to students at the University of California at Berkeley.
7. David Smith.
Became famous for creating and launching the email virus Melissa. According to Smith it was harmless, but each infected computer sent out a multitude of similarly infected emails, eventually rebooting computer systems and servers from around the world. The Melissa virus was unusual in that it was concealed in a file containing passwords to 80 popular porn sites. In spite of the fact that more than 60 thousand e-mails viruses were discovered, only one David went to prison for creating his own.
8. Jonathan James.
He became famous for being sent to prison when he was 16 years old. James was involved in hacking into nationally important systems such as NASA and the Department of Defense. He reportedly stole over $1.7 million worth of software.
9. George Hotz.
In 2011 he created a jailbreak for SonyPlaystation 3. Sony sued George for publishing the jailbreak method he found in the public domain. In retaliation, a group of Anonymous hackers attacked Sony, and it was one of the most expensive attacks of all time. Hotz denied any involvement in the Sony attack, and said "Finding security holes in your devices is cool, but hacking into other people's servers and stealing databases is not cool."
10. Harry McKinon.
In 2002, messages appeared on U.S. Army computers saying, "Your security system is crap! I am Solo, and I will continue to hack your systems at the highest levels. The hacker turned out to be a system administrator from Scotland. Harry was charged with hacking into Army, Air Force, Navy and NASA computer networks.
A total of 97 computers were infected and $700,000 worth of damage was done. The increased interest in Harry McKinon was also due to the fact that he claimed that his hacks were designed to find information about UFOs, which he believed the U.S. government was hiding in the computers of these military structures.
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