super-spy, as in Mission Impossible where Ethan Hunt repels from
the ceiling to hack the CIA computer system and steal the "NOC
list," to the lonely anti-social teen who is simply looking for
entertainment.
The reality, however, is that hackers are a very diverse bunch, a
group simultaneously blamed with causing billions of dollars in
damages as well as credited with the development of the World Wide
Web and the founding of major tech companies. In this article, we
test the theory that truth is better than fiction by introducing
you to ten of the most famous hackers, both nefarious and heroic,
to let you decide for yourself.
Black Hat Crackers
The Internet abounds with hackers, known as crackers or "black
hats," who work to exploit computer systems. They are the ones
you've seen on the news being hauled away for cybercrimes. Some of
them do it for fun and curiosity, while others are looking for
personal gain. In this section we profile five of the most famous
and interesting "black hat" hackers.
Jonathan James: James gained notoriety when he became the first
juvenile to be sent to prison for 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 me was a challenge
to see what I could pull off."
James's major intrusions targeted high-profile organizations. He
installed a backdoor into a Defense Threat Reduction Agency server.
The DTRA is an agency of the Department of Defense charged with
reducing the threat to the U.S. and its allies from nuclear,
biological, chemical, conventional and special weapons. The
backdoor he created enabled him to view sensitive emails and
capture 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 supported the International Space Station's physical
environment, including control of the temperature and humidity
within the living space." NASA was forced to shut down its computer
systems, ultimately racking up a $41,000 cost. James explained that
he downloaded the code to supplement his studies on C programming,
but contended, "The code itself was crappy . . . certainly not
worth $1.7 million like they claimed."
Given the extent of his intrusions, if James, also known as
"c0mrade," had been an adult he likely would have served at least
10 years. Instead, he was banned from recreational computer use and
was slated to serve a six-month sentence under house arrest with
probation. However, he served six months in prison for violation of
parole. Today, James asserts that he's learned his lesson and might
start a computer security company.
Adrian Lamo: Lamo's claim to fame is his break-ins at major
organizations like The New York Times and Microsoft. Dubbed the
"homeless hacker," he used Internet connections at Kinko's, coffee
shops and libraries to do his intrusions. In a profile article, "He
Hacks by Day, Squats by Night," Lamo reflects, "I have a laptop in
Pittsburgh, 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 found flaws in security, exploited them and then informed
companies of their shortcomings. His hits include Yahoo!, Bank of
America, Citigroup and Cingular. When white hat hackers are hired
by companies to do penetration testing, it's legal. What Lamo did
is not.
When he broke into The New York Times' intranet, things got
serious. He added himself to a list of experts and viewed personal
information on contributors, including Social Security numbers.
Lamo also hacked into The Times' LexisNexis account 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 confinement and two years of probation, which
expired January 16, 2007. Lamo is currently working as an award-
winning journalist and public speaker.
Kevin Mitnick: A self-proclaimed "hacker poster boy," Mitnick went
through a highly publicized pursuit by authorities. His mischief
was hyped by the media but his actual offenses may be less notable
than his notoriety suggests. The Department of Justice describes
him as "the most wanted computer criminal in United States
history." His exploits were detailed in two movies: Freedom
Downtime and Takedown.
Mitnick had a bit of hacking experience before committing the
offenses that made him famous. He started out exploiting the Los
Angeles bus punch card system to get free rides. Then, like Apple
co-founder Steve Wozniak, dabbled in phone phreaking. Although
there were numerous offenses, Mitnick was ultimately convicted for
breaking into the Digital Equipment Corporation's computer network
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 hacker released from prison," explains that "he hacked
into computers, stole corporate secrets, scrambled phone networks
and broke into the national defense warning system." He then hacked
into computer expert and fellow hacker Tsutomu Shimomura's home
computer, which led to his undoing.
Today, Mitnick has been able to move past his role as a black hat
hacker and become a productive member of society. He served five
years, about 8 months of it in solitary confinement, and is now a
computer security consultant, author and speaker.
Kevin Poulsen: Also known as Dark Dante, Poulsen gained recognition
for his hack of LA radio's KIIS-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 federal
investigation database. During this pursuit, he further drew the
ire of the FBI by hacking into federal computers for wiretap
information.
His hacking specialty, however, revolved around telephones.
Poulsen's most famous hack, KIIS-FM, was accomplished by taking
over all of the station's phone lines. In a related feat, Poulsen
also "reactivated old Yellow Page escort telephone 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 lines for
the program crashed. Ultimately, Poulsen was captured in a
supermarket and served a sentence of five years.
Since serving time, Poulsen has worked as a journalist. He is now a
senior editor for Wired News. His most prominent article details
his work on identifying 744 sex offenders with MySpace profiles.
Robert Tappan Morris: Morris, son of former National Security
Agency scientist Robert Morris, is known as the creator of the
Morris Worm, the first computer worm to be unleashed on the
Internet. As a result of this crime, he was the first person
prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Morris wrote the code for the worm while he was a student at
Cornell. He asserts that he intended to use it to see how large the
Internet was. The worm, however, replicated itself excessively,
slowing computers down so that they were no longer usable. It is
not possible to know exactly how many computers were affected, but
experts estimate an impact of 6,000 machines. He was sentenced 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 Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He
principally researches computer network architectures including
distributed hash tables such as Chord and wireless mesh networks
such as Roofnet.
White Hat Hackers
Hackers that use their skills for good are classified as "white
hat." These white hats often work as certified "Ethical Hackers,"
hired by companies to test the integrity of their systems. Others,
operate without company permission by bending but not breaking laws
and in the process have created some really cool stuff. In this
section we profile five white hat hackers and the technologies they
have developed.
Stephen Wozniak: "Woz" is famous for being the "other Steve" of
Apple. Wozniak, along with current Apple CEO Steve Jobs, co-founded
Apple Computer. He has been awarded with the National Medal of
Technology as well as honorary doctorates from Kettering University
and Nova Southeastern University. Additionally, Woz was inducted
into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in September 2000.
Woz got his start in hacking making blue boxes, devices that bypass
telephone-switching mechanisms to make free long-distance calls.
After reading an 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 their classmates in college.
Wozniak even used a blue box to call the Pope while pretending to
be Henry Kissinger.
Wozniak dropped out of college and came up with the computer that
eventually made him famous. Jobs had the bright idea to sell the
computer as a fully assembled PC board. The Steves sold Wozniak's
cherished scientific calculator and 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 Letters section of
Woz.org, he recalls doing "what Ed Roberts and Bill Gates and Paul
Allen did and tons more, with no help." Wozniak and Jobs sold the
first 100 of the Apple I to a local dealer for $666.66 each.
Woz no longer works full time for Apple, focusing primarily on
philanthropy instead. 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 of state-of-the-art
technology equipment."
Tim Berners-Lee: Berners-Lee is famed as the inventor of the World
Wide Web, the system that we use to access sites, documents and
files on the Internet. He has received numerous recognitions, most
notably the Millennium Technology Prize.
While a student at Oxford University, Berners-Lee was caught
hacking access with a friend and subsequently banned from
University computers. w3.org reports, "Whilst [at Oxford], he built
his first computer with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800
processor and an old television." Technological innovation seems to
have run in his genes, as Berners-Lee's parents were mathematicians
who worked on the Manchester Mark1, one of the earliest electronic
computers.
While working with CERN, a European nuclear research organization,
Berners-Lee created a hypertext prototype system that helped
researchers share and update information easily. He later realized
that hypertext could be joined with the Internet. Berners-Lee
recounts how he put them together: "I just had to take 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 Wide Web Consortium at MIT. The W3C describes itself as "an
international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time
staff and the public work together to develop Web standards."
Berners-Lee's World Wide Web idea, as well as standards from the
W3C, is distributed freely with no patent or royalties due.
Linus Torvalds: Torvalds fathered Linux, the very popular Unix-
based operating system. He calls himself "an engineer," and has
said that his aspirations are simple, "I just want to have fun
making the best damn operating system I can."
Torvalds got his start in computers with a Commodore VIC-20, an 8-
bit home computer. He then moved on to a Sinclair QL. Wikipedia
reports that he modified the Sinclair "extensively, especially its
operating system." Specifically, Torvalds hacks included "an
assembler and a text editor…as well as a few games."
Torvalds created the Linux kernel in 1991, using the Minix
operating system as inspiration. He started with a task switcher in
Intel 80386 assembly and a terminal 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 is written by
Torvalds himself. The success of this public invitation to
contribute code for Linux is touted as one of the most prominent
examples of free/open source software.
Currently, Torvalds serves as the Linux ringleader, coordinating
the code that volunteer programmers contribute to the kernel. He
has had an asteroid named after him and received honorary
doctorates from Stockholm University and University of Helsinki. He
was also featured in Time Magazine's "60 Years of Heroes."
Richard Stallman: Stallman's fame derives from the GNU Project,
which he founded to develop a free operating system. For this, he's
known as the father of free software. His "Serious Bio" asserts,
"Non-free software keeps users divided and helpless, forbidden to
share it and unable to change it. A free operating system 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 worked as a "staff hacker" on the Emacs project and others.
He was a critic of restricted computer access in the lab. When a
password system was installed, Stallman broke it down, resetting
passwords to null strings, then sent users messages informing them
of the removal of the password system.
Stallman's crusade for free software started with a printer. At the
MIT lab, he and other hackers were allowed to modify code on
printers so that they sent convenient alert messages. However, a
new printer came along – one that they were not allowed to modify.
It was located away from the lab and the absence of the 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, "The GNU Project," in which he recalls choosing to work on
an operating system because it's a foundation, "the crucial
software to use a computer." At this time, the GNU/Linux version of
the operating system uses the Linux kernel started by Torvalds. GNU
is distributed under "copyleft," a method that employs copyright
law to allow users to use, modify, copy and distribute the
software.
Stallman's life continues to revolve around the promotion of free
software. He works against movements like Digital Rights Management
(or as he prefers, Digital Restrictions Management) through
organizations like Free Software Foundation and League for
Programming Freedom. He has received extensive recognition for his
work, including awards, fellowships and four honorary doctorates.
Tsutomu Shimomura: Shimomura reached fame in an unfortunate manner:
he was hacked by Kevin Mitnick. Following this personal attack, he
made it his cause to help the FBI capture him.
Shimomura's work to catch Mitnick is commendable, but he is not
without his own dark side. Author Bruce Sterling recalls: "He pulls
out this AT&T cellphone, pulls it out of the shrinkwrap, finger-
hacks it, and starts monitoring phone calls going up and down
Capitol Hill while an FBI agent is standing at his shoulder,
listening to him."
Shimomura out-hacked Mitnick to bring him down. Shortly after
finding out about the intrusion, he rallied a team and got to work
finding Mitnick. Using Mitnick's cell phone, they tracked him near
Raleigh-Durham International Airport. The article, "SDSC Computer
Experts Help FBI Capture Computer Terrorist" recounts how Shimomura
pinpointed Mitnick's location. Armed with a technician from the
phone company, Shimomura "used a cellular frequency direction-
finding antenna hooked up to a laptop to narrow the search to an
apartment complex." Mitnick was arrested shortly thereafter.
Following the pursuit, Shimomura wrote a book about the incident
with journalist John Markoff, which was later turned into a movie.
http://www.focus.com/fyi/it-security/top-10-most-famous-hackers-all-
time/
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