The World's Most Famous Hackers
Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick is the first hacker to be on the FBI's "most wanted" list. Kevin Mitnick, known as the most notorious computer criminal in US history; He hacked into the networks of major telecommunications companies such as Nokia, Apple, Motorola, and Sun Microsystems, copying their programs; accessed the passwords and e-mails of departments and individuals and entered their private files. He first hacked into the computer network of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) systems in 1979, when he was 16 years old, and stole the company's software. DEC company had to reorganize its software and lost 160 thousand dollars. Mitnick, who was sentenced to two prison terms in 1998 and between 1995 and 2000, was sentenced to a total of five years in prison and eight months in public service for his crimes. Currently, he still provides computer security consultancy services to many companies as a white hacker in his own company, which he founded in the USA, and organizes international seminars on computer security systems. Known for his witty as well as clever personality, Mitnick describes himself as a "socialization engineer", not a hacker. Kevin Mitnick, who made two movies, Freedom Downtime and Takedown, is the author of two books, The Art of Deception and The Art of Intrusion.
Gary McKinnon
Using the nickname 'Solo', Gary Mckinnon is known as the "UFO Hacker"! One day, a shocking message suddenly appears on the Pentagon's computers: "My name is Solo, your computer system is useless! I will destroy your entire computer system!” Gary McKinnon hacked 97 US Army and NASA computers for 13 months between February 2001 and March 2002. Moreover, Mckinnon performed this operation from the study room of his girlfriend's house in London. When Solo was captured, he said that NASA had withheld a lot of information about UFOs, and that he had done this operation to reach them. American government officials announced that Mckinnon had accessed very important confidential files, rendered more than 300 computers unusable with the virus he sent, and inflicted 800 thousand dollars in damage to the American Army. Gary McKinnon, who was sentenced to 70 years in prison, was rescinded when he was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism. Gary Mckinnon, whose obsessive behavior caused a serious problem in his social life due to this disease, was a complete computer genius and could easily solve even very complex systems. Scottish born Gary McKinnon, born in 1966, still works as a computer software specialist in a company and lives in England.
Adrian Lamo
Adrian Lamo became known as the "homeless hacker" because he used the computers and internet connections of internet cafes and libraries. However, Excite@Home was able to break through the security nets of companies with the largest networks such as MCI WorldCom, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google and reach their most confidential information. It is not known what Lamo did with that information, who seized the profile passwords of famous people, especially politicians and Hollywood stars, and also accessed top secret information of the American Government by infiltrating some secret files of the FBI. Adrian Lamo is also known for hacking into conglomerates' databases, breaking their safety nets, then calling companies to let them know where there are security loopholes! Lamo, who was deciphered when he entered the secret section of The New York Times, was searched by the FBI for 15 months and was eventually caught in a shopping mall. As a result, the court sentenced Lamo to a $65,000 fine, 2 years probation, six months' house arrest, and two years not touching the computer. He is currently out and about working as a computer systems analyst.
Vladimir Levin
Levin's story is not like James Bond movies. Russian hacker Vladimir Levin was born in 1994 in St. Petersburg, Russia, he transferred the full 10 million dollars to his own account by logging into the accounts of Citibank customers from his computer. Levin did this by obtaining customers' account numbers, login passwords, and account profile details. After an arrest warrant was issued, he was transferred to the United States and was brought to trial at the New York Courthouse. He was fined $400,000 by the American court for the $10 million he stole. But after a while, it became clear that Vladimir Levin did not have enough technical knowledge to break Citibank's system. After lengthy investigations, it was revealed that a Russian hacker group sold bank login passwords and profile details to Vladimir Levin for $100.
Kevin Poulsen
The black hat hacker of the 80s, Kevin Poulsen, was codenamed Dark Dante. The most famous activity of Kevin Poulsen was the fraudulent acquisition of the Porsche brand car, which Kiss-FM, one of the Los Angeles radio stations, would present to the 102nd caller. It wasn't hard for Dante, as he had already hacked radio channels before. Also, in her youth, she found a way to get commissions on credit card payments for "telegirl" services by hacking into 1-800 numbers in newspaper ads. Kevin Poulsen, who was arrested in 1991 after long investigations by the FBI, was sentenced to 5 years in prison and served his sentence. Now he is out and about doing journalism. He works as the editor-in-chief of Wired News and does public service work. So much so that the detailed article he wrote about 744 sex offenders, which he deciphered from his MySpace profiles, shocked the world. With the program he designed by working for 6 months, Kevin Poulsen scanned the profiles of 1 million people on MySpace and deciphered the perverted old men who entered under different names and abused young children and teenagers. Thus, he played an important role in the prosecution and sentencing of some of these names for sexual harassment.
Stephen Wozniak
From the homemade “blue box” to the high-tech “apple”! Stephen Wozniak, Apple's founding director, nicknamed "Woz", was a white hacker in his youth. Wozniak, a computer programmer and electronics engineer, founded Apple with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne and started a great revolution in the computer world. So much so that the Apple I and Apple II are actually the inventions of Stephen Wozniak. While studying at the University of California, he invented a system that could make unlimited long-distance phone calls for himself and his friends over the internet, and named it "Blue box". Young Wozniak, nicknamed Berkeley Blue, was gifting blue boxes to his college friends. Stephen Wozniak, who made great discoveries with Apple in the following years, says, "If we hadn't made Blue Box and found that system, Apple wouldn't exist today," and he especially emphasizes that Blue Box is a startup and a very important step in their technology.
Robert TappanMorris
Robert Tappan Morris, the creator of the world's first virus-worm software, the famous "Morris Worm", claimed to have created this program to actually test how big the internet and its propagation capacity is. On November 2, 1988, the virus software caused more than 6000 computer systems to crash and become inoperable, mainly in the US Army, research centers and universities. Morris, who caused more than $ 15 million damage with the Worm virus he created, was caught as a result of long investigations. The famous hacker, who was sentenced to three years in prison, also did 400 hours of social work and paid a $10,500 fine. He is currently a faculty member in the Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering at the University of Massachusetts.
Keywords: Adrian Lamo | Gary McKinnon | Hackers | Kevin Mitnick | Kevin Poulsen | Robert Tappan Morris | Stephen Wozniak | Famous hackers | Vladimir Levin