Review Blogs

Search
Related Reviews
Featured Reviews
Most view Reviews
Review Categories

Top 10 most famous hackers in the world

Not all hackers are bad. Good hackers are called “white hat hackers” and use their skills to improve computer security. People who just hack for fun are called "gray hat hackers". The type that causes a lot of disasters and losses is called "black hat hackers". Here are the 10 most notorious “black hat hackers,” what they did, and their current situation.

1. Hacker Kevin Mitnick

Considered "the most wanted computer criminal in US history" by the US Department of Justice, Kevin Mitnick is the leader of the world-famous hacker list. Kevin Mitnick's story is so thrilling that it was even the basis for a movie called Track Down. Some people consider him the best hacker of all time.
After serving a year in prison for hacking into the network of Digital Equipment Joint Stock Company, Kevin Mitnick was released but must be supervised for 3 years. But at the end of that period, he fled and over the next two and a half years hacked into defense warning systems and stole corporate secrets.
Mitnick was eventually arrested and sentenced to 5 years in prison. After his release from prison, he became a consultant and public speaker on computer security and now runs Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC.

View Details

2. Hacker Jonathan James

The life of Jonathan James, known as “c0mrade” (comrade), is a tragic story. He started hacking at a young age, and went to prison for hacking into several commercial and government networks while still a minor.
James hacked into NASA's network and downloaded enough source code (worth $1.7 million at the time) to learn how the International Space Station worked. NASA had to shut down its network for three weeks to investigate, causing another $41,000 in damage.

In 2007, several famous companies became victims of many dangerous cyber attacks. Although James denied involvement, he was still suspected and investigated. In 2008, James committed suicide because he believed he would be convicted for crimes he did not commit.
View Details

3. Hacker Albert Gonzalez

Albert Gonzalez is one of the best computer hackers in the world. He started out as the leader of a hacker group called ShadowCrew. In addition to stealing and selling credit card numbers, this group also fabricated passports, health insurance cards and birth certificates to commit fraud.
Albert Gonzalez collected more than 170 million credit card and ATM card numbers over a two-year period. He then broke into the databases of TJX Companies and Heartland Payment Systems to steal all of their stored credit card numbers.
Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in prison and is expected to be released in 2025.
View Details

4. Hacker Kevin Poulsen

Kevin Poulsen is famous for using his intricate knowledge of phone systems. One time he hacked a radio station's phone line and impersonated the winning caller, thereby winning a brand new Porsche car. The media calls him the “Hannibal Lecter of computer crime.”
Poulsen put himself on the FBI's wanted list when he broke into federal systems and stole wiretap information. He was later arrested and sentenced to 51 months in prison and a $56,000 restitution order.
After being released from prison in 1995, Poulsen began working as a journalist and is currently an editor at the technology magazine Wired. In 2006, he even helped law enforcement identify 744 sex offenders on the social network MySpace.
View Details

5. Hacker Gary McKinnon

Gary McKinnon, known by his nickname “Solo,” is accused of orchestrating the largest military computer hack of all time.
Over a 13-month period, from February 2001 to March 2002, McKinnon illegally accessed 97 computers belonging to the United States Armed Forces and NASA.

He claimed he was only looking for information about free energy containment and covering up unidentified flying object (UFO) incidents, but according to US authorities, he deleted several important files and caused More than 300 computers were inoperable, resulting in more than $700,000 in damages.
Of Scottish descent and operating out of the UK, McKinnon was able to evade capture by the US government before being extradited in 2005.

After a series of appeals, then-British Prime Minister Theresa May blocked his extradition on the grounds that he was “seriously ill” and that extradition would “violate [his] human rights.”
View Details

6. Hacker Robert Tappan Morris

Robert Tappan Morris acquired his knowledge of computers from his father Robert Morris, a computer scientist at Bell Labs and later the NSA. Morris is considered the creator of the world's first computer worm.
In 1988, he created the Morris Worm while a student at Cornell University. This program was intended to measure the size of the internet, but it had a bug: a computer could be infected multiple times, and each infection would slow it down even more. The Morris worm made more than 6,000 computers unusable.
In 1989, Robert Tappan Morris was found to have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was sentenced to three years probation, 400 hours of community service and a $10,050 fine. He later founded Y Combinator and is currently a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
View Details

7. Hacker Loyd Blankenship

Loyd Blankenship, known as “The Mentor” in the hacking world, is a hacker active since the 1970s. He has been a member of several hacking groups, most notably is the Legion of Doom (LOD).
Blankenship is the author of an essay called “Mentor's Last Words,” also known as “A Hacker's Conscience and a Hacker's Manifesto,” which he I wrote after my arrest in 1986. This essay has been considered a foundational "document" of hacking culture.
Blankenship was hired by gaming company Steve Jackson Games in 1989 to work on the game GURPS Cyberpunk. The US Secret Service raided his home in 1990 and confiscated the game's rule book, which it said was a "handbook for computer criminals". He gave up hacking and is now head of research and product design at software security company McAfee.
View Details

8. Hacker Julian Assange

Julian Assange started hacking at age 16 under the name “Mendax.” Over four years, he accessed various government, corporate, and educational networks — including the Pentagon, NASA, Lockheed Martin, Citibank, and Stanford University.
Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006 as a platform to publish leaked news and classified documents from anonymous sources. The United States opened an investigation of Assange in 2010 to charge him under the Espionage Act of 1917.
After living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London from 2012 to 2019, Assange eventually had his asylum revoked and police stormed the embassy to arrest him. He is currently in prison in the UK, and a British court has rejected a US extradition appeal.
View Details

9. Hacker Guccifer 2.0

No one knows for sure who Guccifer 2.0 is. It could be a person or a group masquerading as a person. The name pays homage to a Romanian hacker (known as “Guccifer”) who often targeted US government officials and politically prominent people.
During the 2016 United States Presidential Election, the Democratic National Convention's network was hacked. Thousands of documents have been leaked on WikiLeaks and elsewhere. Many people believe that Guccifer 2.0 is just a cover for Russian intelligence, but in an interview with Vice magazine, Guccifer 2.0 confirmed that he is Romanian, not Russian.
Guccifer 2.0 disappeared shortly before the 2016 US Presidential election, then reappeared once in January 2017 to claim that they had no ties to Russian intelligence. There has been no further news about Guccifer 2.0 since that time.
View Details

10. Hacker Anonymous

Anonymous may be the most famous "hacker" of all time, but also the stupidest. Anonymous is not a single person but a decentralized group of hackers with no real membership or hierarchy. Anyone can act in the name of Anonymous.
Since its emergence in 2003, Anonymous has attacked a number of notable targets, including Amazon, PayPal, Sony, Westboro Baptist Church, Church of Scientology, parts of the dark web, and the Australian and Indian governments. India, Syria, the United States and dozens of other countries.
Anonymous continues its activities to this day. Since 2011, two hacking groups have emerged from Anonymous: LulzSec and AntiSec.
View Details
Like the Top 10 most famous hackers in the world? share me

Would you like to write a review for your company or brand?

Contact Us

Related Reviews

Latest Reviews

promotionsand ADs

category banner
category banner
category banner

© Copyright 2015 SmartCms All Rights Reserved.