The most famous hackers in the world. Generals of computer wars: the best hackers in the world

Russian hackers are infamous for their questionable skills, from evil programmer and nemesis James Bond in Goldeneye to the biggest cybercrime in American history. And while hackers from other countries can quite often be motivated by an ideology, most Russian cybercriminals have earned a reputation as digital pickpockets, more interested in cleaning other people's bank accounts than public statements.

And while it has long been assumed that most hackers are just scammers, cybercrime is still often admired for the technique and intelligence it brings, creating a heady cocktail of art, science, and criminal intent. And while Russian hackers may be less active than their Chinese and Latin American counterparts, the quality of the attacks makes them world leaders in this area. Here are some of the Russian names that have sowed panic in the cybersecurity world.

1. Anonymous international

2. Vladimir Levin

3. Igor Klopov

4. Koobface gang

5. Vladislav Khorokhorin

Hackers are people who break into telephone or Internet networks, creating virus programs and spreading them. Some hackers commit crimes “for a good cause”, some just for the sake of fame, some to compromise the state or a large company. We offer you to find out from the article the top 10 most dangerous and famous hackers, and find out why they got such fame.

Jonathan Joseph James

American hacker, known to many for being the first minor convicted of hacking. When James committed the crime, he was only 15. He repeatedly hacked into several large organizations, including the Agency, owned by the US Department of Defense. He also hacked NASA, could steal any files from the database and did it. James stole nearly $2 million worth of software.

Cody Kretsinger

Member of a whole group of hackers LulzSec. In 2011, he admitted to having hacked Sony Playstation. Then he had access to the personal data of almost 80 million users, and the company had to stop the operation of the network for a month. For this, Kretsinger was arrested for one year.

Kevin Poulsen

Kevin Poulsen may be better known by many as Dark Dante. He hacked into the Los Angeles telephone networks to win expensive prizes, once the hacker got a Porsche car this way. After that, Kevin hacked into the FBI database and gained access to classified information, in which there were recordings of telephone conversations or their transcription.

Poulsen committed several more hacks related to telephone networks, was detained and sentenced to 5 years.

Adrian Lamo

Adrian Lamo is a hacker who has hacked and caused massive damage to several major companies including The New York Times, Yahoo, Bank of America and Microsoft. He used the Internet networks of various libraries, cafes and other institutions for his “work”, for which he received the nickname of a homeless hacker. He often exploited bugs in the security of the system to hack, and sometimes even reported them to companies. He did it to get attention and fame, besides, he did not want to work in the office.

Lamo received a relatively mild punishment for such acts - a fine, six months of house arrest and 2 years of probation. The last one expired in early 2007.

Kevin Mitnick

This hacker was accused of various communications and computer acts in the 80s and 90s, for which he was taken into custody. While Mitnick was in prison, many other authors wrote many books about him.

After his release, Kevin became a consultant on computer security, started writing and did not return to hacking, at least there were no official statements about this. He also founded an entire company - Defensive Thinking Inc., dealing with network and computer security. Mitnick even tried himself as an actor, he played a CIA computer expert in the TV series Spy. In general, the life of a former hacker is full of variety.

Jeremy Hammond

Jeremy Hammond, in addition to being a famous hacker, is also a web developer, musician and political activist. He is also the creator of the HackThisSite site, where you can learn the intricacies of computer security. Since 2003, the site has gained considerable popularity, and almost 2 million people use it.

In 2006, Hammond admitted to having hacked into the computer of a political organization, for which he was sentenced to two years in prison. He has also been arrested several times for political protests.

In 2012, a hacker was arrested by the FBI for hacking into a private firm's email and computer systems. different companies and agencies interacting with the US government. He was sentenced to ten years in prison, but with the condition of good behavior, he can be released ahead of schedule - in 2021.

Operation Aurora

This operation was carried out in 2009 by a whole group of hackers. Their victims were more than 30 companies, among them even Yahoo and Google. The latter was not afraid to report the attack and the theft of intellectual property from its servers. Many accounts Gmail were also hacked, but the hackers did not need them, but source companies.

The names of the members of this group are not indicated in any sources, since they have not yet been found.

Robert Tappan Morris

Robert Tappan Morris became famous as the author of the first network worm, that is, a program that could independently spread through local and Internet networks. In 1988, he shut down more than 6,000 computers in the US. The virus was programmed to guess passwords for user accounts. After that, the entire ARPANET, the prototype of the Internet, was infected. The following year, Morris was charged with computer fraud. He was sentenced to 3 years of probation and community service, and ordered to pay a large fine.

After leaving prison, Robert did not continue his hacking activities, but was engaged in other major projects. In 1955, a former hacker founded Viaweb with Paul Graham, which was sold 3 years later Yahoo. And since 2006, Robert has been a technical advisor to Meraki. In 2010, he received the Mark Weiser Award.

Jacob Applebaum

Jacob Applebaum has never been prosecuted for hacker attacks or break-ins, he was never even suspected of this. But despite this, he is considered a great potential threat for the US security system.

Jacob is a journalist and computer security researcher. He works in the Tor project, which aims to create a secure network connection system.

Gary McKinnon

Gary McKinnon is being charged with the biggest military hack in the history of hacking, according to one of the complainants. To his words, the hacker replied that he did this in order to find evidence of withholding information from the United States about UFOs, about technologies that could be useful to people and about alternative sources of information. After that, the hacker was extracted to the United States.

IN modern world, where computers have penetrated into all spheres of life, there is a small caste of people who can hack into almost any electronic system. This the best hackers in the world who can decide the fate of companies and people without getting up from your chair.

Hackers are always shrouded in some kind of mystery, so there is an ambivalent attitude towards them among the public. On the one hand, after the hacking of serious companies and systems of entire states, they are accused of causing huge multibillion-dollar harm. On the other side, the best hackers are driving the development of the internet and cybersecurity.

That is why the entire hacker party in the world is divided into 2 main camps:

WhiteHat (white hats) are cybergeniuses who use their skills for good. Usually they take a neutral position and are certified specialists of well-known companies.

BlackHat (black hats)- hackers who engage in illegal hacking and cybercrime for their own benefit or just for fun. Sometimes they can act as "Robin Hoods"

This profession is not taught in school or university, most of us have no idea what hackers actually do. The film industry presents them to us as cybervillains, hacking into top-secret systems and financial institutions to line their pockets. However, reality is often far from fairy tales, so real computer hackers have little in common with characters of similar roles from famous films.

However, there is still one small similarity, the main task for a hacker is to remain unnoticed and not caught. Therefore, it is almost impossible to find public interviews and photos of hackers in the press. Today we will try to open the veil and tell you about the best hackers in the world and their hacks.

Anonymous hacker group

Anonymous originally originated in hacker forums as a subculture or online community idealizing the idea of ​​freedom and anonymity on the Internet. The slogan of the community is “We are against corporations and governments that interfere with the Internet.We believe that the Internet should be open and free for everyone.We do not forget, we do not forgive, our name is legion!

The hacking activist group is best known for its counter-terrorism activities and threatening video messages to the terrorist organization ISIS. As proof of this, hackers hacked 5,000 terrorist accounts online as part of the Operation Paris campaign.

By the way, Anonymous hackers periodically carry out other actions in accordance with their ideology. For example, SOPA is against censorship on the Internet, or EX.UA is an attack on government servers in order to protest against the closure of a Ukrainian file sharing service. The group even imposed electronic warfare on various industry giants such as Sony, as well as entire states such as Israel.

Hacker Gary McKinnon

This is the most famous British hacker, who faces up to 70 years in prison in the United States. However, he received public support, he has not yet been extradited and remains at large.

According to the US government in 2001, Harry hacked over a hundred Department of Defense and NASA computers. After gaining access to the system, McKinnon deleted files of special importance and paralyzed the work of the US military network for a day. In addition, he erased US weapons data after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Harry himself denied the accusations and explained that he was trying to find data on UFOs and useful technologies that the government allegedly withheld.

After numerous litigation and accusations, he managed to completely avoid a trial and extradition due to unstable mental health and was found to have Asperger's syndrome and clinical depression.

Hacker Jonathan James

The first underage hacker in history under the nickname “c0mrade”, who, as a teenager at the age of 15, hacked computer network own school, the Bell South telecommunications system, and then it's illegal hacked a US Department of Defense server.

He is there intercepted all correspondence of employees on e-mail, connected to the NASA server And stole software for life support management on the International Space Station. After that, he was arrested, but because of his minority, he escaped punishment.

Later, James was wanted to be charged after the case of the theft of millions of customer credit card data in the TJX retail chain. The hacker himself denied the accusations and committed suicide at the age of 24, explaining this in his suicide note as the only way to escape punishment for an act he did not commit.

Hacker Adrian Lamo

Adrian was known as the "homeless hacker" or "homeless" hacker for the habit of connecting to the network from public places: cafes, libraries, etc. Many believed that Lamo wanted to become famous, so he always informed the victims about his hacks.

In the early 2000s, Adrian hacked the systems of major corporations just for fun, and then informed the companies about security bugs. Among the targets of the hacker were Yahoo, Microsoft and the New York Times, where he managed to make his contact information to the company's database of experts.

Now Lamo works as a well-known lecturer, journalist and independent security expert, ignoring any job offers in the office.

Hacker Kevin Mitnick

Kevin's hacking skills showed up at an early age when he had desire to use public transport for free. To do this, he masterfully faked a ticket by inflating the Los Angeles bus system.

A little later, he turned into a telephone scammer and amused himself when he managed to forward the signal from home phone to a payphone. Later Kevin began to call absolutely free of charge wherever he wanted. A few years later, Mitnick hacked into the Digital Equipment Corporation network and stole software from them, after which he was searched all over the country.

Kevin didn't stop there. Hacked the computer networks of telephone giants Nokia and Motorola, and then one of the FBI officers. Mitnick failed to cover his tracks and ended up in prison. After leaving, he founded a cybersecurity company and wrote several books about hackers.

Today, computers have entered our lives in literally all areas. With their help, we watch TV and shop, listen to music and work, they control spaceships and houses, store information about bank accounts. Gradually the society becomes more and more lazy. It would seem, why do a series of some actions if a smart and hardworking machine can do it for you.

But any coin has its two sides, the same situation with computers and the Internet. If there are some means to make life easier for us, then there will be someone who wants to illegally use other people's data. Such people are called "hackers". Films are made about them, special services are chasing them. Meanwhile, the names of the ten most famous hackers in history are already known. In many ways, they have one thing in common - they all turned out to be caught by the authorities.

Kevin Mitnick was born in 1963 in California. Already at the age of 12, the boy became interested information security and social engineering. This led Kevin to the fact that in the future, by asking certain leading questions, he could access electronic mailboxes different users and their computers. Such seemingly simple methods helped the hacker break into the card system adopted in Los Angeles. Initially, Mitnick, along with his girlfriend, was engaged in hacking telephone networks, having fun with free international calls. In 1979, telephones and PBXs were a milestone for a hacker. As a result, he began to specialize in hacking computer networks, starting with his native school. As a result, over the years of his activity, Mitnick hacked into the systems of companies such as Nokia, Motorola, Fujitsu Siemens and Digital Equipment Corporation. A high reward was announced for the capture of the famous cyber-criminal. In 1994, Mitnick became interested in cellular telephony, and in 1995 he was arrested. The prosecutor announced that the perpetrator caused damage to 80 million dollars! However, the lawyers managed to drop most of the charges, and after four years in prison, Kevin was released. Now he is engaged in law-abiding activities - he has his own company for organizing network security, he is the author of a number of books about the life of hackers. About the very life and activities of the most famous hacker, the film "Hacking" was even made.

Kevin Poulsen was once better known by the nickname "Dark Dante". His most notorious stunt was hacking into the telephone lines of the KIIS-FM radio station that hosted the competition. It was Kevin who became 102 callers and was able to win a Porsche 944 car on the air. The hacker was born in 1965 and at the age of 13 he became a traveler on long-distance telephone lines. His favorite place became the Los Angeles teleconferences, where he could communicate with his peers, hiding his shy nature. Parents were busy with work and themselves, so the boy grew up closed. By the age of 16, Kevin had already learned to listen to other people's telephone conversations, besides, his parents gave him his first computer. At the age of 18, the young hacker was first caught for illegally entering the UCLA network, but due to the minority of the criminal, he was released. Growing up, Poulsen began to work in computer companies while studying safety. But at night, he turned into "Dark Dante", stealing files with military plans, organizing wiretapping and surveillance. In 1991, the FBI finally put the cyber criminal on the wanted list, and in 1993, his most famous hacking of telephone networks took place. As a result, in 1994, Poulsen was arrested, paid a fine and served 4 years. Now the former hacker is engaged in journalism, publishing articles on computer security topics familiar to him.

Adrian Lamo was nicknamed "The Homeless Hacker". He was born in 1981 in Boston, and got his nickname for constantly changing places of his actions. As a child, Adrian hacked into his father's Commodore 64 to play his own scripts. At the age of 17, Lamo was left without the care of his parents - they moved, leaving their son alone. He was already well versed in computers, working part-time in various companies. Soon Lamo began to travel around the country with only one laptop, a set of clothes and a blanket. The hacker accessed the Internet from cafes and libraries and other public places. Lamo researched security systems largest companies hacking them next. The list of his victims is impressive - Microsoft, NY Times, Yahoo, Bank of America. Small sites, like dating sites, simply did not interest him. At the same time, the hacker not only hacked the security systems, but also reported the vulnerabilities found. That is why the FBI did not declare a hunt for such an "assistant" for a long time. In September 2003, the offender turned himself in to the authorities, confessing to the hacks he had committed. He was sentenced to probation and a $65,000 fine. In 2007, the trial period has passed, now Lamo is a journalist. In 2010, Adrian was noted for the fact that he gave the authorities Bradley Manning, who trusted him, who supplied the well-known Wikileaks with confidential materials.

John Slate was born in 1982. An inconspicuous computer security consultant has created a whole virus network. With its help, he was able to access the secret information of many users - their passwords, accounts, bank accounts. The hacker's guilt was aggravated by the fact that he involved underage colleagues in his activities, and used the information received together with friends, causing considerable material damage to the victims. Even while under investigation, John managed to continue his illegal activities. The scammer ended up injecting his "worms" into more than 150,000 computers! In 2009, he was arrested, Slate was threatened with a prison term of up to 60 years and a fine of 1.75 million. However, the sentence turned out to be rather mild - four years in prison and about 20 thousand dollars in various fines.

Vladimir Levin became the first known Russian hacker. They started talking about him in the 90s when he tried to hack the Russian Citibank. The criminal was born in 1967 in a family of intellectuals and was educated as a microbiologist. Computers were always just a hobby for Levin. It is difficult to call him a full-fledged hacker, because for hacking he used the human factor, not the machine one. In 1994, Levin was able to gain access to corporate accounts of Citibank clients and attempted to withdraw about $12 million to various countries. The hacker was arrested in 1995 at London Airport. He did not manage to use the stolen funds. True, the bank administration was never able to return all the funds back - 400 thousand remained unfound. In 1997, Levin was taken to the United States, where he confessed to stealing almost 4 million at the trial. The process attracted a lot of attention - never before had a hacker been caught stealing such large sums. The offender was imprisoned for 3 years, it is curious that he began to study English only in the prison itself, before that Levin knew him only within computer terms. Citibank itself was forced to rethink its security system. This story left many questions. So it remained unclear whether Levin had accomplices and where did the money go?

Fred Cohen went down in history as the creator of the first computer virus. It happened in 1983. Fred, a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, owns the term. Cohen, at his presentation, demonstrated a program that was able to completely master the VAX computer system, hiding inside graphics program V.D. Cohen's viruses were harmless, it was he who taught them how to get inside the "exe" launcher models, compressing them. This form of software is called "compression viruses". In the 1990s, with the development of information exchange technologies, viruses created on the basis of Cohen's ideology spread widely, becoming not just a hindrance, but a strategic threat to the security of entire countries. The authorities never had any complaints about Fred himself - all his activities were directed to the educational sphere. Today, a well-known hacker-theorist occupies an important position as a manager of an information security company.

Mark Aben was born in New York in 1972. Parents immediately realized that their son would be a genius. The kid already knew the alphabet at the age of 2, and at 3 he tried to write words himself. At 5, Mark had already read a bunch of books, and not fairy tales, but technical publications. The technique immediately interested the child prodigy. By the age of 10, he decided to understand how the telephone network worked, which Mark used with success, chatting with strangers. By the age of 11, Aben received his first computer, which he began to master on his own, using the "poke" method. Over time, Mark began to get involved in the underground party. By the age of 17, he could already do anything on the telephone networks - from blocking a number to tracking calls. Aben took the pseudonym "Optics" and the fame of him spread in narrow circles. Soon the hacker took an active part in the formation of the hacker groups "Masters of Deception" and "Legion of Doom". During the daytime, he himself was engaged in minor computer repairs, and at night he led a second, more interesting life. In the late 80s, interest in a new, romantic, profession arose not only from the press, but also from the FBI. The first arrest took place in 1990, but then the minor Aben was released. In 1994, he was no longer able to get off the court and a year in prison. In 1995, in honor of his release, Aben threw a party, which was attended by many of his colleagues and friends. This marked the beginning of a new life. Today, the former hacker is an independent security consultant for his own small company.

Nation Even-Chame was born in Australia in 1971. He became one of the most highly qualified specialists of the "Sphere" group, he himself acted under the nickname "Phoenix". In 1988, the Australian police, with the help of their agents and informants, began to develop this illegal association. For his criminal activities, Naishon first used the X25 computer network, which operates on the basis of telephone networks, and then the Internet. As a result, the police began to listen to the young hacker's modem. In April 1990, an arrest took place, Even-Chame was charged with 48 fraudulent activities. These included hacking several American universities and even NASA. The case was the first of its kind in Australia. The hacker was threatened with 10 years in prison, but he decided to cooperate with the police, eventually receiving 500 hours of community service and a year of probation. Neishon could not explain the motivation for his actions. Now the famous hacker works in the IT field, preferring to avoid interviews and discuss his past career.

Robert Tappan Morris was born in 1965 and became famous as the creator of the first network computer worm. The brainchild of a hacker was able in 1988 to paralyze the work of 6,000 computers in the United States. The worm program penetrated other people's networks and computers, multiplying rapidly, corrupting files and programs. Maurice's worm tried to guess the password to infected machines using a dictionary from popular words. His attack literally paralyzed the ARPANET, after which significant changes were made to the security systems. In July 1989, Morris was arrested and became the first person convicted of computer fraud. The hacker himself said that he created the worm only in order to count the number of computers on the network. However, the court considered such arguments unconvincing, especially since the "innocent" action caused damage of half a million dollars. The hacker was given 3 years of probation and 400 hours of community service along with a $10,000 fine. Morris now works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is a professor in computer science and electronics. It can be argued that Robert finally said goodbye to his past, because it is no coincidence that he was appointed head of research at National Center Computer security.

Eric Corley is better known in the hacker community as Emmanuel Goldstein. Born in 1959, the attacker became known at the turn of the 80s and 90s, when the general public first learned about hacking computer systems. However, for the first time he appeared before the court only in 1999, when he was accused of distributing a program to crack DeCSS codes. Corley's creation made it possible to decrypt the contents of protected laser discs, and it was written by a group of European experts. The hacker was forced to remove this program from his site, but the start was made - more than 500 other sites began to distribute similar applications. Eric founded the famous 2600 magazine, which promotes and defends hackers. Now he lives in New York, speaking periodically on radio and television.

Since the eighties of the last century, the profession of a computer hacker has been covered with a halo of romanticism, and numerous cyberpunk movies have made this occupation desirable for millions of teenagers. Therefore, it is not surprising that real hackers from the real adult world today become the same superstars as pop singers or movie actors.

Who are these people and what do they really do? It is quite obvious that we can hardly judge many of them, if only because the plans of a hacker who breaks into top-secret systems do not include public interviews and photos for the press at all. On the contrary, his task is to remain unnoticed and not caught. Therefore, the arrest of the most dangerous representatives of this community becomes an event, and their personalities arouse no less interest than the adventures of fictional movie characters.

However, reality is infinitely far from fairy tales, and real computer hackers have little in common with movie images. Their life stories also bear little resemblance to the plots of Hollywood films, and the achievements of the five most famous hackers in the world are excellent proof of this. And why they are not the best, probably everyone has already guessed: simply because they are known to everyone.

1. Kevin Mitnick

American Kevin Mitnick is probably the most famous hacker in the world, largely due to the penchant for eccentric behavior that the idle public expected from him. During his arrest in 1995, Mitnick categorically declared that all he had to do was whistle into a public pay phone to start a nuclear war.

In reality, of course, he could not do anything of the kind, because, even though he really hacked many secure networks, he did not use any ingenious programs and supernatural codes for this, but banal methods social engineering In other words, the human factor. Mitnick used not so much some technical skills as knowledge of psychology and manipulated people, forcing them to give out their passwords.

Practice hacking various systems Mitnick started from childhood. It is known that at the age of 12 he found a way to fake bus tickets, which allowed him to move around the city for free. Then he "intercepted" control of the system voice communication at the local McAvto diner to tell all sorts of nasty things to visitors.

At the age of sixteen, Mitnick hacked into the Digital Equipment Corporation network and stole the software hosted there: this cost him a year in prison and three years under police supervision. It was at this time that he entered the system voice mail Pacific Bell, and after a warrant was issued for his arrest, went on the run.

In 1999, the FBI agents who caught Mitnick claimed that he had false documents and Cell phones with "cloned" numbers. He was ultimately charged with hacking into several computer and telephone networks and sentenced to 46 months in prison plus 22 months for violating probation; while the joke about nuclear war cost him eight months in solitary confinement.

Kevin Mitnick was released from prison in 2003 and has since written several books about his hacking endeavors. In 2000, the film Track Down was released, based on his biography written by Tsutomu Shimomura and John Markoff, with Shimomura being a computer systems expert whose computer was hacked by Mitnick. Today, Mitnick is 49 years old and runs his own computer security company.

2. Gary McKinnon

Scotsman Gary McKinnon is the most famous British hacker, whose extradition has been sought by the United States since the beginning of the 2000s, where he faces more than 70 years in prison. UK police first became interested in McKinnon in 2002, but thanks to public support and some other circumstances, he is still at large.

In the US, McKinnon is accused of hacking nearly a hundred computers belonging to the Department of Defense and NASA in 2001. According to the authorities, having gained access to the system, he deleted critical important files and actually paralyzed the work of the US military department network for a whole day. Moreover, McKinnon allegedly erased American weapons data from hacked computers after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and stole some critical important information. According to the laws in force in the UK for such offenses, he was entitled to only a six-month sentence.

McKinnon himself claimed to have searched US military computers for evidence of withholding information about UFOs and other potentially useful technologies from the public. In addition, he claimed to have gained access to absolutely unprotected machines and left many records of all the vulnerabilities found on the same computers.

In November 2002, a federal court in the US state of Virginia officially accused McKinnon of seven facts of computer crimes, and if the UK had extradited him to the United States, the cracker could well have spent his whole life in prison. After the entry into force of the Extradition Act of 2003, it seemed that the fate of the hacker was sealed, but that was not the case. The only change was that he was required to report daily to the police station and not leave the house at night.

The defense insisted on a medical examination of McKinnon, and he was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome (a form of autism) and clinical depression, capable of provoking suicide. On this basis, McKinnon appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, which initially suspended the extradition, but then refused to block it. In 2009, the Supreme Court issued a permit for extradition, but the public outcry of the case led to the fact that it never took place. Many famous personalities spoke out in support of the hacker - from musicians Sting and Peter Gabriel to London Mayor Boris Johnson and actor Stephen Fry.

In October 2012, Home Secretary Theresa May announced that McKinnon's extradition would be blocked on the grounds that if extradited, the risk to the defendant's life (he could commit suicide) was so great that such a decision would be contrary to human rights. In the future, it was decided to abandon the criminal prosecution of the hacker in the UK: formally, due to difficulties with evidence located in the United States. Now McKinnon is absolutely free.

3. Jonathan James

American Jonathan James is the first juvenile hacker convicted in the United States for cybercrimes. According to the prosecution, at the age of 15 in 1999, he hacked computer system own school, the network of the telecommunications company Bell South, and then penetrated the server of the US Department of Defense. Here he intercepted more than three thousand emails government officials, hacked into a NASA server and stole software designed to manage life support systems on the International Space Station. Pretty cool, especially for a fifteen year old teenager!

In 2000, James was arrested, but due to his young age, he was found guilty on two counts in juvenile court and, thanks to this, avoided actual imprisonment. Instead, he spent six months under house arrest and sent written apologies to the Pentagon and NASA. If James were two years older, he would have faced at least ten years in prison.

Meanwhile, a few years later, Jonathan James became suspected of yet another computer crime: in 2007, credit card information for millions of customers of the TJX retail chain was stolen, and the Secret Service searched James's house, trying to find evidence linking him to this crime.

Despite the fact that charges were never filed, James was sure that he would go to jail, and (according to official version) committed suicide. In a note he left behind, he stated that he did not believe in the justice system and saw suicide as the only way to maintain control of the situation and get away with a crime he did not commit. In interviews that James gave prior to the theft of TJX customer data, he announced his intention to open his own computer security firm. Instead, at the age of 24, he committed suicide.

4. Kevin Poulsen

American Kevin Poulsen is another former hacker who changed his occupation, like Mitnick, to a safer one. Back in the 1980s, Poulsen specialized in hacking telephone lines and manipulated numbers and channels with ease. different operators. Poulsen first became known under the pseudonym Dark Dante in 1993 after hacking into the telephone line management system of the Los Angeles radio station KIIS-FM. As a result of skillful blocking of lines, he became the winner of several competitions and, as the 102nd caller, “won” a Porsche 944 S2.

Poulsen came to the attention of the FBI after hacking into secret databases containing information on wiretapping. telephone conversations. In one of the documentaries television programs Unsolved Mysteries, dedicated to unsolved crimes, his face flashed, but immediately after that, inexplicably, everything telephone lines NBC was out of order, so no one could get through and identify Poulsen.

Nevertheless, the hunt, announced by the FBI, bore fruit: one of the employees of the supermarket recognized Poulsen and blocked him in the aisle of the store. Kevin was charged with hacking telephone networks and money laundering and sentenced to five years in prison, after which he was banned from touching computers for three years.

After his release from prison in 1998, Poulsen turned to journalism and today serves as senior editor of the online version of the famous magazine about computer technology Wired.

5. Sven Olaf Kamphius

Dutch-born Sven Olaf Kamphius, owner of the CyberBunker hosting provider Pirate Bay and a prominent member of the German Pirate Party, was arrested by Spanish police in April 2013 after a series of powerful cyberattacks that, according to some experts, threatened the operation of the entire Internet. The fact is that the already mentioned company CyberBunker and CB3ROB, also owned by Kamphius, hosted not only torrent trackers, but also botnets, spammers and other suspicious enterprises.

A massive DDoS attack on the Spamhaus Project servers followed after the computer security firm blacklisted CyberBunker and CB3ROB. In response, Kamphius announced the creation of the STOPhaus group, which, according to him, included hackers not only from the United States, Canada and Western Europe, but also from Russia, Ukraine and China. According to the prosecution, by multiplying requests through the DNS resolvers of different providers, the STOPhaus group managed to bombard Spamhaus Project servers with requests at a speed of more than 300 Gb / s, which significantly slowed down the entire Internet.

After his arrest, Kamphius stated that he had nothing to do with this attack and that he only publicly represented the STOPhaus group, but did not participate in its activities. According to him, the damage from the attack on the Spamhaus Project is generally exaggerated many times over. He calls himself an Internet activist and a fighter against censorship and all those who try to control the Internet.

The investigation continues, but the man who almost "put down" the Internet, one way or another, is quite worthy to be on our list.

IN real life computer hackers is not at all as romantic and glamorous as it might seem after watching Hollywood science fiction. As a rule, it all comes down to living underground, secret not only from the police, but also from friends and relatives, and long years in prison. Someone is very lucky - and subsequently manages to apply their talents in a legitimate business. And someone is lucky much less.