To keep this show simple, we will try and give you a name or at least a group that is
supposedly led by one master hacker.
10.
Dark Dante We’ll start with a guy who might not have
been the best hacker to walk the Earth, but you have to admire his style.
This man, who was really named Kevin Poulsen, did something pretty cool in the past, and
he’s still pretty cool today.
His biggest claim to fame was back in 1990 when he took over all the phone lines for
a Los Angeles radio station and made sure that he was the lucky winner of a brand-new
Porsche 944 S2.
He was just 25 at the time.
The FBI soon came after him and he was arrested and sentenced to 5 years, at the time the
longest sentence ever given in the U.S. for hacking.
Even when he got out, there was a ban on him using a computer.
He then took off his black hat and started working in security, and after that he became
a contributing editor for the magazine Wired, and he had lots of success breaking big stories.
He even created some software that tracked registered sex offenders on MySpace, which
resulted in at least one arrest.
9.
Albert Gonzalez This is the man who is said have stolen more
identities than anyone else in history.
He is credited with what the New York Times called “The Great Cyberheist”.
He stole 90 million credit and debit card numbers from American department stores and
businesses and he got 20 years for it in 2010.
Again, that was the biggest sentence ever to be handed down for such a crime at the
time.
He was 28-years old.
He ended up costing banks and companies in the region of $200 million, but it’s thought
he made only $2.8 million.
It’s not bad really, but probably wasn’t worth 20 years of freedom.
8.
Cracka This tenacious and cheeky British boy was
just 15 when he hacked the FBI, but he was part of a bigger group called “Crackers
with attitude.”
If you know your rap music, then you’ll know where they got the name.
Some hackers in the U.S were charged with being part of this group, but it seems the
lead member in the UK wasn’t charged.
Police got him, but his name was never revealed.
All we know is that at age 15, he hacked tens of thousands of FBI and Homeland Security
staff and other government big wigs in 2015, as well as hacking the personal email of the
director of the CIA.
Imagine how that felt for the head of the world’s biggest spying outfit.
It’s still a bit of a mystery as to who Cracka is, but Motherboard had a word with
him, “The teenager said authorities arrested him on Tuesday, and are accusing him of the
attacks on Brennan, White House officials, and the recent hack on the Department of Justice,
which resulted in the publication of the names and contact information of almost 30,000 FBI
and DHS employees.”
7.
Max Ray “Iceman” Butler From June 2005 to September 2007, it’s thought
this young man from Idaho stole around 2 million credit card numbers and racked up $86 million
in charges.
He started hacking as a kid, first going to the bad side and supplying illegal software
he had stolen, but then was hired by the same people he ripped off and became a consultant.
He was supposed to be fixing an exploit for the U.S. government when he built a backdoor
into the Department of Defense’s computer network.
He was caught again, and this time sentenced to 18 months in prison.
When he got out he caused havoc, creating malware to steal credit card information and
PINs and causing cyber attacks in the USA.
He sold a lot of banking information on the dark web but was eventually caught.
He was sentenced to 13 years in prison, which at the time was the longest sentence for such
a crime, and he was ordered to pay back his victims a total of $27.5 million.
He is due to get out of prison in 2019.
6.
ASTRA The identity of Astra has never been revealed,
but it’s thought that he was 58-years old when he was caught.
It’s also said that this Greek guy was a math genius.
For half a decade he hacked the computers of the French aviation company, Dassault Group.
During this time, he stole weapons secrets relating to technology and engineering, giving
others the exact plans regarding how to build certain weapons and machines.
This came in handy for some very bad people you’d expect to see in a James Bond movie,
and it’s thought the damage he caused the company cost around $360 million.
He had 250 buyers or thereabouts, from countries all over the world.
He was caught in 2008 and sentenced to six years.
No one knows where he is now or who he really is, but we do know that the word “Astra”
means “weapon” in Sanskrit.
5.
Yu Pingan The ever-strange and never-aging security
genius and part-time gun-slinger John MacAfee said this hack was one of the greatest ever
performed.
Known as the OPM (or Office of Personnel Management) hack, the person behind it managed to get
his hands on information about every single person or consultant that had worked for the
U.S. government for the last 50 years.
This hack was discovered in 2015.
Pingan even managed to have all the information on secret employees, so that meant CIA, undercover
FBI, and all kinds of special operators.
In 2017, a 36-year old Chinese national named Yu Pingan was arrested for this almighty hack
and charged with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Also known as "GoldSun", this clever guy didn’t just have data about 21.5 million government
employees and applicants, but he also knew all about their families and relatives.
Not surprisingly, given that the U.S. government thinks Chinese smartphones are spying devices
for the country, the government said Yu was working officially and the hack was called
an act of espionage.
We can find no reports about this story after his arrest in August 2017.
4.
Jonathan James So there have been some great young hackers,
with one little guy named Kristoffer Von Hassel who hacked the Xbox at just 5 years old.
But today we are only talking about people who caused serious damage or blew the minds
of security experts.
One such man was Jonathan James, who at the age of 15 and 16 managed to hack his local
school system.
But that was nothing; at the same age, he hacked the United States Department of Defense,
getting a lot of information about what was happening in the department, who was employed
there, and being first on the ball regarding threats to the USA.
This young man from Florida was nothing short of a genius, and he decided to hack NASA.
He downloaded information pertaining to how the International Space Station worked, data
that had a value of $1.7 million.
NASA had to shut down its computer network for three weeks while figuring out who was
behind the invasion.
He was arrested and put under house arrest, and even had to go to NASA and the Department
of Defense to personally apologize.
He carried on though, and later hacked giant retail stores and all the information about
their customers, including credit card details.
Things got out of hand and James started thinking he was about to get the blame for things he
hadn’t done.
The young chap was paranoid, and instead of clearing his head, he took a gun and blew
his head off in 2008.
Part of his suicide note read, “I have lost control over this situation, and this is my
only way to regain control.”
3.
Gary McKinnon This young Scottish lad went a step further,
and he is said to have been behind the “biggest military computer hack of all time.”
Calling himself Solo, it’s said that between February 2001 and March 2002, he hacked almost
100 NASA and US military computers.
It’s said he paralyzed the military for a while, making very important computers that
were used to control parts of the armed forces totally inoperable.
This was a huge deal of course, with the U.S. being the most advanced military in the world…maybe…The
Scot, then aged 35, left a note for this powerful military.
It simply read, “Your security is crap.”
He said he hacked NASA mainly because he wanted to see if there was any UFO secret information.
He was caught, but the USA couldn’t get him extradited.
He could have gotten 70 years over there, but UK officials and a passionate public who
loved the brazen hacker demanded he not be sent over to the lion’s den.
Pink Floyd even wrote a song about him.
This clever man now roams free in the UK where he has an SEO-focused company.
That basically means he can get your website at the top of Google searches, and you might
well believe him given his past.
We would.
2.
Julian Assange Ok, so we won’t say WikiLeaks, but we do
have to talk about the man himself, who was a formidable hacker at a very young age.
Long before Assange became an enemy of the United States, he was, it seems, an enemy
of all kinds of institutions.
The Guardian wrote a long feature on the life of this hacker as a young man, stating that
he went through 37 different schools and came out with no qualifications.
He helped write the book “Tales of Hacking, Madness & Obsession on the Electronic Frontier”
in 1997, which proved he was a hacking genius.
Calling himself “Mendax,” in his teens until he reached 20, he hacked the Australian
government, big corporations, and also educational networks.
He moved on to banks, the Pentagon, NASA, Lockheed Martin, all before he became internationally
famous.
The Guardian writes that in 1991, he was without a doubt the best hacker in Australia, perhaps
even the world.
It’s said Assange believed he was a chosen one, once stating, “Men in their prime,
if they have convictions, are tasked to act on them.”
And that he certainly did, becoming the most recognizable hacker ever to have lived.
1.
Kevin Mitnick You might have guessed this is the guy we’d
have at number one, as he’s kind of a mythological hacker.
Looking at security websites such as Kaspersky, they all agree that this man deserves a lot
of credit for his hacks.
This is a guy that was hacking systems when he was only 16 yrs old, and he’s made a
life’s work out of it since, when he wasn’t spending time behind bars at least.
At one point he went on the run and was a fugitive for more than two years, and all
the time he was hacking networks, stealing passwords, copying very valuable proprietary
software, and generally causing trouble.
Mitnick was the inspiration behind the iconic movie, “War Games”.
That’s because in 1982, the then young American man still in his teens hacked the North American
Defense Command (or NORAD).
Well, that is the story, but actually Mitnick says he never even did it.
Nor did he wiretap the FBI, something he also became famous for.
He denies this till today, but some people don’t believe him.
He has said in interviews that while he was damn good, the U.S. government blew up his
talents out of sheer fear.
During a 5-year stint in prison, they kept him in solitary confinement for 8 months,
just because the government was so fearful of his magical talents.
He wasn’t even allowed to use the prison payphone because, in his own words, the judge
was so paranoid, he actually believed that Mitnick could whistle into a phone and perhaps
start launching missiles.
Poor Mitnick had become a victim of fear and ignorance, with a judge and a government that
were way behind him.
Nonetheless, some fears were justified.
Mitnick also hacked Digital Equipment Corporation's network, copying and selling their software.
He got past what were thought to be the very secure networks of Sun Microsystems, and companies
such as Motorola, Netcom, and Nokia.
He also hacked Pacific Bell's network, once saying he only did it just to prove it could
be done.
He now runs his own security firm.
Still known as the world’s best hacker, he always said he did it for fun rather than
for money, and we commend him for that.
His job now is being paid tons of money by big companies to ensure they won’t get hacked.
We’ll end today’s episode with a quote from Mitnick himself: “Should we fear hackers?
Intention is at the heart of this discussion.”
So, do you fear hackers, considering how much of our lives are online?
If you could hack anything, what would you hack, and would your intentions be good or
bad?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called Mariana’s Web - The Scariest Part
of the Internet!
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!