Best Hackers of All Time

Despite the rich and diverse culture, as any other domain, hacking owns a top of hackers who made the biggest hacks in the world, and it’s hard to be on top
because there are millions of hackers but only the best skilled of them succeed, the rest are just a part of people used to make the successful hackers shine even more. In fact, being successful is not even a goal; successful people are people who do everything with passion and hard work no matter how hard the situation is and success is a collateral effect you get, not a goal.
Gary McKinnon was born on 10 February 1966 in Glasgow, Scotland, he has always been curious and passionate about computers and informatics, which is totally great if you follow your dream in this domain of science. Gray is living right now in London and he is known as a hacker for the operation he did in 2002 called “biggest military computer hack of all time” when he used to put down the US Military’s Washington Network of about 2000 computers for 24 hours and that’s how he received the title of “The biggest hacker of all time”, his curiosity strongly made him to break into NASA’s computers just to get information on UFOs, he wanted to make sure that he is getting it right from the source. He illegally accessed 97 US Military and NASA computers by deleting a couple of files and installing a virus. Everything he made was just to satisfy his curiosity. The whole hack was from his girlfriend’s aunt’s house in London using the name “Solo”. More than that, after hacking he posted a message on the US Military’s website saying “Your security is crap.” And continued hacking but at the end he admitted that he left a threat on one computer after another hack saying “US foreign policy is akin to Government-sponsored terrorism these days … It was not
a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year … I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels .
Right now, Gray is happy with his title and by following his dream he is more than pleased working as a system administrator, a great example of a man who is happy because he followed his dreams. LulzSec or Lulz Security is an important group of hackers due to their realizations, they are a group with eleven members and seven volunteers and they are doing high profile attacks.
Their motto is “The world’s leaders in high-quality entertainment at your expense”, “Laughing at your security since 2011” and their main goal is showing the gigantic companies their lack of security and absence of taking care of their personal data. They hacked Sony, News International, CIA, FBI, Scotland Yard, and several noteworthy accounts to show them how they can play with other people’s information. By hacking, they were having lots of fun and a demonstrative attack is when they broke into News Corporations account posting a report about the death of Rupert Murdoch on 18 July 2011 which was totally fake.
Also, they have created an ASCII graphic used by them in its Chinga La Migra torrent, here’s how the graphic looks like:

. /$$ /$$/$$$$$$
.| $$ | $$ /$$__ $$
.| $$ /$$/$$| $$ /$$$$$$$$| $$ \__/ /$$$$$$/$$$$$$$
.| $$| $$ | $$| $$|____ /$$/| $$$$$$ /$$__ $$ /$$_____/
.| $$| $$ | $$| $$/$$$$/ \____ $$| $$$$$$$$| $$
.| $$| $$ | $$| $$ /$$__//$$ \ $$| $$_____/| $$
.| $$$$$$$$| $$$$$$/| $$ /$$$$$$$$| $$$$$$/| $$$$$$$| $$$$$$.$
.|________/ \______/ |__/|________/ \______/ \_______/ \_______/
//Laughing at your security since 2011!

Another important figure in hacking world is represented by Adrian Lamo; he was born on February 20, 1981 in Boston, Massachusetts and he is mixed race (Colombian-American)he is known as a former hacker and threat analyst. Lamo doesn’t own a high school diploma and he was often called “Homeless Hacker” because he loved to surf, travel, explore abandoned buildings and go to the internet cafes, libraries and universities to discover network and look after details, exploiting security holes was always a hobby for him.

Lamo first got media attention when he decided to change careers and realized his skills in hacking. He hacked big companies such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and The New York Times and in two thousand and three he’s got his first arrest. In the prison, he studied and after getting free he’s got a batch of an American Threat Analyst which allows him to break into accounts sitting is spacious places such as cafeterias. Lamo is one of the biggest examples showing us that school is not
learning you everything and the main problem of school nowadays is the big amount of information school is giving to the students in different domains in order to let students choose a domain they love and specialize only on it. Number four in this top is taken by Mathew Bevan and Richard Pryce, two hackers which case is similar to Gray’s case. Mathew Bevan was born in June 10, 1974 and he is a British Hacker born in Cardiff, Wales he’s got his first sentence and arrest in 1996 after breaking into secure U.S government network protecting himself with the nick name “Kuji”, Mathew wasn’t very good at school and he used the internet to escape form the real life, in this way he formed a double life, the first one with ordinary activities at day and the second life with night activities based on computers and networking. Mathew Bevan and Richard Pryce created many damages between United States of America and North Korea as they used to hack the Military Us computers and installing on them foreign and strange systems. The contents of Korean Atomic Research Institute were dumped into USAF system.

Jonathan Joseph James (December 12, 1983 – May 18, 2008) is an American hacker from North Florida and he is the first juvenile in prison due to a cybercrime he did at age of 15. His action name is “c0mrade” and he broke into Defense Threat Reduction Agency of US department and he installed software that controlled the messages passed on though conversations between the employees of DTRA and he also collected the user names and passwords and other details of employees. More than that, he stole important software. NASA paid from its wallet 41,000$ to shut down its system. Jonathan ended his life committing suicide in 2008. Number six is Kevin Poulsen and his hack story is the funniest so far. Kevin Lee Poulsen (born November 30, 1965) was born in Pasadena, California and he is a black hat hacker because he used his skills to get one of his interests true, he is currently working as a digital security journalist. Would you do anything to follow your dreams? In his case the answer is yes, so from dream to practice was only a step and he made this step by hacking a radio show powered by Los Angeles radio station KIIS-FM, the game rules were so simple, the 102nd caller will win a prize of a Porsche 944 S2 and Kevin wanted to make sure that he will be the lucky caller so he hacked into their phone line. Known as “Dark Dante” he went underground when FBI started to follow him but he was caught and arrested with a sentence of five years. And no one knows what happened with the car. Kevin David Mitnick was born on 6 August, 1963 in Los Angeles, California, he was called once as ‘’the most wanted cyber-criminal of US, but time and work transformed him into a successful entrepreneur. Kevin is also an important hacker; he broke into Nokia, Motorola and Pentagon. He’s got media attention when he was arrested in 1999 and 1988, he had two hack names “The Condor, The Darkside Hacker” and after spending five years at the prison he opened a security company named Mitnick Security Consulting. At the age of 15 he showed his interest to social engineering and he started to collect information including user name, passwords and phone numbers.

Nowadays, he is working as a computer security consultant but in the past he used to work as a receptionist for Stephen S. Wise Temple.

Number eight is taken by Anonymous, one of the most popular moves from the last years, the group was born in 2004 on the website 4chan, it’s more an ideology and it represents a concept in which few communities of users exist in an anarchic society and they are fighting for internet freedom against big corporations. The members are wearing Guy Fawkes masks and they are attacking religious and corporate  websites in special. They have targets such as The Vatican, the FBI, and
the CIA, PayPal, Sony, Mastercard, Visa, Chinese, Israeli, Tunisian, and Ugandangovernments which they almost touch. Many of the members wish to control the Virtual World someday. Astra is the cover of a Greek mathematician who is 58 years old and it’s well known due to the damage Astra caused to the French Dassault Group in 2008. Astra hacked into their system and stole weapons technology data and for five years Astra sold the data to five countries around the world. Official sources say that he had been wanted since 2002. Astra’s happiness meant Dassault sadness because the damage caused to Dassault was about $360 millions while Astra was selling data to more than 250 people all around the world. And the last place in this top is taken by Albert Gonzalez, an American computer hacker; I’d call him The Master Hacker of internet banking because he stole more than 170 million credit cards and ATM numbers in the period 2005-2007. He is originally born in Cuba in 1981 but he immigrated to the USA in 70’s and he’s got his first computer at age of 8. After many attacks he’s got arrested on May 7, 2008 and got a sentence of 20 years in Federal prison.