Top 30 Computer Hackers

1) Jonathan James

At the age of 16, James was the first juvenile convicted and sent to prison for hacking. James targeted high-security organizations for his hacking amusement. His conquests included the Department of Defense, NASA and the Department of Justice, where he viewed classified materials and stole software valued at $1.7 million. James served a six-month sentence under house arrest, although an adult convicted of his crimes would serve a 10-year sentence.

2) Adrian Lamo

Lamo, known as the homeless hacker because he used public connections at libraries and Internet enabled coffee houses, committed hacking crimes involving penetration testing, finding security gaps in a company’s computer system. He accessed personal information, such as social security numbers, and then brazenly informed his victims, including The New York Times, Yahoo!, Citigroup and Microsoft, of their system flaws. After his conviction, Lamo paid a $65,000 fine and sentenced to two years probation after serving home confinement for six months.


3) Kevin Mitnick

First arrested at the age of 17, Mitnick eventually became the most wanted computer criminal in the country. Mitnick hacked the systems of such well-known companies as Motorola, Fijitsu and Novell for the purpose of stealing software and damaging their machines. His final arrest came in 1995, and he served four years for computer crimes. Mitnick authored two books, including “The Art of Intrusion.” Hollywood produced a movie based on his hacking activities called, “Takedown.” Today, Mitnick operates a computer security firm.

4) Robert T. Morris
As a student in Cornell University in 1988, Robert T. Morris created the first computer worm, a virus that spreads via the Internet. His claims that the worm began simply as an experiment that spiraled out of his control did not persuade prosecutors, who pointed out the significant loss of time and money his creation caused. Morris served three years of probation along with community service and paid a fine of $10,000. Morris went on to create a company that sold online software products, which Yahoo! Purchased in 1998 for $45 million. Today, Morris works at M.I.T. as a professor in their computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory.

5) Kevin Poulsen

In 1990, radio station 102.7 FM in Los Angeles hosted a contest, awarding a free Porsche to the 102nd caller of the day. Poulsen, having already hacked into the station’s phone lines arranged to become that caller. He later went on to hack computer systems of the FBI and the Defense Department. Arrested in 1991, after seventeen months of hiding, he received a sentence of 51 months, the longest sentence ever given for computer crimes at that time. Today, Poulsen writes professionally.

6) Jeanson James Ancheta


Jeanson James Ancheta

A dropout of Downey High School in California, Jeanson James Ancheta became a hacker in 2004 after he started to work with software robots called “botnets.” His hacking practice began when he discovered rxbot, a computer worm that has the capacity to infect and destroy computer networks. He became the first person to have ever been charged for controlling a huge number of hijacked computers in the United States

7) Kevin Poulsen


Kevin Poulsen
A news editor at Wired.com, Kevin Lee Poulsen is a former hacker whose most remarkable hack was when he took over the telephone lines of the entire Los Angeles-based radio station KIIS-FM as he intended to make sure that he would be the 102nd caller in order to win a Porsche 944 S2.  After he was released from prison, he decided to leave the computer programming world and become a journalist to distance himself from his criminal past.

8) Albert Gonzalez


Albert Gonzalez
A computer criminal best known for having masterminded and orchestrated a string of credit card thefts in the United States that brought in 170 million US dollars to his personal account, Albert Gonzalez is a computer hacker who is said to have committed the biggest and most controversial fraud in history. He used SQL injections in his operations to steal computer data from private computer networks and launch ARP spoofing attacks, a technique that sends fake messages to local area networks.

9 George Hotz
George Hotz
An alumnus of the John Hopkins Centre for Talented Youth program, George Francis Hotz is known for unlocking the iPhone to allow it to be used with other wireless carriers. He was also the one who developed the limera1n jailbreak tool, the tool that could remove the limitations of Apple devices such as iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Apple TV. He was also sued by Sony for hacking the PlayStation3.

10 Kevin Mitnick

Kevin Mitnick
An American computer security consultant, Kevin David Mitnick is one of the most notorious hackers of the 20th century. He got involved in several computer and communications-related crimes and even became one of the most wanted computer criminals in the United States. At a very young age of 12, Kevin Mitnick  begun to use his social engineering skills to circumvent the punch card system used in Los Angeles buses.

11 Gary Mckinnon

Gary McKinnon
Convicted for having hacked a total of 97 US-based military and NASA computer systems, Gary McKinnon is a systems administrator based in Scotland. In 2002, he was known for having perpetrated the largest military computer hack of all time after shutting down a network of 2,000 computers in the US military and deleting critical files such as weapons logs in just a matter of 24 hours. This rendered the US military network inoperable for days.

12 Adrian Lamo

Adrian Lamo
Adrian Lamo first caught the attention of the media after he broke into several high-profile computer networks such as The New York Times, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. He also became known for operating Inside-AOL.com, an AOL watchdog website. He has performed several authorized and unauthorized security checks for high-profile networks and yet never asked for a fee. Lamo was complimented for fortifying the corporate security of Worldcom.

13 Jonathan James

Jonathan James
A hacker who was imprisoned at a juvenile age for violating the cybercrime law, Jonathan James was known for committing several unauthorized intrusions in computer networks and systems including those of Bellsouth and the Miami-Dade School. In his early 20’s, he admitted to the authorities that he had installed an illegal backdoor in a computer server in Virginia to access the usernames and passwords of some 300 internet users, particularly DRTA employees and military men.

14 Owen Walker

Owen Walker
A hacker based in New Zealand, Owen Walker was a ringleader of a notorious international hacking organization that was estimated to have caused about $27 million worth of damages to several groups. He did not receive formal training in computer programming since he dropped out of school because of bullying. He masterminded the attack of the computer network of the University of Pennsylvania through the use of unauthorized botnets which he established himself.

15 Robert Tappan Moris

Robert Tappan Morris
A computer scientist who in 1988 invented the first computer worm on the internet known as the Morris Worm. Robert Tappan Morris was the first person to have ever been convicted due to his violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of the United States. He used to be a professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before he was sentenced to three years of probation by the US court.


 16 HD Moore


HD Moore
HD Moore is the creator of the computer software Metasploit which was developed to test computer networks resistance to hacker penetration.  HD Moore is also known for software projects such as WarVOX, AxMan, the Metasploit Decloaking Engine and Rogue Network Link Detection Tools.  As a computer engineer, he concerned himself with the development of platforms intended to become security tools designed to test for vulnerabilities within networks in order to aid the development of stronger network protection software.

17 Denis Moran


Dennis Moran
One of the most notorious computer criminals of the 20th century, Dennis M. Moran was involved in a series of denial-of-service attacks that caused hundreds of internet websites to shut down. Also known as Coolio, Dennis Moran also masterminded the defacement of the DARE and RSA Security websites, as well as the unauthorized access of the computer systems of the US Air Force and US Army. As an adult, he was charged of 7 counts of Class A felonies related to illegal access to networks.

18 Kristina Svechinskaya

Sam Jain
An internet entrepreneur and the former chief executive officer of eFront, Sam Jain was arrested in California in 2000 after being charged with submitting fraudulent data to website ranking publisher Media Matrix. Prior to that, he had a pending case in California because of his involvement in the sale of counterfeit Symentec software. He also got involved in the ICQ instant messaging scandal, which allowed him to access private data from several internet accounts.

19 Sam Jain

Karl Koch
A German hacker who became famous in the 1980’s, Karl Koch was involved in the sale of hacked information from US military computers to the KGB, the main security agency of the Soviet Union. He was a member of different hacking organizations such as the CCC (Chaos Computer Club), and worked with individual hackers such as DOB or Dirk-Otto-Brezinski and Urmel. He was among the few hackers who got involved in the Cold War computer espionage incident.

20 Leonard Rose


Leonard Rose
Leonard Rose was a hacker convicted in 1991 due to wire fraud. He was known for having stolen Unix source codes from AT&T and distributed two Trojan Horse programs which allowed him to gain illegal access to several computer systems. He was also accused of being the mastermind of the Legion of Doom hacking group, one of the most active hacker groups from 1980’s to 1990’s, and of collecting login information from various websites.

21 Rafael Nunez


Rafael Nunez
Rafael Nunez was a member of the notorious hacking group World of Hell in 2011. As a member of the group, he got involved in several high profile attacks, finding websites with poor security and then defacing them with light-hearted messages. He was part of the Dan Verton book entitled “The Hacker Diaries: Confessions of Teenage Hackers” in 2002. Today, he is a notorious businessman dwelling in Venezuela.

22 Andrew Auernheimer

Andrew Auernheimer
More commonly known as “Weev,” Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer was an internet troll who gained media attention because of his inflammatory, off-topic posts in several online communities and forums. An American grey hat hacker, Andrew was known for using several pseudonyms in his operations. He was the one responsible for the disruption of Amazon’s services in 2009 and for hacking the website of The New York Times.

23 Mark Abene


Mark Abene
Known by his pseudonym Phiber Optik, Mark Abene was a New York-based hacker who used to be a member of some of the most notorious hacker groups in the United States, including the Legion of Doom and the Masters of Deception. He was a high-profile hacker who targeted large corporations and was among the most important figures of the Masters of Deception. Aside from computers, he also explored and hacked several telecommunication systems.
 
24 Julian Paul Assange

Julian Paul Assange
An Australian editor and publicist, Julian Paul Assenge is the founder of WikiLeaks, a site that publishes submissions of secret information from personal web accounts and news leaks. Before he became internationally acclaimed for his founding of WikiLeaks, he was a teenage hacker who published US military documents. At age 16, he joined the International Subversives group and hacked computer systems under his pseudonym, “Mendax.”

25 Mike Calce

Mike Calce
Michael Demon Calce, also known as the MafiaBoy of cyberspace, was a high school apprentice at West Island, Quebec when he got involved in a series of publicized denial-of-service attacks against some of the largest commercial websites, including Yahoo!, eBay, CNN, Amazon.com and Dell, Inc. In 2000, he targeted Yahoo! through project Rivolta, a term which means “riot” in Italy. He initially denied the offenses charged against him but accepted the accusations in 2001.

26 Chad Davis

Chad Davis
An American hacker who operated under the pseudonym Mindphasr, Chad Davis is among the most notorious cybercriminals of the 20th century. He founded Global Hell, a syndicate of computer hackers in the United States, and authored the hacking of the websites of some of the largest organizations and corporations in the country. He was the man behind the vandalism of the homepage of The White House and the US Army with a message saying “GlobalHell will not die.”

27 Nahshon Even-Chaim

Nahshon Even-Chaim
Also known as Phoenix, Nahshon Even-Chaim was the first computer hacker to have ever been convicted in Australia. His mission was to break into computer systems by dialling indirectly or placing a call through X.25 networks or internet connectivity. Among the websites he damaged were those of the University of California, Berkley, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Hacking computers was his way of ridiculing the entire computer security community.

28 Raphael Gray

Raphael Gray
At age 19, Raphael Gray was able to hack several computer systems around the world in just a matter of one month. His mission was to gain unauthorized access to credit card information, which eventually netted him millions of dollars. Dubbed “The Bill Gates Hacker,” Gray broke into secure computer systems and published all the credit card information he accessed as part of his multimillion credit card pound mission.

29 Ryan Ackroyd

Ryan Ackroyd, aka, Kayla aka lolspoon, is a former black hat hacker who was one of the six core members of the hacking group "LulzSec" during its 50 day spree of attacks from May 6, 2011 until June 26, 2011.At the time, Ackroyd posed as a hacker named "Kayla" and was responsible for the penetration of multiple military and government domains and many high profile intrusions into the networks of Gawker in December 2010, HBGaryFederal in 2011, PBS, Sony, Infragard Atlanta, Fox Entertainment and others.
After his release from jail, Ackroyd publicly stated during "a conversation with Lulzsec" that he believes Anonymous, other activists and like-minded should come together and attempt to change issues legally.
In December 2014 he gave his first ever lecture in an over-capacity lecture auditorium at SHU for over 200 students, where he spoke about Lulzsecs "50 days of lulz".
On his Twitter account Ackroyd vowed to help the security of the systems he once breached, stating that he would "help secure and defend the systems in hopes we can all learn from each other, should I be given the chance to do so". He also added "For me, it wasn't about stealing people's information, I just wanted to show people how flawed their so-called secure systems are. People need to fix their stuff." "I sent countless emails to companies and even government organisations and I was ignored. I soon realised I'd have to show them why they should secure themselves before they would listen. I'm like Jiminy Cricket, only when you don't listen I'd hit you really hard with my tiny umbrella so you'd do the right thing." he joked.

Arrest and Legal Proceedings

On September 1, 2011, Ackroyd's "lolspoon" Twitter feed went silent for the last time,amidst announcements that the hacker was arrested in Mexborough, South Yorkshire, England.It became clear that Ackroyd was not, in fact, a girl, but rather a 24-year-old man with prior military service in the British Army serving in Iraq. He was released on bail with fellow co-defendants and Ackroyd was accused of installing a trip-wire which activated as soon as agents moved his computer upon raiding his home, which clean erased all data on his system.
On April 9, 2013, Ackroyd appeared in court for the final time where he was branded "highly forensically aware" by the court. Ackroyd pled not guilty to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks carried out under the LulzSec banner during its "AntiSec" campaign, but pled guilty to violating the computer misuse act.
Ackroyd served a 30-month prison sentence in England.

30 Mustafa Bassam


Mustafa Al-Bassam (born January 1995), alias Tflow, is a former black hat hacker who was one of the six core members of LulzSec during its 50-day spree of attacks in the spring of 2011.At the time of the so-called "50 Days of Lulz", Al-Bassam was 16 years old and living as a student in London. He is one of the affiliates of the online association of "hacktivists" known as that targeted and HBGaryFederal in February 2011, having done much of the actual hacking work. Tflow also managed the LulzSecurity.com website during its short run in June 2011. He is currently a technology volunteer with Privacy International in London.

Rise to prominence

In February 2011, HBGaryFederal CEO Aaron Barr claimed he was going to expose the identities of hackers from Anonymous. Mustafa Al-Bassam, going by "Tflow" at the time, came across this information and shared it with co-conspirators Jake Davis, Hector Monsegur and others. Chatlogs from the AnonOps IRC network demonstrate Tflow's integral role in the operation which hacked the servers of HBGaryFederal, defaced its homepage and leaked more than 70,000 private company emails, doing millions of dollars worth of damage. During the next several months, Tflow and fellow hacktivists Topiary, Sabu, Kayla, Pwnsauce and Palladium began searching for vulnerabilities in high level computer systems. During this time, Tflow and Topiary are credited with inventing the name "LulzSec" for the hacking group they were forming.

Arrest and legal proceedings

On July 20, 2011, it was announced on Fox News and other press outlets that London's Metropolitan Police had arrested a 16-year-old pupil in London who was alleged to have used the nickname "Tflow" in a series of high-profile attacks on fox.com, the FBI affiliate "Infragard",PBS and Sony. For legal reasons, his name could not be disclosed for nearly two more years. On April 9, 2013, Tflow's full name was revealed along with his picture on multiple news outlets throughout the internet. He pled guilty to computer misuse and received a 20-month suspended sentence with 500 hours of unpaid community service work. He is currently free and back on the internet after a nearly two year internet ban imposed by police.

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