Top 10 most dangerous hackers

Think you are pretty good at controlling your internet security? Think again. There are experienced and secret hackers out there who can cross all the obstacles you put in their way. They are not only devilishly smart, but also resourceful, they constantly invent new ways to get through the security protocols. Whatever you do to protect yourself, hackers will always be one step ahead. Say thank you that the most experienced of them would rather focus on draining millions from banks or revealing state secrets than sending messages to your friends on your behalf. You can find out about them in our Top 10 Most Dangerous Hackers.

10. Jeremy Hammond

Jeremy Hammond, currently serving ten years in prison, is a hacker who stole 60,000 credit card numbers and used them to donate money to charity. So this is a good hacker? It seems that he, of course, is on the side of good, attacking neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers, but, we agree with the police, Jeremy is at the same time on the other side of the law.

One of his greatest accomplishments has been hacking the email accounts of the global intelligence group Stratfor and publishing 973 of them on WikiLeaks. Among the disclosed information were found details of the death of Osama bin Laden and plans to organize a revolution in Venezuela. It was extremely shocking information, but he ended up in jail not after this loud publication, but after another theft of money from a credit card, some say that what happened to him was unfair.

9. Kevin Poulsen

Sometimes hackers can look completely harmless in their daily life. Take Kevin Poulsen, who is now the news editor for wired.com, a popular and legitimate website endorsed by tech lovers. He was once a highly secretive hacker, doing things like winning a Porsche 944 S2 by hacking into the phone lines of a Californian radio station KIIS-FM and ensuring that he was the 102nd caller.

Like other hackers, he used his powers for the greater good by identifying MySpace users looking for child porn. But he also used his powers in a bad way, hacking into FBI computers and serving 5 years in prison for this reason. After his release, he focused on his writing career, not only helping to publish Wired magazine, but also writing his book “Kingpin”. A versatile and seemingly re-educated hacker.

8. Jonathan James

Many hackers start out young and they will appear even younger as this generation grows up surrounded by technology. Jonathan James was the poster boy for teenage hackers who earned his first conviction at age 16 after stealing a $ 170 million code from NASA. He did this by hacking into the computers of the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency and installing a so-called "back door" that gave him access to both messages and source code. At the time of the break-in, Jonathan was only 15 years old, and he was tried at 16, so he was punished as a minor.

After all this, he decided to leave all his deeds in the past, but in 2007 his name was associated with the break-in of the TJX department store. Jonathan managed to defend his innocence, but he was convinced that someday he would go to prison, because of this, James committed suicide on May 18, 2008.

7. Hackers of the Aurora group

Not one hacker, but an entire group was guilty of Operation Aurora, an international complex hack aimed at 34 companies, including Google and Yahoo !. It is believed that the hackers were originally from China, as part of the Elderwood Gang, a hacker group based in Beijing. The Shanghai group PLA Unit-61398 was also accused of committing this operation. Google became the first to report the attack, writing in a blog post about the theft of their intellectual property.

It seems the hackers were behind the source code of these internet giants, not the personal information leak, although it was later reported that some Gmail accounts were also hacked. The hackers at Aurora have not yet been caught, they say they are still operating. The main result of this story was the complete closure of Google's China office.

6. Adrian Lamo

Known as the “Homeless Hacker” because of his couch surfing and hostel stays. Adrian Lamo is a bit of a disturbed character. His ex-girlfriends describe him as a self-controlled person with Asperger's. Adrian may have been a victim of a restraining order, was so religious that he refused to give blood samples. All this may explain his anti-social behavior, one of the results of which was the hacking of the website of the New York Times and adding himself to their expert database. For this he was convicted in 2004 and sentenced to 6 months of house arrest, plus a fine.

He also turned many members of the hacking community against each other. This happened after the donation to WikiLeaks and the exposure of one of their assistants - soldier Bradley Manning, who leaked confidential hacker information. Kevin Poulsen then supported Lamo and together they were called "criminals" and "informers", but Lamo argued that Manning put people's lives in danger by his actions. The last time they heard about him was that he was hiding from Manning, expecting revenge.

5. Robert Tappan Morris

One of the earliest hackers in history is Robert Tappan Morris, the creator of the Morris worm, a virus that is said to have infected about 6,000 computers. He developed and released it while attending Cornell in 1988 and was most likely trying to define the size of the internet. It was a rather innocent goal, but he made his worm unkillable and self-replicating, and in the most inappropriate places for this.

Robert was charged with violating the Computer Fraud and Violence Act and was the first to do so. Like many of these hackers, his punishment was relatively light - probation, community service and a fine, and then he founded several companies in the computer field.

4. Cody Crestinger

Associated with the hacker group LulzSec, Cody Krestinger is known to his friends as “Recursion”. He was convicted in 2013 for participating in a 2011 Sony Playstation hack, where he managed to obtain personal data from 77 million people and provoke a network outage for 24 days. People often accused LulzSec of being childish, with no real motivation, their goals are clear from the group's name “the lulz”, which means fun or laughter.

They almost never hacked for financial gain. This is proved by the fact that not a single person out of those 77 million reported missing accounts, after which the same people proved that it is very easy to obtain this type of information, which only confirmed the guesses of the people about the childish purpose of LulzSec. Krestinger also received a relatively light sentence, having spent only a year in prison for his crimes, while many of the LulzSec were still at large and working.

3. Jacob Appelbaum

Another hacker associated with WikiLeaks is someone with a troubled past. He ended up in an orphanage, and then lived with his father, who was a heroin addict and belonged to a group of other people like him who have nothing to lose. After his unhappy childhood, Jacob was inspired to channel his energies into computer science. Now he plays the role of the American public figure WikiLeaks, which is why he is instantly stopped at airports and asked about his political views.

He is also a spokesman for Torah technology, which is helping projects like WikiLeaks by forwarding emails between several different countries. So a message sent from the US to Iraq can go through three different servers before reaching the endpoint, keeping the location of both parties secret. Applebaum has never been convicted of burglary and now lives in Berlin, but is apparently still viewed as a threat, as he and his partner most likely spied on people at night. Fearfully…

2. Kevin Mitnick

Many candidates have competed for the title of the most dangerous hacker in the world. These two hackers have mastered this title at different times, Kevin Mitnick is one of them, but now he is a venerable businessman who, like many other hackers, specializes in improving the protection of their clients' firms. This transformation happened to Kevin at the end of a 5-year prison sentence, itself stemming from a breach of the previous sentence (Mitnick committed the break-in at the end of the supervised release period). He was arrested in 1995 after hacking into DOJ computers when Kevin was said to have been able to launch nuclear warheads by whistling over a payphone. The claims may have been exaggerated, but it's not hard to find out why he was considered the most dangerous hacker of the 1990s.

1. Gary McKinnon

But Mitnick has since been replaced by McKinnon, who was able to hack into the Pentagon and leave a message that read, "Your safety is crap." Between 2001 and 2002, at a difficult time for America, he repeatedly hacked into US Army and NASA computers from his base in London, deleting files and changing passwords. At one point, he caused a 24-hour system shutdown and stopped the trucks carrying the ammunition. He also left an anti-American message that read: “The foreign policy of the United States these days is like state sponsored terrorism ...

Unsurprisingly, on September 11 last year, more guards were called than usual ... I AM ONE. And I will continue to hack at high levels. ” He was arrested in 2002 and is currently serving time in Britain, although the US continues to push for his extradition. An experienced and very dangerous hacker who was stopped before he caused a military disaster.