Aaron Swartz
Aaron Swartz famously helped start the popular online social network Reddit and created a cascade of attention throughout his time as a hacktivist. In 2011, the government arrested and charged Swartz with hacking into MIT’s network to download a massive cache of JSTOR academic data. These charges eventually evolved into two federal counts of wire fraud and nearly a dozen violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act with a maximum penalty of a million dollars and 35 years in prison.
Jeanson James Ancheta
Jeanson took a unique approach to hack compared to others on the list with his curiosity about “botnets.” These botnets consisted of software-based attacks that breached control of a computer system. Scaling this type of attack by stringing hundreds of different computer systems into a network can have a devastating impact.
Kelvin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick likely holds the title of the world’s best hacker ever. Kevin Mitnick started hacking at an early age. He broke into the realm of public attention in the 1980s after he hacked into the North American Defense Command (NORAD). These events would inspire the movie War Games. Two other hacking instances propelled Mitnick to be the number one hacker of all time. First, in 1989, he hacked into Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) to make copies of their software. The DEC hacks led to his arrest and conviction, but while on release, he famously hacked into Pacific Bell’s voicemail system to prove that he could.
Robert Tappan Morris
On November 2, 1988, Robert Morris released a worm that brought down one-tenth of the Internet. With the need for social acceptance that seems to infect many young hackers, Morris made the mistake of chatting about his worm for months before he actually released it on the Internet, so it didn't take long for the police to track him down. Morris said it was just a stunt and added that he truly regretted wreaking $15 million worth of damage, the estimated amount of carnage caused by his worm.
Vladimir Levin
Seeming like the opening of a James Bond movie, Vladimir Levin was working on his laptop in 1994 from his St. Petersburg, Russia, apartment. He transferred $10 million from Citibank clients to his own accounts around the world. As with most Bond movies, Levin's career as a hacker was short-lived -- with a capture, imprisonment, and recovery of all but $400,000 of the original $10 million.
Michael called
Michael Calce, also known as MafiaBoy, was arrested in February 2000 for launching a denial-of-service attack that brought down many of the Internet's largest sites, including Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo. Calce's lawyer, Yan Romanowski, claimed, "If [MafiaBoy] had used all his powers, he could have done unimaginable damage."
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
The now-famous founders of Apple Computer spent part of their youth as hackers. They spent their pre-Apple days (circa 1971) building Blue Box devices (an early phreaking tool allowing users to make long-distance calls without the financial charges) and selling them to fellow students at the University of California, Berkeley.
David Smith
Smith's fame comes from being the author of the infamous email virus known as Melissa. According to Smith, the Melissa virus was never meant to cause harm, but its simple means of propagation (each infected computer sent out multiple infected emails) overloaded computer systems and servers worldwide. Smith's virus was unusual in that it was originally hidden in a file containing passwords to 80 well-known pornography Web sites.
George Hotz
While George Hotz may be a renowned jailbreak artist, he's best known for being named the primary reason for the April 2011 PlayStation breach. As one of the first hackers to jailbreak the Sony PlayStation 3, Hotz found himself in the middle of a very mean, public, and messy court battle with Sony -- perhaps because of the public release of his jailbreaking methods.
Gary McKinnon
In 2002, a decidedly odd message appeared on a U.S. Army computer: "Your security system is crap," it read. "I am Solo. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels." It was later found to be the work of Gary McKinnon, a Scottish system administrator.
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