Technology
Top 10 Notorious Black Hat Hackers
To accompany the technological advancements of the computer
world and the constant changing definition of a hacker, we thought it
was time to look back at ten of the most notorious black hat hackers and
the legendary hacks that earned them such a title. First, it should be
known that a black hat hacker is computing slang for a person who
engages in illegal or malicious hacking. A white hat hacker is a
computer hacker who intends to improve internet security. It is
note-worthy that many white hat hackers, such as Steve Jobs of apple,
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and even many hackers listed below, were
once black hat hackers.
10
Kevin Poulsen
a.k.a. Dark Dante
The notorious ’80s black hat hacker, Kevin Poulsen, gained
recognition for his hacking of the telephone lines for LA radio station
KIIS-FM, securing himself a place as the 102nd caller and winning a
brand new Porsche 944, among other prizes. Law enforcement dubbed
Poulsen the “Hannibal Lecter of computer crime.” Poulsen went
underground as a fugitive when the FBI began its search for him, but in
1991, he was finally captured.
He pleaded guilty to seven counts of mail, wire and computer fraud,
money laundering, obstruction of justice, and for obtaining information
on covert businesses run by the FBI. Kevin Poulsen was sentenced to 51
months in prison (4 years and 3 months), which was the longest sentence
ever given for hacking at the time. However, since serving time, Poulsen
has worked as a journalist and is now a senior editor for Wired News.
Poulsen’s most note-worthy article details his work on identifying 744
sex offenders with MySpace profiles.
Cyber-criminal Albert Gonzalez has been accused of masterminding the
biggest ATM and credit card theft in history; from 2005 to 2007, he and
his cybergroup had allegedly sold more than 170 million card and ATM
numbers. Gonzalez’s team used SQL injection techniques to create malware
backdoors on several corporate systems in order to launch
packet-sniffing (specifically, ARP Spoofing) attacks, allowing him to
steal computer data from internal corporate networks. When he was
arrested, authorities seized $1.6 million in cash including $1.1 million
found in plastic bags placed in a three-foot drum which had been buried
in his parents’ backyard. In 2010, Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years
in federal prison.
It’s almost like the opening of a James Bond movie: in 1994, while
working from his laptop from his Russian apartment in St. Petersburg,
Vladimir Levin transferred $10 million from the accounts of Citibank
clients to his own accounts around the world.
However, Levin’s career as a hacker was only short lived, with a
capture, imprisonment and recovery of all but $400,000 of the original
$10 million. During Levin’s 1997 trial in the United States, he was said
to have coordinated the first ever internet bank raid. The truth is
Levin’s ability to transfer Citibank client funds to his own accounts
was possible through stolen account numbers and PINs. Levin’s scam was a
simple interception of clients’ calls while recording the punched in
account numbers.
On November 2, 1988, Robert Morris released a worm that took down
one-tenth of the Internet, crippling 6,000 plus computer systems. It
didn’t take long for the police to track him down. Due in part to the
need for social acceptance that seems to be common amongst many young
hackers, Morris made the fault of chatting about his worm for months
before its release on the Internet. Morris claimed it was just a stunt,
and added that he truly regretted causing $15 million worth of damage:
the estimated amount of carnage his worm left behind.
Morris was one of the first to be tried and convicted under the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act but only had community service and a fine
as his penalty. The defense for such a light sentence was that Morris’
worm didn’t destroy the actual contents of affected computers. Morris
now works in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
6
Michael Calce
a.k.a. MafiaBoy
In February of 2000, Michael Calce launched a series of widely known
denial-of-service attacks against large commercial websites, including
Yahoo!,
Amazon.com,
Dell, eBay, and CNN. He hacked Yahoo! when it was still the web’s
leading search engine and caused it to shutdown for about an hour. Like
many hackers, Calce exploited websites primarily for pride and
establishing dominance for himself and his cybergroup, TNT. In 2001, the
Montreal Youth Court sentenced Calce to eight months of open custody,
one year of probation, restricted use of the Internet, and a minimal
fine.
Smith’s fame is due to being the author of the infamous e-mail virus,
Melissa. Smith claims that the Melissa virus was never intended to
cause harm, but its simple means of propagation (each infected computer
sent out multiple infected emails) overloaded computer systems and
servers around the world. Smith’s virus takes an unusual turn in that it
was originally hidden in a file that contained passwords to 80
well-known pornography websites. The name Melissa was derived from a lap
dancer Smith met while on a trip in Florida. Even though over 60,000
email viruses have been discovered, Smith is the only person to go to
federal prison in the United States for sending one.
Nicknamed “the homeless hacker,” Adrian Lamo used coffee shops,
libraries and internet cafés as his locations for hacking. Apart from
being the homeless hacker, Lamo is widely-known for breaking into a
series of high-profile computer networks, which include The New York
Times, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and MCI WorldCom. In 2002, he added his name
to the The New York Times’ internal database of expert sources and
utilized LexisNexis account to conduct research on high-profile
subjects. The Times filed a complaint, and a warrant for Lamo’s arrest
was issued, followed by a 15-month investigation by federal prosecutors
in New York.
After several days in hiding, he finally surrendered to the US
Marshals, and then to the FBI. Lamo was ordered to pay approximately
$65,000 in damages and was sentenced to six months house arrest at his
parents’ home, with an additional two years of probation. In June 2010,
Lamo disclosed the name of Bradley Manning to U.S. Army authorities as
the source of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike video leak to
Wikileaks. Lamo is presently working as a threat analyst and donates his
time and skills to a Sacramento-based nonprofit organization.
The name of the acclaimed jailbreak artist, George Hotz, will forever
be associated with the April 2011 PlayStation breach. Being one of the
first hackers ever to jailbreak the Sony PlayStation 3, Hotz found
himself in the midst of a very relentless, public and messy court battle
with Sony – perhaps worsened by Hotz’s public release of his jail
breaking methods. In a stated retaliation to Sony’s gap of the unstated
rules of jail breaking – never prosecute – the hacker group Anonymous
attacked Sony in what would be the dubbed as the most costly security
break of all time to date.
Hackers broke into the PlayStation Network and stole personal
information of some 77 million users. However, Hotz denied any
responsibility for the attack, and added “Running homebrew and exploring
security on your devices is cool; hacking into someone else’s server
and stealing databases of user info. is not cool.”
2
Jonathan James
a.k.a. c0mrade
Jonathan James, 16-year-old black hat hacker, became the first
juvenile imprisoned for cybercrime in the United States. James gained
his notoriety by implementing a series of successful intrusions into
various systems. At an amazingly young age of 15, James specialized in
hacking high-profile government systems such as NASA and the Department
of Defense. He was reported to have stolen software worth over $1.7
million. He also hacked into the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and
intercepted over 3,000 highly secretive messages passing to and from the
DTRA employees, while collecting many usernames and passwords.
On May 18, 2008, at the age of 25, James committed suicide using a
gun. The words in his suicide note provide some insight into this
obviously brilliant but troubled youth who thought he would be a
scapegoat and blamed for cyber crimes he did not commit: “I have no
faith in the ‘justice’ system. Perhaps my actions today, and this
letter, will send a stronger message to the public. Either way, I have
lost control over this situation, and this is my only way to regain
control.”
In 2002, an exceptionally odd message appeared on a US Army computer
screen: “Your security system is crap,” it read. “I am Solo. I will
continue to disrupt at the highest levels.” It was later identified as
the work of Scottish systems administrator, Gary McKinnon.
McKinnon suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, which is the least severe
form of autism. The symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome certainly match
Gary’s actions: that is, highly intelligent with an exceptional
understanding of complex systems. Though sufferers often have difficulty
reading social cues and acknowledging the impact of their
often-obsessive behavior, they tend to be geniuses in one particular
subject. For Gary, it was computers.
Gary has been accused of executing the largest ever hack of United
States government computer networks — including Army, Air Force, Navy
and NASA systems. The court had recommended that McKinnon be apprehended
to the United States to face charges of illegally accessing 97
computers, causing a total of $700,000 in damage. Even more interesting
are McKinnon’s motives for the large scale hackings, which he claims
were in search of information on UFOs. He believed the US government was
hiding such information in its military computers.
Kevin David Mitnick (born on August 6, 1963) is an American computer
security consultant, author, and hacker. In the late 20th century, he
was convicted of various computer- and communications-related crimes. At
the time of his arrest, he was the most-wanted computer criminal in the
United States. Mitnick gained unauthorized access to his first
computer network in 1979, at 16, when a friend gave him the phone number
for the Ark, the computer system Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)
used for developing their RSTS/E operating system software. He broke
into DEC’s computer network and copied their software, a crime he was
charged with and convicted of in 1988.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Mitnick gained
unauthorized access to dozens of computer networks while he was a
fugitive. He used cloned cellular phones to hide his location and, among
other things, copied valuable proprietary software from some of the
country’s largest cellular telephone and computer companies. Mitnick
also intercepted and stole computer passwords, altered computer
networks, and broke into and read private e-mail.
Due to his fame he is included as a bonus entry here.
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