Top 5 most famous hackers: what happened to them

Cybercrime in the modern world reaches its peak. There are two types of hackers. One of them was created by Hollywood, and their images are recognized by everyone in the world. Usually the role of a gamer is assigned to an antisocial botanist, breaking into secure networks, he becomes the leader in the cyber world.

Returning to reality, we can say that a hacker is a person who hacks the source code of the software, thereby bypasses the computer security system and does harm.

The term "hacker" originally applied to ordinary programmers who did not conduct any criminal activity. In the real world there are good and bad hackers. The benevolent name is the white hat, respectively, of people who have malicious intentions - a black hat.

The article will name the names of famous hackers, which can be called, more likely, black hats. How did they become famous and what happened to them?

Jonathan James

In the vastness of the Internet is more commonly known as "c0mrade". How did the hacker come to his glory and what happened to him?

Jonathan was convicted and sent to the US prison for hacking. At that time he was a minor teenager. At the age of 15, he hacked a number of networks belonging to Bell South, Miami-Dade, the US Department of Defense and NASA.

James hacked the NASA network and learned how the International Space Station works. The amount of assets downloaded amounted to $ 1.7 million. In addition, the entire organization had to shut down its network for another three weeks to find out the reasons for the hacking and conduct an investigation. It cost management $ 41,000.

The history of James has, unfortunately, a tragic ending. In 2007, a number of malicious network attacks occurred. Jonathan denied his involvement in this hacking wave. In 2008, he committed suicide, because he believed that he would be convicted for an offense that was not perfect for him.

Kevin Mitnick

Computer hacker Kevin Mitnick worked so interestingly and secretly that the US Department of Justice called him the most wanted hacker in US history. His story is so unique that it formed the basis of two films: "Freedom Downtime" and "Takedown".

After serving a year in jail for hacking digital equipment on the network corporation, he was released on a subscription basis. In the end, he escaped from surveillance and cracked the alert system in America's defense system.

Mitnick was caught and convicted for 5 years. At the moment he advises employees in the field of computer security.

Albert Gonzalez

Known in the vastness of the Internet by the fact that for 2 years he bought stolen credit cards. There were more than 170 million of them.

Gonzalez is the leader of the hacker group ShadowCrew, which was engaged in stealing credit card numbers, then sold them on the Internet. ShadowCrew produced including fake passports, medical records and birth certificates for the purpose of identity theft. As a result, more than $ 4.3 million was stolen.

Gonzalez hacked databases of TJX companies and Heartland payment systems, where credit card numbers are stored. In 2010, the leader of the hacker group was sentenced to imprisonment for 20 years.

Kevin Poulsen

Known under the pseudonym Dark Dante. He earned his fifteen-minute glory, thanks to a thorough knowledge of the telephone system. At one point, he hacked the radio station and called himself the winning number in the lottery. So he won a new Porsche. In the media he is called Hannibal Lecter computer crime.

Having broken into the state secret information, Kevin began to be searched for by the Security Service. They seized him in the hypermarket. He was sentenced to 51 months in prison and fined $ 56,000.

After his release, he began working as a journalist.

Gary McKinnon

To his name, he added the word "Solo". Thus McKinnon said that he would become the largest hacker of all time.

Gary McKinnon for 13 months, from February 2001 to March 2002, illegally obtained access to 97 computers of the US Armed Forces and NASA.

McKinnon argued that he was looking for information about the activity of UFOs in various parts of our vast planet, which was classified. But according to the American authorities, he removed a number of critical files, thus more than 300 computers became inoperable. The hacker caused damage to the state in the amount of $ 700,000.

McKinnon was born in Scotland, so the US authorities still lead him "hunting". If he arrives in America, he will be sentenced to 70 years and fined $ 2 million.