Most Popular Hackers Of All Time

I mentioned few most popular Hackers in this article. This article contains a combination of both “White and Black Hat” Hackers. Hacking refers to the re-configuring or re-programming of a system to function in ways not facilitated by the owner, administrator, or designer. “Hack” may refer to a clever or quick fix to a computer program problem, or to what may be perceived to be a clumsy or inelegant (but usually relatively quick) solution to a problem, such as a “kludge”.

The terms “hack” and “hacking” are also used to refer to a modification of a program or device to give the user access to features that were otherwise unavailable, such as by circuit bending. It is from this usage that the term “hacking” is often used to refer to more nefarious criminal uses such as identity theft, credit card fraud or other actions categorized as computer crime (via Wiki).


"The information present in this article are taken from Wikipedia. The details about each and every Hacker is also taken from Wikipedia"

.Bill Gates

William Henry “Bill” Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, philanthropist, author and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world’s wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books.

Kevin Mitnick

Kevin Lee Poulsen (born 1965 in Pasadena, California, U.S.) is a former black hat hacker. He is currently a senior editor at Wired News. Before segueing into journalism, he had a notorious career in the 1980s as a hacker whose handle was Dark Dante. He worked for SRI International by day, and hacked at night. During this time, Poulsen taught himself lock picking, and engaged in a brash spree of high-tech stunts that would ultimately make him one of America’s best-known cyber-criminals. Among other things, Poulsen reactivated old Yellow Page escort telephone numbers for an acquaintance that then ran a virtual escort agency. 

Kevin Poulsen 

Kevin Lee Poulsen (born 1965 in Pasadena, California, U.S.) is a former black hat hacker. He is currently a senior editor at Wired News. Before segueing into journalism, he had a notorious career in the 1980s as a hacker whose handle was Dark Dante. He worked for SRI International by day, and hacked at night. During this time, Poulsen taught himself lock picking, and engaged in a brash spree of high-tech stunts that would ultimately make him one of America’s best-known cyber-criminals. Among other things, Poulsen reactivated old Yellow Page escort telephone numbers for an acquaintance that then ran a virtual escort agency.

Gary McKinnon 

Gary McKinnon (born 10 February 1966) is a Glasgow-born systems administrator and hacker who has been accused of what one US prosecutor claims is the “biggest military computer hack of all time, although McKinnon himself states that he was merely looking for evidence of free energy suppression and a cover-up of UFO activity and other technologies potentially useful to the public. After a series of legal proceedings in the UK, McKinnon is currently awaiting extradition to the United States.

Jonathan Joseph James

Jonathan Joseph James (December 12, 1983 – May 18, 2008), a.k.a. c0mrade, was an American hacker who was the first juvenile incarcerated for cybercrime in the United States. The South Florida native was 15 years old at the time of the first offense and 16 years old on the date of his sentencing. He died on May 18, 2008, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Jon Lech Johansen 

Jon Lech Johansen (born November 18, 1983 in Harstad, Norway), also known as DVD Jon, is a Norwegian programmer famous for his work on reverse engineering data formats. He is most famous for his involvement in the release of the DeCSS software, which decodes the content-scrambling system used for DVD licensing enforcement. Jon is a self-trained software engineer, who quit high school at the first year to spend more time with the DeCSS case. He moved to the United States and worked as a software engineer in October 2005 until November 2006. He then moved to Norway but moved back to the United States in June 2007.
Adrian Lamo

Adrian Lamo is a threat analyst and journalist, known as a former grey hat hacker, principally for breaking into a series of high-security computer networks, and his subsequent arrest. Best known among these were his intrusions into The New York Times, Yahoo! News, and Microsoft. He is also known for identifying security flaws in computer networks of Fortune 500 companies and then notifying them of any flaws he found. He also informed the authorities of the identity of a US Army Intelligence Specialist who is alleged to be the source of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike video leak to Wikileaks.

Robert Tappan Morris

Robert Tappan Morris, (born November 8, 1965), is an American associate professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the Institute’s department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is best known for creating the Morris Worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet. He is the son of Robert Morris, the former chief scientist at the National Computer Security Center, a division of the National Security Agency (NSA).

Vladimir Levin

Vladimir Levin is a Russian-born Jewish individual famed for his involvement in the attempt to fraudulently transfer US$10.7 million via Citibank’s computers. Currently he is living and doing business in Lithuania.

David L. Smith 

David L. Smith a.k.a. Kwyjibo is the man responsible for the release of the single most costly worm in the history of the internets to that point. He did it totally for the lulz, and when he got caught by the man, he somehow managed to reduce his time served by getting a job working for the FBI.

Mark Abene

Mark Abene (born 1972 ), better known by his pseudonym Phiber Optik, is a computer security hacker from New York City. Phiber Optik was once a member of the Hacker Groups Legion of Doom and Masters of Deception. In 1994, he served a one year prison sentence for conspiracy and unauthorized access to computer and telephone systems.

Chen Ing-hau

Chen Ing Hau (Chen Yinghao, born August 25, 1975), from Taiwan, is the author of the CIH virus (also known as Chernobyl) which infected millions of computers worldwide in 1999. Chen released CIH while attending Tatung University in Taipei. When he created the virus, he received little more than a demerit from the university. He became nervous after learning that the virus had become prevalent. Some classmates advised him not to admit to creating the virus, but he believed that security experts could track him down given enough time. Prior to graduation, he wrote an apology on the Internet, in particular to numerous users in China who were affected. He began serving in the military due to conscription. Due to the constitution of Taiwan at the time, no law prohibited his actions, and he was never prosecuted for the CIH virus.

Dmitry Sklyarov

Dmitry Vitalevich Sklyarov (born December 18, 1974) is a Russian computer programmer known for his 2001 arrest by American law enforcement over software copyright restrictions under the DMCA anti-circumvention provision.

Mudge

eiter C. Zatko, better known as Mudge, was a member of the high profile hacker think tank the L0pht as well as the long-lived computer and culture hacking cooperative “The Cult of the Dead Cow”. He has been tapped by DARPA to be a Program Manager within the Strategic Technology Office where he will help fund research to defeat cyber attacks.

Tsutomu Shimomura

Tsutomu Shimomura (Shimomura Tsutomu born 1964) is a Japanese scientist and computer security expert based in the United States, who became an instant celebrity when he worked together with computer journalist John Markoff, tracked down and helped the FBI arrest hacker Kevin Mitnick.

Dennis Moran

Dennis M. Moran (born 1982 in Massachusetts, United States),also known as Coolio, is an American computer hacker who was accused in February 2000 of a series of Denial-of-service attacks that shut down some of the most popular websites on the Internet. He was later arrested and pled guilty to defacing the websites of DARE and RSA Security, as well as unauthorized access of US Army and Air Force computer systems at four military bases.

Richard Stallman

Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16, 1953), often abbreviated “rms”, is an American software freedom activist and computer programmer. In September 1983, he launched the GNU Project to create a free Unix-like operating system, and has been the project’s lead architect and organizer. With the launch of the GNU Project, he initiated the free software movement; in October 1985 he founded the Free Software Foundation.

John Draper

John Thomas Draper (born 1944), also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch or Crunchman (after Cap’n Crunch, the mascot of a breakfast cereal), is a computer programmer and former phone phreak. He is a legendary figure within the computer programming world.

Linus Torvalds

Linus Benedict Torvalds (Swedish pronunciation born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer best known for having initiated the development of the Linux kernel and git revision control system. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project’s coordinator.

Stephen Wozniak

Stephen Gary “Woz” Wozniak (born August 11, 1950 in San Jose, California) is an American computer engineer who co-founded Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.) with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne. His inventions and machines are credited with contributing significantly to the personal computer revolution of the 1970s. Wozniak created the Apple I and Apple II computers in the mid-1970s.

Eric Steven Raymond

Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is a computer programmer, author and open source software advocate. His name became known within the hacker culture when he picked up maintenance of the “Jargon File” in 1990. After the 1997 publication of “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”, Raymond became, for a number of years, an unofficial spokesman of the open source movement.