The portrayal of hackers in the media has ranged from the high-tech super-spy, as in Mission Impossible
where Ethan Hunt repels from the ceiling to hack the CIA computer
system and steal the "NOC list," to the lonely anti-social teem who is
simply looking for entertainment.
Also known as Dark Dante, Poulsen gained recognition for his hack of LA radio's KIIS-FM phone lines, which earned him a brand new Porsche, among other items. Law enforcement dubbed him "the Hannibal Lecter of computer crime."
Hackers that use their skills for good are classified as "white hat." These white hats often work as certified "Ethical Hackers," hired by companies to test the integrity of their systems. Others, operate without company permission by bending but not breaking laws and in the process have created some really cool stuff. In this section we profile five white hat hackers and the technologies they have developed.
"Woz" is famous for being the "other Steve" of Apple. Wozniak, along with current Apple CEO Steve Jobs, co-founded Apple Computer. He has been awarded with the National Medal of Technology as well as honorary doctorates from Kettering University and Nova Southeastern University. Additionally, Woz was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in September 2000.
Berners-Lee is famed as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the system that we use to access sites, documents and files on the Internet. He has received numerous recognitions, most notably the Millennium Technology Prize.
The reality, however, is that hackers are a very diverse bunch, a
group simultaneously blamed with causing billions of dollars in damages
as well as credited with the development of the World Wide Web and the
founding of major tech companies. In this article, we test the theory
that truth is better than fiction by introducing you to ten of the most
famous hackers, both nefarious and heroic, to let you decide for
yourself.
Black Hat Crackers
The Internet abounds with hackers, known as crackers or "black hats,"
who work to exploit computer systems. They are the ones you've seen on
the news being hauled away for cybercrimes. Some of them do it for fun
and curiosity, while others are looking for personal gain. In this
section we profile five of the most famous and interesting "black hat"
hackers.
1) Jonathan James:
James gained notoriety when he
became the first juvenile to be sent to prison for hacking. He was
sentenced at 16 years old. In an anonymous PBS interview, he professes, "I was just looking around, playing around. What was fun for me was a challenge to see what I could pull off."
James's major intrusions targeted high-profile organizations. He
installed a backdoor into a Defense Threat Reduction Agency server. The DTRA
is an agency of the Department of Defense charged with reducing the
threat to the U.S. and its allies from nuclear, biological, chemical,
conventional and special weapons. The backdoor he created enabled him to
view sensitive emails and capture employee usernames and passwords.
James also cracked into NASA computers, stealing software worth
approximately $1.7 million. According to the Department of Justice, "The
software supported the International Space Station's physical
environment, including control of the temperature and humidity within
the living space." NASA was forced to shut down its computer systems,
ultimately racking up a $41,000 cost. James explained that he downloaded
the code to supplement his studies on C programming, but contended,
"The code itself was crappy . . . certainly not worth $1.7 million like
they claimed."
Given the extent of his intrusions, if James,
also known as "c0mrade," had been an adult he likely would have served
at least 10 years. Instead, he was banned from recreational computer use
and was slated to serve a six-month sentence under house arrest with
probation. However, he served six months in prison for violation of
parole. Today, James asserts that he's learned his lesson and might
start a computer security company.
2) Adrian Lamo:
Lamo's claim to fame is his break-ins
at major organizations like The New York Times and Microsoft. Dubbed the
"homeless hacker," he used Internet connections at Kinko's, coffee
shops and libraries to do his intrusions. In a profile article, "He Hacks by Day, Squats by Night,"
Lamo reflects, "I have a laptop in Pittsburgh, a change of clothes in
D.C. It kind of redefines the term multi-jurisdictional."
Lamo's intrusions consisted mainly of penetration testing, in which
he found flaws in security, exploited them and then informed companies
of their shortcomings. His hits include Yahoo!, Bank of America,
Citigroup and Cingular. When white hat hackers are hired by companies to
do penetration testing, it's legal. What Lamo did is not.
When he broke into The New York Times' intranet, things got serious.
He added himself to a list of experts and viewed personal information on
contributors, including Social Security numbers. Lamo also hacked into
The Times' LexisNexis account to research high-profile subject matter.
For his intrusion at The New York Times, Lamo was ordered to pay
approximately $65,000 in restitution. He was also sentenced to six
months of home confinement and two years of probation, which expired
January 16, 2007. Lamo is currently working as an award-winning
journalist and public speaker.
3) Kevin Mitnick:
A self-proclaimed "hacker poster boy," Mitnick
went through a highly publicized pursuit by authorities. His mischief
was hyped by the media but his actual offenses may be less notable than
his notoriety suggests. The Department of Justice
describes him as "the most wanted computer criminal in United States
history." His exploits were detailed in two movies: Freedom Downtime and
Takedown.
Mitnick had a bit of hacking experience before committing the
offenses that made him famous. He started out exploiting the Los Angeles
bus punch card system to get free rides. Then, like Apple co-founder
Steve Wozniak, dabbled in phone phreaking. Although there were numerous
offenses, Mitnick was ultimately convicted for breaking into the Digital
Equipment Corporation's computer network and stealing software.
Mitnick's mischief got serious when he went on a two and a half year "coast-to-coast hacking spree." The CNN article, "Legendary computer hacker released from prison,"
explains that "he hacked into computers, stole corporate secrets,
scrambled phone networks and broke into the national defense warning
system." He then hacked into computer expert and fellow hacker Tsutomu
Shimomura's home computer, which led to his undoing.
Today, Mitnick has been able to move past his role as a black hat
hacker and become a productive member of society. He served five years,
about 8 months of it in solitary confinement, and is now a computer
security consultant, author and speaker.
4) Kevin Poulsen:
Also known as Dark Dante, Poulsen gained recognition for his hack of LA radio's KIIS-FM phone lines, which earned him a brand new Porsche, among other items. Law enforcement dubbed him "the Hannibal Lecter of computer crime."
Authorities began to pursue Poulsen after he hacked into a federal
investigation database. During this pursuit, he further drew the ire of
the FBI by hacking into federal computers for wiretap information.
His hacking specialty, however, revolved around telephones. Poulsen's most famous hack, KIIS-FM, was accomplished by taking over all of the station's phone lines. In a related feat,
Poulsen also "reactivated old Yellow Page escort telephone numbers for
an acquaintance who then ran a virtual escort agency." Later, when his
photo came up on the show Unsolved Mysteries, 1-800 phone lines for the
program crashed. Ultimately, Poulsen was captured in a supermarket and
served a sentence of five years.
Since serving time, Poulsen has worked as a journalist. He is now a
senior editor for Wired News. His most prominent article details his
work on identifying 744 sex offenders with MySpace profiles.
5) Robert Tappan Morris:
Morris, son of former National Security Agency scientist Robert Morris, is known as the creator of the Morris Worm,
the first computer worm to be unleashed on the Internet. As a result of
this crime, he was the first person prosecuted under the 1986 Computer
Fraud and Abuse Act.
Morris wrote the code for the worm while he was a student at Cornell.
He asserts that he intended to use it to see how large the Internet
was. The worm, however, replicated itself excessively, slowing computers
down so that they were no longer usable. It is not possible to know
exactly how many computers were affected, but experts estimate an impact
of 6,000 machines. He was sentenced to three years' probation, 400
hours of community service and a fined $10,500.
Morris
is currently working as a tenured professor at the MIT Computer Science
and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He principally researches
computer network architectures including distributed hash tables such as
Chord and wireless mesh networks such as Roofnet.
White Hat Hackers
Hackers that use their skills for good are classified as "white hat." These white hats often work as certified "Ethical Hackers," hired by companies to test the integrity of their systems. Others, operate without company permission by bending but not breaking laws and in the process have created some really cool stuff. In this section we profile five white hat hackers and the technologies they have developed.
1) Stephen Wozniak:
"Woz" is famous for being the "other Steve" of Apple. Wozniak, along with current Apple CEO Steve Jobs, co-founded Apple Computer. He has been awarded with the National Medal of Technology as well as honorary doctorates from Kettering University and Nova Southeastern University. Additionally, Woz was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in September 2000.
Woz got his start in hacking making blue boxes, devices that bypass
telephone-switching mechanisms to make free long-distance calls. After
reading an article about phone phreaking in Esquire, Wozniak called up
his buddy Jobs. The pair did research on frequencies, then built and
sold blue boxes to their classmates in college. Wozniak even used a blue
box to call the Pope while pretending to be Henry Kissinger.
Wozniak
dropped out of college and came up with the computer that eventually
made him famous. Jobs had the bright idea to sell the computer as a
fully assembled PC board. The Steves sold Wozniak's cherished scientific
calculator and Jobs' VW van for capital and got to work assembling
prototypes in Jobs' garage. Wozniak designed the hardware and most of
the software. In the Letters
section of Woz.org, he recalls doing "what Ed Roberts and Bill Gates
and Paul Allen did and tons more, with no help." Wozniak and Jobs sold
the first 100 of the Apple I to a local dealer for $666.66 each.
Woz no longer works full time for Apple, focusing primarily on
philanthropy instead. Most notable is his function as fairy godfather to
the Los Gatos, Calif. School District. "Wozniak 'adopted'
the Los Gatos School District, providing students and teachers with
hands-on teaching and donations of state-of-the-art technology
equipment."
2) Tim Berners-Lee:
Berners-Lee is famed as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the system that we use to access sites, documents and files on the Internet. He has received numerous recognitions, most notably the Millennium Technology Prize.
While a student at Oxford University, Berners-Lee was caught hacking
access with a friend and subsequently banned from University computers. w3.org
reports, "Whilst [at Oxford], he built his first computer with a
soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television."
Technological innovation seems to have run in his genes, as
Berners-Lee's parents were mathematicians who worked on the Manchester
Mark1, one of the earliest electronic computers.
While working with CERN, a European nuclear research organization,
Berners-Lee created a hypertext prototype system that helped researchers
share and update information easily. He later realized that hypertext
could be joined with the Internet. Berners-Lee recounts
how he put them together: "I just had to take the hypertext idea and
connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and – ta-da! – the World Wide Web."
Since his creation of the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee founded the
World Wide Web Consortium at MIT. The W3C describes itself as "an
international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff
and the public work together to develop Web standards." Berners-Lee's
World Wide Web idea, as well as standards from the W3C, is distributed
freely with no patent or royalties due.
3) Linus Torvalds:
Torvalds
fathered Linux, the very popular Unix-based operating system. He calls
himself "an engineer," and has said that his aspirations are simple, "I
just want to have fun making the best damn operating system I can."
Torvalds got his start in computers with a Commodore VIC-20, an 8-bit home computer. He then moved on to a Sinclair QL. Wikipedia
reports that he modified the Sinclair "extensively, especially its
operating system." Specifically, Torvalds hacks included "an assembler
and a text editor…as well as a few games."
Torvalds created the Linux kernel
in 1991, using the Minix operating system as inspiration. He started
with a task switcher in Intel 80386 assembly and a terminal driver.
After that, he put out a call for others to contribute code, which they
did. Currently, only about 2 percent of the current Linux kernel is
written by Torvalds himself. The success of this public invitation to
contribute code for Linux is touted as one of the most prominent
examples of free/open source software.
Currently, Torvalds serves as the Linux ringleader, coordinating the
code that volunteer programmers contribute to the kernel. He has had an
asteroid named after him and received honorary doctorates from Stockholm
University and University of Helsinki. He was also featured in Time
Magazine's "60 Years of Heroes."
4) Richard Stallman:
Stallman's fame derives from the
GNU Project, which he founded to develop a free operating system. For
this, he's known as the father of free software. His "Serious Bio"
asserts, "Non-free software keeps users divided and helpless, forbidden
to share it and unable to change it. A free operating system is
essential for people to be able to use computers in freedom."
Stallman,
who prefers to be called rms, got his start hacking at MIT. He worked
as a "staff hacker" on the Emacs project and others. He was a critic of
restricted computer access in the lab. When a password system was
installed, Stallman broke it down, resetting passwords to null strings,
then sent users messages informing them of the removal of the password
system.
Stallman's crusade for free software started with a printer. At the
MIT lab, he and other hackers were allowed to modify code on printers so
that they sent convenient alert messages. However, a new printer came
along – one that they were not allowed to modify. It was located away
from the lab and the absence of the alerts presented an inconvenience.
It was at this point that he was "convinced…of the ethical need to
require free software."
With this inspiration, he began work on GNU. Stallman wrote an essay, "The GNU Project,"
in which he recalls choosing to work on an operating system because
it's a foundation, "the crucial software to use a computer." At this
time, the GNU/Linux version of the operating system uses the Linux
kernel started by Torvalds. GNU is distributed under "copyleft," a
method that employs copyright law to allow users to use, modify, copy
and distribute the software.
Stallman's life continues to revolve around the promotion of free
software. He works against movements like Digital Rights Management (or
as he prefers, Digital Restrictions Management) through organizations
like Free Software Foundation and League for Programming Freedom. He has
received extensive recognition for his work, including awards,
fellowships and four honorary doctorates.
5) Tsutomu Shimomura:
Shimomura reached fame in an
unfortunate manner: he was hacked by Kevin Mitnick. Following this
personal attack, he made it his cause to help the FBI capture him.
Shimomura's work to catch Mitnick is commendable, but he is not without his own dark side. Author Bruce Sterling recalls:
"He pulls out this AT&T cellphone, pulls it out of the shrinkwrap,
finger-hacks it, and starts monitoring phone calls going up and down
Capitol Hill while an FBI agent is standing at his shoulder, listening
to him."
Shimomura out-hacked Mitnick to bring him down. Shortly after finding
out about the intrusion, he rallied a team and got to work finding
Mitnick. Using Mitnick's cell phone, they tracked him near
Raleigh-Durham International Airport. The article, "SDSC Computer Experts Help FBI Capture Computer Terrorist"
recounts how Shimomura pinpointed Mitnick's location. Armed with a
technician from the phone company, Shimomura "used a cellular frequency
direction-finding antenna hooked up to a laptop to narrow the search to
an apartment complex." Mitnick was arrested shortly thereafter.
Following the pursuit, Shimomura wrote a book about the incident with
journalist John Markoff, which was later turned into a movie.
I hope you have enjoyed introduction to some of the most famous
real-life hackers, both white and black alike, and have gotten a clearer
impression of who hackers really are.
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