#1
Jeremy Hammond:



Jeremy Hammond is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence. He stole 60,000 credit card numbers and used them to make donations to charity. That doesn’t seem so bad, does it? He certainly seems to be broadly on the side of good, attacking neo-nazis and holocaust deniers, but there’s no denying he’s on the wrong side of the law at the same time. One of his greatest accomplishments was hacking into the e-mails of the Stratfor group, who specialize in global intelligence, and publishing 973 of them on the WikiLeaks website. Among the revelations contained in the e-mails were details of Osama bin Laden’s death and plans to incite a revolution in Venezuela. It was shocking stuff, but it was the credit card theft that saw him sent to jail.




#2
Kevin Poulsen:



The life of a hacker is usually pretty normal. Take Kevin Poulsen, who is now News Editor for wired.com – a popular and legitimate site favored by geeks. But he was once a black-hat hacker, pulling off such stunts as winning a Porsche 944 S2 from KIIS-FM by hacking their phone lines and guaranteeing he was the 102nd caller. Like some other hackers, he has used his powers for the greater good by identifying MySpace users who were looking for child porn. But he turned rogue by hacking into the FBI computers which led to his being convicted for 5 years in jail. Since his release, he’s concentrated on his writing career not just at wired but also with his book “Kingpin”. A versatile and, it would seem, reformed hacker.




#3
Jonathan James:


Growing up with technology all around us has led to a reduction in the age at which people start hacking. Jonathan James was the poster boy for teenage hackers, gaining his first conviction at the age of 16 for stealing $170m worth of code from NASA. He did this by hacking into the computers of the Defence Threat Reduction Agency and installing a “backdoor” which gave him access to both messages and source code. He was 15 at the time of the offence and 16 when tried, so received only a juvenile sentence. He resolved to put this past behind him but in 2007 his name was mentioned in conjunction with a hack on the TJX department store. Maintaining his innocence but convinced he would go to prison, he committed suicide on May 18th 2008.




#4
The Aurora Hackers:



The Aurora hackers are a group of hackers who were responsible for “Operation Aurora“, an international and complex hack in 2009 that targeted 34 companies including Google and Yahoo! The hackers are believed to originate from China as part of the Elderwood Gang – a group of hackers based in Beijing. A Shanghai-based group, PLA Unit-61398, were also believed to be involved, in this massive operation. Google were the first to make the attack public, stating on their blog that they had had their intellectual property stolen – it seems that the hackers were after the source code of these internet giants, rather than any personal information although it later emerged that certain gmail accounts had also been hacked. The hackers behind Aurora have never been caught and said to still be actively hacking. The main result of the whole episode was that Google withdrew from China entirely.


#5
Adrian Lamo:



Also known as “the Homeless Hacker” Adrian Lamo is something of a troubled character. He did his hacking while couch-surfing and living in hostels. Ex-girlfriends describe him as controlling, and he has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. He may also have been the subject of a restraining order at one point and is so strongly religious that he refuses to give blood samples. All of which may explain his anti-social behavior – hacking into the New York Times website and adding himself to their expert database. It was for this that he was convicted in 2004, and sentenced to six months’ detention at his parents’ house, plus a fine. He also turned the hacking community against each other – after donating to WikiLeaks, he then exposed one of their contributors – a soldier called Bradley Manning, who was leaking confidential military information. Lamo was supported by Kevin Poulsen and together they were called “felons” and “snitchs” but Lamo maintains that Manning was putting lives in danger with his actions. When last heard of, Lamo was in hiding for fear of Manning’s revenge.


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