1. Top 5 Hackers of all the time-
Have you ever noticed your computer/laptopresponding weirdlylike
opening the web camera, applications on its own and getting Restart if
you click shut down. Then it’s time for you to take care of your
Pc/Laptop seriously becausemaybe someone breached intoyour
computer and got control of it. Well, this is what we say “Hacking”-
breakingintosomeone else’s computer without permission and stealing
the data thereby causing serious damage tothem.
Hackers have been around since the dawn of computers, and they have
their own ways and reasons for hacking. Here is about the 5 most
dangerous hackers and the havoc they caused..
Kevin Mitnick:
Kevin Mitnick alias “The Condor” is known as The King of all the hackers.
In early Adulthood, he began taking advantage of the system by tricking
the Los Angeles bus transportsystem to get free rides and made free
calls on his hacked cell phones. As he aged Mitnick found his gift for
code and began hacking intobig name companies like Nokia, IBM,
Motorola and eventually The Pentagon. Before he was finally arrested in
2. 1995, millions of dollars of information passed through his hands. After
5 years of incarceration thatincluded 8 months of solitary confinement
in prison, he became a consultant and now runs his own security
company.
Mathew Bevan and Richard Price:
The dangerous British hackingduoof Mathew Bevan and Richard Price
hacked the Pentagon’s network for several weeks and progressed
further by stealing battle field simulations.They started intercepting
messages from US agents stationed in North Korea and access sensitive
materialfrom a Korean nuclear facility. This was quite alarming tothe
US because at that time they were using US systems to infiltrate
information from Korean systems which nearly sparked an international
issue.
Gary McKinnon:
3. He is a Scottish hacker and gained access to 97 US militarynetworks and
NASA servers in between 2001 and 2002 and even left the military a
message on its website: “yoursecurity system is crap”. He deleted
sensitive data, software and files but cost the US government $700,000in
recovery charges due to the severity of damage.McKinnon wasn’tin for
any kind of monetary game but he was just looking for files containing
evidence of extraterrestrial life which according to him be found.
Jonathan James:
Known as the “Comrade” on the internet, Jonathan James was the first
juvenile convicted and jailed in the United States for hacking. Atjust 15
4. years of age he managedto hack into number of networks, including
those belonging toBell South, Miami Dade,The US Departmentof
Defence, and even NASA. During his NASA hack he stole source code
responsible for operating the International Space Station. Once NASA
detected the breach, it had to shut down their computer networks for
three weeks, causing $41,000in damages. Arrestedon January26, 2000,
James plea-bargainedand was sentenced to house arrestand probation.
James was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on May 18,
2008. In his suicide note he wrote he was troubled by the justice system
and believed he would be prosecuted for newer crimes with which he
had nothing to do.
Astra:
Astra was the penname of Greek hacker whobreached into the systems
of France’s DassaultGroup, stole high profile weapon technology data,
software and sold it to people and organisations across Brazil, South
Africa, the Middle Eastand rest of the world for five long years. The
damages he caused are estimated between 250 and 361 million dollars.
Strangely even after all the destruction caused, Astra was never publicly
identified. Speculations and rumours say that he is a 58 year old Greek
Mathematician and is serving sixty years in jail somewhere