We are all aware that cyber terrorism has grown rapidly in the last decade to accompany the technological advancements of the computer world, thus now we’ve designed a list of mythical cyber offenders ever.
Firstly for those who don’t understand the term “black-hat“, it is popular slang used in the technology industry to describe a set of illegal or unauthorized activities. A white hat hacker is the opposite of a black-hat hacker, white hat hackers are those specialists who that seek to protect and improve internet security in organizations. White hat hackers understand the techniques used by black-hat hackers and hack to make procedures more secure.
Who is a black hat hacker?
A “black hat” hacker is a computer specialist or programmer who violates computer safety for little reason beyond maliciousness or for personal gain. Black hat hackers are usually known to form the stereotypical, illegal hacking groups often portrayed in popular culture. They are known to break into big companies or organizations networks to destroy data or use for personal vendettas.
Black hat hackers target bank information, login details and can stroke mayhem by shutting down large corporations and make them lose billion of dollars in the process. A good example of what black hat hackers can do is when Hollywood actors had their iCloud accounts ravaged, and also their naked photographs were released to the general public.
In this article, we present: 8 of the most dangerously skilled hackers to have caused problems for governments, brought down multi-million dollars websites and made millions for themselves—before finally getting caught by the authorities.
5) Adrian Lamo
Nickname: The Homeless Hacker
Age: 37
Lamo is widely-known for breaking up into a collection of high-profile computer networks of The New York Times, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft before he was arrested in 2003. Adrian Lamo utilized coffee shops, libraries and web cafés as his locations for hacking.
After he was arrested his life has had a rough patch, he was accused of pointing a gun at his girlfriend was sent to a psychiatric ward afterward in another incident. His biggest point in the limelight was when he reported Chelsea Manning to the authorities after her leak of government documents. He is popularly known as “The snitch” among hackers. Now he is a threat analysis.
4) Albert Gonzalez
Known as: CumbaJohnny, Segvec, SoupNazi, KingChilli
Age: 35
Albert Gonzalez started Shadowcrew.com and gathered several 4,000 members. Members of the website can purchase or offer fraudulent passports or bank accounts numbers, drivers’ licenses, Social Security cards, charge cards, credit cards, bank cards, debit cards, birth certificates, faculty university student identification cards, along with medical health insurance cards. It is stated that over a hundred and seventy million debit and credit cards had been set on the website by 2005 to 2007.
Gonzalez, by Florida, was not known as a low-key spender; he had been famous for throwing a social gathering. He had been charged with having 15 bankcards while at New Jersey, but avoided Jail time after giving up roughly 19 ShadowCrew members to the Secret services.
3) George Hotz
George Hotz, is known for April 2011 PlayStation breach and was one of the first hackers ever to jailbreak the Sony PlayStation 3, he was drawn into a public battle with Sony and he made it worse with his public release of his jail breaking methods. In a stated retaliation to Sony’s gap of the unstated rules of jail breaking – never prosecute – the hacker group Anonymous attacked Sony in what would be the dubbed as the most costly security break of all time to date.
Hackers broke into the PlayStation Network and stole personal information of some 77 million users. However, Hotz denied any responsibility for the attack and added “Running homebrew and exploring security on your devices is cool; hacking into someone else’s server and stealing databases of user info. is not cool.”
2) Jonathan James
Jonathan James, became the first juvenile imprisoned for cyber crime. By implementing a string of intrusions, James acquired his notoriety. In an anonymous PBS interview, he professes, “I was simply looking around, playing around. What was interesting for me personally was a challenge to find out what I could pull away.”
James’ intrusions targeted organizations like NASA and the Department of Defense. He broke into NASA computers, stealing applications worth approximately $1.7 million. He hacked to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and intercepted over 3,000 messages passing to and from the DTRA employees while collecting many usernames and passwords.
His suicide was inspired by the belief that he would be prosecuted. “I honestly, honestly had nothing to do with TJX,” James wrote in his suicide note, “that I have no religion in the ‘justice’ system. Perhaps this letter, and my activities today will send a stronger message. In any event, I’ve lost control over this circumstance, which is my only means to recover control.”
1) Gary McKinnon
Back in 2002, a highly strange message appeared to a US Army monitor: “Your security program is nonsense,” it read. “I’m Solo. It was recognized as the work Gary McKinnon, a systems administrator.
Gary was accused of implementing the largest hack such as NASA systems, Air Force, Navy and Army. The courtroom had advocated that McKinnon is apprehended to face charges of illegally obtaining 97 computers, resulting in a total of $700,000 from damage. More intriguing are the reasons for the scale of McKinnon. He thought the US administration hide pieces of information about UFOs.