THE 25 MOST FAMOUS HACKERS IN HISTORY - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

There are famous hackers who have stood out for their knowledge, skills and what they are capable of achieving by working on their own. Rafael Gray, Chad Davis, Andrew Auernheimer and others that we will mention in this article.

The word hacker is English and comes from the verb to hack, which means to cut. So, we have to hacker is a "cutter". This tells us rather little and, in this case, the etymology of the term does not help us to get a precise idea.

A computer hacker is not just a network hacker. A hacker is, above all, a curious person who, through his knowledge of computer science, whether or not he is a professional programmer, manages to access protected Internet sites or pages through his computer that are difficult or impossible for other users to access. mortals.

A hacker can penetrate, with relative ease, into the bank accounts of thousands of people and access very juicy information that can be of interest to many companies.

However, not all hackers use their skills for evil ends. Many defend public or private organizations, or go public with inside information.

List of the most influential hackers

1- Rafael Gray

This boy became a billionaire by accessing the computer systems of computers around the world, getting the credit card numbers of many, many people. He was nicknamed "Hacker Bill Gates." In other words, for many it has been the undisputed number one.

2- Chad Davis

His nom de guerre was Mindphasr. He is one of the most famous cyber criminals of the 20th century. He was the creator of "Global Hell" (the Global Hell), a kind of hacker syndicate that operated in the United States and that brought the main North American companies down the street of bitterness.

He was responsible for all the vandalism suffered by the official White House website. The attacks ended with the famous legend: "Global Hell will never die."

3- Julian Paul Assange

Source: Martina Haris / Julian Assange

He is the creator of the well-known WikiLeaks, a page that is dedicated to airing a lot of secret information about governments, the military, conspiracies, emails from influential people, etc.

In adolescence, he was able to access and publish "top secret" documents from the United States Army. At the age of 16, he was already leading an international group of hackers and hacking computers under the pseudonym Mendax.

4- Andrew Auernheimer

Source: Weev at en.wikipedia

This guy's way of hacking is also interesting. He is an internet troll, better known by his pseudonym: "Weev."

He is dedicated to writing, in forums and internet communities, inflammatory and provocative opinions, using many pseudonyms at the same time. He managed to disrupt the Amazon page and was responsible for hacking the New York Times page.

5- Rafael Núñez

Source: Ensambleanunnaki

A member of the famous hacker group "World of Hell", he carried out targeted, high-profile attacks against sites that suffered from poor security.

Núñez appears in Dan Verton's (2002) book entitled "Hacker Diaries: Confessions of Teenage Hackers." He is now a well-known Venezuelan businessman.

6- Kristina Svechinskaya Vladimirovna

There are also ladies in hacking. This young Russian hacker managed to get into the biggest American and British banks through a Trojan. The damsel managed to scam some three billion dollars in total through Trojans.

7- Karl Koch

A James Bond of hackerism. This German became famous in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union still existed and the Cold War was at its peak.

He sold hacked information from American Army computers to the Soviet KGB. He was one of the few hackers to actively participate in espionage affairs of the famous Cold War.

8- Gary McKinnon

Source: en: User: Wilsha

This Scottish system administrator was arrested for hacking no less than 97 American military bases. It also slipped easily into NASA computers.

His greatest feat was accomplished in 2002, when within an incredible 24 hours he accessed, hacked and managed to bring down the systems of 2,000 US Army computers and stole secret files and weapons systems.

This massive attack caused much of the army network to be disabled for several days.

9- Adrian Lamo

Source: Lamo-Mitnick-Poulsen.png: Photo by Matthew Griffiths; rights assigned to Adrian Lamo, subsequently freely released to the public domain by same. First published by Wired News in 2002, without assignment of rights. No rights reserved, but please credit photographer (Matthew Griffiths) in subsequent use.derivative work: Beao

He hacked the pages of the New York Times, Yahoo and Microsoft. After this success, he was commissioned to reinforce the IT security of numerous pages of well-known companies.

Many hackers end up working to prevent other hackers from doing what they did. The whiting that bites its tail.

10- Robert Tappan Morris

Source: Trevor Blackwell

Computer engineer who in 1988 invented the "worm" or computer worm. This worm is a kind of virus but, unlike these, it spreads without the help of a person, by itself.

Tappan was the first person to be arrested for violating the United States Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he was sentenced to three years in prison by the American courts.

11- Kevin Poulsen

Source: Klpoulsen

Hacker for a Porsche 944! This man, a news editor at Wired.com, hacked into every phone line in the city of Los Angeles to make sure his call would be the hundredth second in a list of calls to a radio station.

That number was the right to win the jackpot: a Porsche 944 S2. After getting out of prison, he left the programming world and became a journalist to get away from the criminal activities of his past as a hacker.

12- Albert González

Source: US Secret Service / US Attorney for New Jersey

Known for being the mastermind behind a massive credit card scam, Albert managed to divert $ 170 million into his account. That fraud was considered one of the largest in the history of the United States.

It used SQL (structured query language) to steal data from the system, with the card numbers and the names of the cardholders, and launched massive ARP attacks (in Spanish, address resolution protocol) that planted the area with false messages throughout the system.

13- George Hotz

Source: Steve Jennings / Getty Images

A student at the John Hopkins Center for Talented Young Programmers, George rose to fame for his hacking of the iPhone, which allowed it to be used by other terminals without being connected to any network.

It was also able to bypass the limitations of the iPad, iPad touch, and Apple TV. He was also sued by Sony for hacking his famous Play Station 3.

14- Kevin Mitnick, the precocious

Source: Eneas De Troya from Mexico City, Mexico

A computer security consultant, Mitnick is one of the best known hackers of the 20th century. He participated in various computer crimes against communication security and became one of the most wanted computer criminals by the North American authorities.

At the age of twelve, he already made his first steps by modifying the Los Angeles city bus card in his favor. Photos of him wearing a T-shirt circulate online with the caption: "I'm not a hacker but a security professional."

15- Astra

His real name was never known. It seems that he was a 58-year-old mathematician. He broke into the supersonic fighter builder's database and stole all the data on the Dassault Group company's new weapons for those and other warplanes.

The information interested people from all over the world. There were about 250 buyers from all over the globe: the Middle East, Brazil, South Africa, France, Germany, Italy, etc.

The price of each document amounted to a thousand dollars. Instead, the damage that this caused to the Dassault Group company exceeds 360 million dollars.

16- Jonathan James

Source: Naranj8

His pseudonym was "com0rade". She died at the age of 24. At fifteen he began his hacking career, bringing down the Bell South system, Miami-Dade, NASA and the database of the United States Ministry of Defense.

James stole over a million and a half dollars. He was sentenced to 6 months of house arrest and the judge also required him to write a letter of apology to both NASA and the American Ministry of Defense.

In addition, in 2007, after the great scam of the Albert González group, the police carried out a search at James' house. He assured that he had nothing to do with that matter.

He panicked that he would be locked up for the crimes of card theft and, in 2008, he took his life by shooting himself in the shower.

He wrote a farewell letter in which he said that he did not believe in the justice system and that his letter might make many pause. The letter ended by saying that he had lost control of the situation and that this was the only way to regain it.

17- Vladimir Levin

His story resembles the plot of the James Bond spy movie “Casino Royal”.

Together with his gang, in his apartment in Saint Petersburg (Russia), Levin stole millions of accounts, around the world, from the Citybank. But the operation was not carried out online. He did it through wiretapping.

He managed to intercept many customer conversations with the bank and thus they managed to know all the necessary data. In 1998, the judge ruled that Levin should return the amount of $ 240,000 to the bank. He was behind bars for three years. Since then, nothing has been heard from him.

18- Mathew Bivan and Richard Price

This British couple had the US government in check during 1994. They managed to access and attack the Pentagon system. They imitated the way the American agents communicate and leaked restricted security information to Korean agents.

At that time they were 21 and 16 years old respectively. The Americans, at first, could not know which country had received the information, North Korea or South Korea. If it had been North Korea, the risk of a world war was real.

Luckily for the world, the falsified reports reached the South Korean intelligence service. A year later, the hacking duo was detected and they were arrested.

19- Chen Ing Hou

This Taiwanese Chinese created a virus that he named after his initials: CIH. Although he later regretted it and apologized to the world for having created this dangerous virus, he claimed to have done so to discredit all the companies that make antivirus for computers, calling them sloppy.

He wanted to teach them a lesson, in his own words. This virus was later known as the Chernobyl virus, an allusion to the Ukrainian nuclear plant that suffered that tragic accident in 1986.

The virus was much more dangerous just on April 26, the date of the Chernobyl accident. Later it was discovered that this date was actually the birthday of friend Chen Ing.

20- Ehud Tenenbaum

Jewish hacker who rose to fame at age 19 for leading a group of hackers who managed to damage the communication systems of the largest North American companies. He hacked into the computer systems of the United States Air Force, NASA, the American Navy, the Pentagon, the Knesset, and MIT.

He also hacked into the computers of Palestinian-based terrorist groups and destroyed the pages of the Hamas organization.

21- Michael Calce

In 2000, this 15-year-old Canadian under the pseudonym "Mafiaboy" launched denial of service or DDoS attacks on Yahoo !, Amazon, eBay, Buy.com, CNN and Dell. This cost the companies more than $ 7 million in damages.

After the attack, he was arrested and sentenced to eight months in prison. He currently considers himself a white hat hacker. He wrote some books telling his story and in 2017 he presented his documentary Rivolta.

22- Sven Jaschan

German and computer student who in 2004 spread the Netsky and Sasser computer worms on the net. They were created when he was 16 years old, but released two years later.

According to the company Sophos Group, these viruses infected at least 70% of computers in the first months of 2004, around 18 million computers. He was arrested and sentenced to 3 years in jail with probation and 30 hours of community service.

23- Stephen Gary «Steve» Wozniak

Source: photo by Alan Light

Before being known as Apple co-founder Stephen considered himself a 'white hat' hacker by poking fun at the phone system. I created devices that allowed to make free calls over long distances.

I call the devices "Blue Box" or "Blue Boxes," earning the nickname Berkeley Blue from the "Phone Phreaking" community.

24- David L. Smith

He is known for creating the "Melissa" virus. This computer virus was spread in 1999 through emails that promised to offer access to 80 pornographic websites. The original file was called "List.doc" and it infected Microsoft Office documents.

David was arrested, found guilty, sentenced to 10 years in prison and had to pay a fine of $ 5,000. His virus caused more than $ 70 million in damage.

In 2001 he collaborated with the FBI to capture the Dutch hacker Jan de Wit, wanted for creating viruses Anna Kournikova.

25- Loyd Blankenship

Source: Lblankenship; borders removed by Grawity (log)

Since 1970 Loyd has contributed and participated in the hacker community, which gave him the title "The Mentor." He is known for writing the essay "The Hackers Manifesto."

This essay was written after his arrest; serves as a guide for new hackers and describes the basics of hacking. He currently works for the computer security company McAfee.