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 The notion of the small guy causing chaos amongst the big companies and beating the system has always held a particular interest for us. Here are the top (ex) Hackers in the world.
 Jonathan 'c0mrade' James
Jonathan James was rudely woken at 6 am on the morning of January 26, 2000 by the Department of Defence, NASA and local police. An early arrest at the age of 16 put a stop to Jonathan James's activities. But by then he's already hacked into NASA, stealing software claimed to be worth $1.7 million (James later said the code was 'crappy'). Somewhere along the line he'd also found time to hack into the DTRA network. DTRA is the Defence Thread Reduction Agency, charged with reducing the threat to the US from nuclear, biological and special weapons. He installed a backdoor in the DTRA servers allowing him to view emails and capture users and passwords.His age prevented a long sentence, and he was placed under house arrest and banned from recreational computer use. He served 6 months for parole violation. Today he claims he's learned his lesson.
 Adrian 'the Homeless Hacker' Lamo
Lamo focused his hacking skills on organizations like the New York Times, Yahoo, Bank of America and Microsoft. Earning the nickname 'The Homeless Hacker' for his use of internet connections at Kinko's, coffee shops and libraries. His hacking was for the most part pretty innocent, finding security flaws and reporting the details to the companies involved. That is until he reached the servers of the New York Times. He decided to add himself to a list of experts and viewed personal information on contributors. His effort here earned him $65,000 in restitution to the New York Times, six months home confinement and two years probation. Today Lamo works as an award winning journalist and public speaker. We failed to find out if he contributes to the New York Times. In 2002 whilst being interviewed for NBC Nightly News, the
young blood interviewer made the suggestion Lamo hack NCB servers. At Kinko's where the interview was being filmed, Lamo was inside the network within five minutes browsing mails, vendors databases and what not. The segment was never shown.
 Kevin 'Poster Boy' Mitnick
Now so much a programmer but a hacker who gained access by social engineering. Many claim his punishment was excessive - spending nearly 5 years in jail. Mitnick started out by using his own punch to gain free rides on the Los Angeles bus system (by punching his own tickets) and moved on to phone phreaking (manipulating phones to avoid charges). In his own words, he then went on a 'coast to coast hacking spree' lasting two and a half years in which he stole corporate secrets, scrambled phone networks, broke into the nation defence warning system and hacked into the home computer of fellow hacker Tsutomu Shimomura. This proved to be his downfall. Today Mitnick works as a computer security consultant.
 Robert Tappan Morris
You would think a son of former National Security Agency scientist Robert Morris would know something about avoiding the long arm of the law. Apparently not. Morris is famous for creating he Morris Worm, the first computer worm to be unleashed on the internet. He was also the first person to be prosecuted in 1986 under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.His reason for releasing the Morris Worm was to see 'how big the internet was'. The worm infected an estimated 6,000 machines, slowing some down so much they were no longer usable. His activities earned him fines of $10,500, 400 hours community service and three years probation. He currently works as a professor at MIT in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory.
 David L. Smith
Mr. Smith is the writer of the notorious Melissa worm, released in March 1999. The virus forwarded itself to the first 50 addresses in a persons Outlook address book and damaged documents by putting the text "twenty-two, plus triple-word score, plus fifty points for using all my letters. Game’s over. I’m outta here. " (From The Simpsons - 'Bart the Genius').
Microsoft, Intel, Lucent Technologies and Lockheed Martin were all forced to shut down their email servers due to the volume of email being sent. He was sentenced to ten years in a United States Federal Prison. Shortly thereafter the sentence was reduced to twenty months and a $5,000 fine when Smith began working undercover with the FBI.
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