Historically in the world of technology and cybersecurity, there are people recognized for their incredible feats and although the term hacker usually has negative connotations, not always its execution has a criminal relation. For this reason today we bring you a review of some of the most famous hackers worldwide.
Kevin Poulsen:
This American was the first hacker accused of espionage in the U.S. since only at the age of 17 he managed to hack into the Pentagon’s computer network and even though on this occasion he was not convicted because he was a minor, this was only the beginning of his criminal activities.
From tapping into the computers of telephone companies to win radio contests, and hacking into a federal network to obtain information on the former president of the Philippines. After a long FBI manhunt and serving a 5-year prison sentence for computer fraud.
In 2000, after his court supervision expired Poulsen joined SecurityFocus magazine as editorial director and began his work as a journalist and reporting on security and hacking.
Poulsen together with Aaron Swartz designed and developed the open source platform SecureDrop to provide secure communication between journalists and their sources, today this tool is used by more than a dozen news organizations.
Julian Assange
Australian programmer, cyber activist, and journalist, he is the founder of the well-known WikiLeaks, which is nothing more than a website aimed at collecting and sharing confidential information on an international scale.
At first, WikiLeaks was launched in Sweden, since the laws of that country allow the anonymity of a person, and the same year of its launch in 2007 WikiLeaks made public a US military manual that provides detailed information about its detention center in Guantanamo.
After this event and together with other accusations of sexual assault, Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 to avoid extradition and to date, he is practically imprisoned there, because if he leaves the embassy he would be automatically arrested by the British authorities.
Edward Snowden
He is a computer professional and former CIA employee who in 2007 began working at the Central Intelligence Agency which allowed him to reveal many classified NSA documents to the press. By 2013 the U.S. The Department of Justice charged him with espionage and government theft; that same year Snowden flew to Russia where he was granted political asylum and took up residence.
Snowden’s reputation has been described by some as good and others as very bad, as he has been considered in many ways, a hero, whistleblower, dissident, and on the other hand a traitor and a stateless person, but among his statements and leaked documents there is evidence of violations of the privacy of US citizens and his fight has focused on Internet freedom and basic freedoms of people against mass surveillance that build governments.
Aaron Swartz
He was a programmer, writer, and Internet activist, who was known by the hacker community as the first martyr to defend free knowledge. From his early childhood, he excelled in the area of programming and was recognized for his codes. At the age of 14, he was co-author of RSS 1.0, which is responsible for publishing articles from various digital media and mentioning the sources to which it belongs.
In addition, Swartz was a founder of Watchdog.net, Jottit, and reddit.com. He helped launch Creative Commons and was the creative director of Open Library.
He fought against SOPA, which is the law that works against online piracy. By 2011 Aaron started downloading documents from JSTOR, the world’s largest academic publishing library, and following this he was arrested on charges of wire fraud, computer fraud, illegal entry to protected computers, and damage as he was accused of stealing nearly 5 million documents.
Swartz was facing a 35-year prison sentence and paying more than $1 million in fines, but in 2013 he was found dead in his New York apartment, that same year he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame.
George Hotz
This is the hacker who rose to fame when he made Apple and SONY tremble after breaking through their defenses and offering users the opportunity to unlock their devices and take full advantage of the benefits of their equipment without additional costs.
Hotz was the first to unlock the Iphone’s bootloader to use the device on any network, as until then it could only be used with AT&T who was the exclusive seller.
Later, he continued in his antics when he released jailbreak for all iPhones and iPod touches, thus unlocking the SIM card for all devices.
Then, in 2010 he announced that he was able to hack a PS3 thus gaining read and write access to the console, and released a public jailbreak, thus allowing any user to hack the system using the OtherOS feature and forcing SONY to remove the OtherOS feature from the machine and fortifying the PS3 with the addition of advanced custom firmware.
However, as early as 2010 it reported that it was getting out of the device piracy business as it was only using it as a distraction.
While piracy and hacking activities are not well conceived in the business world, the truth is that they have helped many technology companies to create increasingly robust software and to look closely at any vulnerabilities in their equipment, which generates greater security for companies and users.
