World’s top hackers and their hacks
Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls, encryption, and secure access devices and it’s money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain: the people who use, administer, operate and account for computer systems that contain protected information.
Let’s have a small web surfing on the top hackers in the world and the hacks they performed.
KEVIN MITNICK
Kevin was the most wanted computer criminal in US history and when he was 12 he started his passion towards hacking and technologies. He reverse-engineered the Los Angeles public transportation transfer system so he could ride the buses for free. His life history has been featured in the film called Track Down(2000). Kevin Mitnick was jailed two times:
First, In 1988 was arrested for illegally copying software from Digital Equipment Corporation’s Network. During that trial, his defense attorneys argued that his hacking activities were an “addiction” and he was sentenced to a year in jail and six months in a halfway house.
Second, In 1995 to 2000 FBI arrested him on charges of wire fraud and breaking into the computer systems of several major corporations. The case bestowed upon Mitnick a sort of antihero status while raising the consciousness of hacking and computer security in the general population. Mitnick already had a long history of fiddling with computer networks and telephone systems before his 1995 arrest. He was caught after the FBI tracked him to his hideout in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Mitnick pleaded guilty to some charges and served five years in prison (including eight months spent in solitary confinement), then spent two more years in supervised release before all restrictions were lifted. But during this 2 year time gap he hacked the National defense’s warning system and stealing some corporate secretes. For three years, he wasn’t allowed to the use the Internet.
Kevin often trumpeted himself more as a “social engineer” than a hacker. He said he preferred to use “persuasion, influence and manipulation” in order to solicit information from influential people.
JONATHAN JAMES
Jonathan James had already achieved renowned hacker status by becoming the first juvenile hacker in the age of 16yrs to be sentenced to juvenile detention for 6 months in year 2000. In his teenager years, James began “cracking” computer systems using the pseudonym of “C0mrade.” James was charged with hacking of computer system belonging to NASA and the Department of US Defense and he made them to shutdown the network system of NASA for 3 weeks.
His hacks were harmless, but he stole information and the security breaches required extensive downtime in order to secure the systems, which cost tens of thousands of dollars. James’ father truly supported his son, saying that he had not caused any damage and had exposed only security flaws.
In 1999, James installed a backdoor on a Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) server in Dulles, VA. The DTRA is the division of the Department of Defense that monitors possible threats to the United States. This backdoor allowed him to install a sniffer that gave him the ability to capture thousands of messages between employees at the DOD and a number of usernames and passwords. During this period he also penetrated the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and downloaded the NASA code that controls temperature and humidity in the International Space Station.
In year 2008, government agents raided his house as part of an investigation into what was then called the largest identity theft case in U.S. history. James and some others were suspected of hacking into the systems of many large level businesses and stealing information as part of an identity and credit card theft chain that had millions of dollars. Prone to depression, on May 18, 2008, James was found dead in the shower of a self-inflicted shotgun blast. It is believe he committed suicide out of fear that he would be prosecuted for crimes he did not commit. In his suicide note he wrote that it was the only way to “regain control” over the situation.
ALBERT GONZALEZ
In 2009, Albert Gonzalez said guilty to hacking into numerous companies ‘computer systems in connection with the called TJX identity theft ring — the same series of crimes that led to the raid on Jonathan James’ house. This group Gonzalez was a part of stole 36 million credit card numbers from TJX, which owns by TJ Maxx and other large stores, although the 70 percent or so of these cards were expired. also, the costs to companies responding to the attacks were immense; TJX alone spent approx more than $170 million
He hacked into the Heartland Payment systems that handled credit card transactions for major retailers. Then the Miami resident got creative. He would cruise by stores with his laptop and infiltrate wireless Internet signals. A Trojan Horse program would be planted in the store’s network and Gonzalez would later vacuum out credit and debit numbers.
What’s the strange about Gonzalez’s case is that for years he worked as informant for the secret service, providing such information on other credit card thieves. However, by continuing and expanding his own criminal behavior, he left himself open to prosecution and was eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison. Several other men also sentenced to prison time for their participation in the chain, although Gonzalez’s sentence remains the longest ever handed down to a hacker in the United States.
ROBIN TAPPAN MORRIS
Morris was a talented computer scientist who had graduated from Harvard in June 1988. He had grown up immersed in computers, who was an early innovator at Bell Labs and was also known for his technological prowess, especially in Unix; he was also known as a prankster.
On November 2, 1988, a maliciously clever program was unleashed on the Internet from a computer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This morris worm was soon propagating at remarkable speed and grinding computers to a halt. A worm is a program that can run by itself and can propagate a fully working version of itself to other machines.
The worm only targeted computers running a specific version of the Unix operating system, but it spread widely because it featured multiple vectors of attack. For example, it exploited a backdoor in the Internet’s electronic mail system and a bug in the “finger” program that identified network users. It was also designed to stay hidden. At the same time, the Morris Worm inspired a new generation of hackers and a wave of Internet-driven assaults that continue to plague our digital systems to this day. Whether accidental or not, the first Internet attack 30 years ago was a wake-up call for the country and the cyber age to come.
After the incident became public, the FBI launched an investigation. Agents quickly confirmed that Morris was behind the attack and began interviewing him and his associates and decrypting his computer files, which yielded plenty of incriminating evidence. Prosecutors indicted Morris in 1989. The following year, a jury found him guilty, making him the first person convicted under the 1986 law. Morris, however, was spared jail time, instead receiving a fine, probation, and an order to complete 400 hours of community service.
GARY McKINNON
This intelligent Scottish hacker’s found a document entitled “non-terrestrial officers” and this excel sheet had the ranks and names of unknown individuals. Further he found one more tab in excel for “material transfers between ships”. When he tries to read the ship details he was unable to come across anything that mentioned them (at least in public), reinforcing his assessment that these were part of a covert and non-terrestrial US initiative.
He was able to access these top secret documents through a program called Landsearch, which, after having gained control over the domain, had the ability to search all the files and folders “on every machine” and he said this in his interview.
McKinnon suspicion for hacking into U.S. government computer networks in late 2001 and early 2002, in what’s been called a historic breach of security. A British court judgement accuses McKinnon of infiltrating 97 computers, installing hacking software, deleting important files and stealing information. He confessed that he left a threatening note on one Army computer, in which he identified himself by the name “SOLO”. Gary McKinnon has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and suffers from depression illness.
McKinnon has admitted to the hacks and said he thought he could find evidence that U.S. was covering up the existence of UFOs. His case remains ongoing.