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ackr a k r

Srinidhi Ravi Asian School of Cyber Laws

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Hackers that shook the world !


Srinidhi Ravi Asian School of Cyber Laws

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If you are good hacker everyone knows your name, if you are a great hacker no one knows who you are.

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Published in 2012 by Asian School of Cyber Laws. Copyright 2012 by Asian School of Cyber Laws. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or otherwise used without prior written permission from the author unless such use is expressly permitted by applicable law. No investigation has been made of common-law trademark rights in any word. Words that are known to have current trademark registrations are shown with an initial capital and are also identified as trademarks. The inclusion or exclusion of any word, or its capitalization, in this book is not, however, an expression of the publisher's opinion as to whether or not it is subject to proprietary rights, nor is it to be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark. This book is provided "as is" and Asian School of Cyber Laws makes no representations or warranties, express or implied either in respect of this book or the software, websites and other information referred to in this book. By way of example, but not limitation, Asian School of Cyber Laws makes no representations or warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose or that the use of licensed software, database or documentation will not infringe any third party patents, copyrights, trademarks or other rights. 3|Page

The chosen case scenarios are for instructional purposes only and any association to an actual case and litigation is purely coincidental. Names and locations presented in the case scenarios are fictitious and are not intended to reflect actual people or places.

Reference herein to any specific commercial products, processes, or services by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by Asian School of Cyber Laws, and the information and statements shall not be used for the purposes of advertising.

Printed in India

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Contents

people 0. Introduction ......................................................................................8

1. Adrian Lamo ....................................................................................... 14 10. Albert Gonzalez ............................................................................... 17 11. Alvi brothers ..................................................................................... 20 100. Chad Davis ...................................................................................... 22 101. Chen Ing-hau.................................................................................. 24 110. Clifford Stoll ................................................................................... 27 111. David Smith .................................................................................... 30 1000. Dennis Moran .............................................................................. 32 1001. Dmitry Sklyarov ......................................................................... 34 1010. Ehud Tenenbaum....................................................................... 37 1011. Frederick Cohen ......................................................................... 39 1100. Gary McKinnon ........................................................................... 41 1101. Jan de Wit ..................................................................................... 44 1110. Joanna Rutkowska .................................................................... 46 1111. John Draper ................................................................................. 49 10000. John Schiefer ............................................................................. 52 5|Page

10001. Jon Lech Johansen ................................................................... 54 10010. Jonathan Joseph James .......................................................... 56 10011. Jeanson James Ancheta ......................................................... 60 10100. Jeffrey Lee Parson ................................................................... 62 10101. Jerome Heckenkamp .............................................................. 64 10110. Kevin Mitnick ............................................................................ 66 10111. Kevin Poulsen ........................................................................... 69 11000. Kristina Vladimirovna Svechinskaya ............................... 72 11001. Mark Abene ............................................................................... 75 11010. Michael Calce ............................................................................ 77 11011. Nahshon Even-Chaim ............................................................ 79 11100. Onel A. de Guzman .................................................................. 82 11101. Pieter Zatko ............................................................................... 85 11110. Raphael Gray ............................................................................ 87 11111. Richard Jones ............................................................................ 89 100000. Robert Tappan Morris ........................................................ 91 100001. Susan Headley ........................................................................ 94 100010. Vladimir Levin ....................................................................... 97

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groups 1. ANONYMOUS ................................................................................... 101 10. CHAOS COMPUTER CLUB ......................................................... 111 11. CULT OF THE DEAD COW ......................................................... 114 100. DIGITAL DAWGPOUND ........................................................... 117 101. GENOCIDE2600 ......................................................................... 118 110. GLOBALHELL .............................................................................. 120 111. GOATSE SECURITY ................................................................... 121 1000. HACKER DOJO .......................................................................... 123 1001. HACKWEISER ........................................................................... 125 1010. HARFORD HACKERSPACE ................................................... 127 1011. HELITH ....................................................................................... 129 1100. HONKER UNION ...................................................................... 131 1101. IPHONE DEV TEAM ............................................................... 133 1110. L0PHT ......................................................................................... 134 1111. LULZRAFT ................................................................................. 136 10000. LULZSEC .................................................................................. 138 10001. MASTERS OF DECEPTION................................................. 141 10010. MILW0RM ............................................................................... 142 10011. NETWORK CRACK PROGRAM HACKER GROUP ........ 144 10100. PHONE LOSERS OF AMERICA .......................................... 146 7|Page

ZERO

0. Introduction

The term hacker is very generic. It usually means someone who bends or breaks the security system in a computer or network. This could be for fun, for learning, for proving a point, making a statement or even for profit. It may refer to a person looking for loopholes in the system to improve computer security; it may be a bunch of smart kids doing it to make money; or just a computer geek who wants to find a way of making a computer application do something it was not designed to do. In the words of Paul Graham: To the popular press, "hacker" means someone who breaks into computers. Among programmers it means a good programmer. But the two meanings are connected. To programmers, "hacker" connotes mastery in the most literal sense: someone who can make a 8|Page

computer do what he wantswhether the computer wants to or not. To add to the confusion, the noun "hack" also has two senses. It can be either a compliment or an insult. It's called a hack when you do something in an ugly way. But when you do something so clever that you somehow beat the system, that's also called a hack. The word is used more often in the former than the latter sense, probably because ugly solutions are more common than brilliant ones. Nowadays, the term cracker is frequently used to denote a hacker with criminal intentions. A group of hackers working together would form a community e.g. Anonymous. As you read the book, you will also realize that most hackers have handles, which are considered to be cooler than their legal names. A handle also helps them to hide their identity from the police. Handles also make it difficult to guess the hackers race and gender. E.g. Shrinidhi is obviously a south Indian girl, but who is Ace? Hackers are conventionally divided into a few categories such as: Neophytes, or n00bs or newbies are beginners with virtually no hacking experience". 9|Page

Script Kiddies are amateurs or point-and-click hackers who use ready-made hacking software and scripts to break into very vulnerable systems. White Hat Hacker: A person who aims at improving the security of his organizations systems is a White Hat Hacker. Technically, this is ethical hacking done with no malicious reasons. Also known as computer security experts, white hats perform penetration tests on corporate and Government networks to improve system security. Black Hat Hacker: A Black Hat illegally breaks into computer systems and networks to steal critical information, cause damage or make money. Grey Hat Hacker: A Grey Hat first hacks into computer systems and networks of organizations and then informs the targets about their poor security. The grey hat then offers to fix the vulnerabilities for a fee. Hackitivists use hacking as a means of political protest. Their favorite methods include denial of service and web defacement attacks. Blue hat hackers test new applications for vulnerabilities before the application is publically released. 10 | P a g e

Nation state hackers are those that work for or on behalf of intelligence agencies of countries. Organized hacker gangs carry out various cyber crimes for profit. Bots are automated software programs that are used for hacking. These may even be powered with artificial intelligence capabilities. Any discussion on hackers and hacking is incomplete without the hackers manifesto: The Hacker Manifesto by +++The Mentor+++ Written January 8, 1986 Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"... Damn kids. They're all alike. But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him? I am a hacker, enter my world... 11 | P a g e

Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... Damn underachiever. They're all alike. I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..." Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike. I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I'm a smart ass.. Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here... Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all... Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike... 12 | P a g e

You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert. This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

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ONE

1. Adrian Lamo

Adrian was one of the hackers who broke into computers for good reasons being a threat analyst by profession. The Columbian- American hacker strangely never resided in one place to perform his hacking. He often did a lot of his work from cyber cafes, university libraries and abandoned buildings. Adrian first got famous when between 2002 and 2003; he hacked into the systems of several large companies like Microsoft, Yahoo!. The grey hat hacker in fact added his name to the internal database of expert sources after breaking into the systems of The New York times. However, after he hacked into such high profile networks, he also explained why and how he did it. And the best part - even when the system access was authorized from his end, he would find security loopholes in their systems for free. This led to his arrest in 2003. 14 | P a g e

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In 2004, an interview with Wired revealed that Lamos girlfriend accused him of using a stun gun on her, for which the court issued a restraining order against the hacker. Lamo surrendered himself to the U.S Marshals and the FBI after several weeks in hiding. He was also required to pay $65,000 for the damages he had caused and sentenced to six months house arrest. Lamo served two years probation and is now employed as a tech journalist.

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TWO

10. Albert Gonzalez


Albert committed the biggest bank theft so far between 2005 and 2007. He with a group of other hackers used SQL injections to create back doors on a large number of corporate systems and installed ARP spoofing softwares to retrieve sensitive information from them; later reselling over 170 million card numbers. In high school, Albert and his friend hacked into the Indian governments computer systems through library computers and dropped a mail about their culture. After the incident, the hacker was warned to stay away from computers for a few months. In 2000, Albert moved to Kearny, New Jersey. There he joined a hacker group named Shadowcrew. Apart from credit card theft, the hacker has also been accused of innumerable objects of identity theft like birth certificates, drivers license, college identity cards, etc.

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A member of the group sold personal information regarding $18 million email accounts and accomplices who sold forbidden items were indicted. Gonzalez was also involved in hacking the TJX companies and the mastermind behind stealing millions of credit card and debit card details. In 2010, he was sentenced to twenty years in federal prison.

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THREE

11. Alvi brothers

The Brain was the first computer virus accidentally created by two Pakistani brothers Basit and Amjad in September 1986. The brothers worked at a hospital and created the virus for the sole purpose of preventing others from copyrighting their medical software. 20 | P a g e

The virus only had the capability to damage MS-DOS. The Brain virus affected the IBM Personal computers. It would replace the boot sector of the floppy disc with five kilobytes of the virus. The real boot sector is shifted to another section in the hard disk. The virus came with a message that said Welcome to the Dungeon 1986 Brain & Amjads (pvt) LtdVIRUS_SHOE RECORD V9.0 Dedicated to the dynamic memories of millions of viruses who are no longer with us today - Thanks GOODNESS!! BEWAREOF THE er..VIRUS: this program is catching program follows after these messages....$#@%$@!! The virus also contained contact details and address of the creator of the virus and mentioned that in order to cure the infected system, the victims would have to call the authors back. They tried to convince frustrated victims from different parts of the country that they had no evil intentions while creating the virus. Later when the code ran amok, they had no choice but to cut their telephone lines. The brothers are currently working in Pakistan as Internet Service providers for an organization named the Brain Telecommunication Limited.

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FOUR

100. Chad Davis

Davis, popularly known as Mindphasr was a hacker of the late 20th century. He formed a ring of about 60 hackers by the name of GlobalHell. Davis has been accused of participating in high profile attacks such as web defacements and hacking into websites of government and corporate agencies. The members of this group also broke into websites of the US army, US cellular, US postal service and that of the White House. They then tapped illegally tapped teleconferences and stole critical information. The FBI tried to track down the members of Globalhell on June 2nd 1999 after they destroyed the systems of the White House. On June 28th, he deliberately hacked into the systems f the US army after the previous investigation, posting a message saying globalHell will not die. This incident forced the FBI and the Computer Crime Resident Agency of 22 | P a g e

the Army's Criminal Investigation Command to handle the case. On March 1st 2000, David was sentenced to six months imprisonment, ordered to pay US$8,054 followed by three years probation. The American hacker, post-conviction works as an independent security consultant. Davis has also been invited to give speeches in different parts of the country on network security and its importance.

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FIVE

101. Chen Ing-hau

Chen ing-hau is the author of the deadly Chernobyl virus. It was a file virus that was first discovered on the 25th of June 1998. CIH gets its name from the initials of its creator and came with an .exe file extension. The nature of the virus was such that when executed on a computer system, it would turn into a resident and infect every executable file. CIH would look out for empty spaces in a file, split itself into smaller pieces and occupy the blank spaces by inserting its own code. Due to this ability of the virus, the file size never increased. Hence, the virus is also called Spacefiller. The Chernobyl virus has the capability to run only on Windows 95, 98 and ME systems. The virus has two payloads. The first payload fills up the hard drive by overwriting random data from the 0th sector of the disk. 24 | P a g e

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This went on using an infinite loop till the system crashed. This made it impossible to recover information from the system. On the other hand, the second payload caused permanent damage to the computer by writing to the Flash BIOS and corrupting the information stored there. This resulted in a blank screen display when a user turned on the system. The virus first spread in 1998 summer through pirated software. Within a year, multiple software companies unintentionally released the virus. IBM manufactured PCs pre-installed with the virus in 1999. Hundreds of computers in Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and about ten companies in India were infected with the virus resulting in about $250,000,000 worth of damages. The Taiwanese hacker was initially arrested and released shortly after as no official complaint was filed against him.

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SIX

110. Clifford Stoll

Clifford Stoll is not a typical hacker. He is mainly an astronomer and author from Buffalo, New York. Stoll was employed at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) in California, a Computer Center, where he had to track an accounting error in the LBL system. While working as the system administrator, Stoll once mentioned that the system had been hacked and the root password had been accessed. Naturally, the system security was more important than an accounting error. Clifford was also able to trace and identify how the hacker accessed the computer. The LBL also sealed off the system but in resulted in a futile attempt to protect the systems. In the end, they set up a honeypot to track down the criminal. 27 | P a g e

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A honeypot is a tactic that seems like very useful information to the hacker and is also a trap set to catch an intruder. He ultimately discovered hacker Markus Hess, after which Stoll rose to fame for having solved one of the first few cases relating to digital forensics. The brainy author penned down details of his investigation in the book The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy through the Maze of Computer Espionage and in a paper "Stalking the Wily Hacker".

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SEVEN

111. David Smith

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Before we discuss the next hacker, its important to know about the Melissa Virus. Melissa is a macro virus that replicated itself rapidly. It spreads via email attachment that does not destroy files but cause the virus to be sent to the first 50 contacts in the Microsoft Outlook address book . The virus also crippled several safeguards in Word 97 and Word 2000. David Smith was the creator of the infamous Melissa virus. David belonged to the United States of America and apparently named his virus after a stripper in Florida. The virus spread in the form of a suspicious chain letter with a file that originated on the internet as alt.sex Newsgroup and comprised of a list of passwords of websites that required memberships. On March 26th 1999, Microsoft was forced to shut their incoming emails due to the virus. It also affected Intel and a few other companies. Smith was arrested and then later sentenced to jail on May 1st 2002 for having caused $80million worth of damage. He spent over one year and eight months in prison, paid a $5000 fine and did hours of community service for intentionally sending a virus to cause damage.

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EIGHT

1000. Dennis Moran

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The American, popularly known as Coolio, was initially accused of denial of service attacks on Yahoo!, ebay and other common websites on the net. The message sent by the network administrator to CERT regarding the smurf attack stated that the attacks were planned and committed by experienced hackers. This incapacitated the website for several hours. Later it was found that Moran was not responsible for the attacks. The hacker was again accused of launching a chain of denial of service attacks in February 2000 when he defaced national websites owned by the Army, Los Angeles Anti Drug organization and that of the Air Force. A month later, the FBI investigated the case and confiscated the hackers computers. They found evidence of suspicious activities. However, Moran was not charged with any crime. With time, the FBI thoroughly checked evidences relating to other defaced websites and Moran was convicted of 4 counts of Class A violation of unauthorized access. The hacker was also fined with US $15,000.

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NINE

1001. Dmitry Sklyarov

Drimtry was working in a software company named ElcomSoft while simultaneously researching on cryptanalysis as a part of his PhD. At that time, he developed the Advanced E-Book Processor (AEBR) which made it easy for users to avoid the copyright protections in Adobe systems e-book reader program. A complaint from the US Company, Adobe Systems was filed against him on 16th July 2001. Although the Russian programmer was charged with violating copyrights, technically he had done nothing illegal in his jurisdiction as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not apply in Russia. Hence, several websites initiated protests against his arrest with slogans like Free Drimtry or Free Sklyarov. 34 | P a g e

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In July 2001, Adobe and the Association of American Publishers came forth with a press release declaring their support for Drimtrys arrest. But Adobe recommended his release after a meeting with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and decided to hold the case against the company. Drimtry was jailed after developing the software but he was released on 6th August 2001 on a bail worth US $50,000 and was not allowed to leave his city. Later, charges against him were dropped and a jury realised that ElcomSoft had accidentally violated the US Law.

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TEN

1010. Ehud Tenenbaum

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This is an Israeli hacker known by the pseudonym The Analyser. Tenenbaum rose to fame in 1998, when he was responsible for intruding into systems of several large websites, a few which were of NASA ,US Air Force, US Navy, the Pentagon, MIT and many more American and Israeli universities. He installed a Trojan and softwares to retrieve information from packets. At the age of 19, he belonged to a small hacker group and committed the crime. Before the hacker was sentenced to imprisonment, he served the Israeli defence forces for a short term. He was released soon as he was involved in a traffic accident. Tenenbaum was penalised for the act and was sentenced to imprisonment for a year and half. But he served only 8 months. After being released from prison in 2003, he started his own company 2XS to provide information security. In 2008, the hacker again participated in credit card fraud. A group of hackers broke into financial organizations to steal credit card numbers which were later sold to other criminals. Tenenbaum was charged with Credit card fraud and was sentenced a two year suspended imprisonment. He also had to pay a fine worth US$ 18,000.

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ELEVEN

1011. Frederick Cohen


Fred Cohen was a student at the University of Southern California School when he invented the first computer virus. In 1983, the American boy came up with a short program that infected computers and multiplied itself and distributed from one computer system to another. The virus was given the name parasitic application due to its ability to replicate and damage files. The application immediately took control over the systems functions. A Parasitic application could not be easily found as it was hidden within a bigger program that performed useful operations and was stored in the floppy disk of a computer. The computer scientist also wrote a useful program that, when spread, infected executable files, compressed the size of files and increased memory space in the system. Since it did no harm to the system, Cohen also believed that there are positive viruses. Similarly, he has also done other virus related researches in the past. 39 | P a g e

Today, Cohen owns a company that offers information security.

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TWELVE

1100. Gary McKinnon

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According to a few websites Gary is the Worlds most dangerous hacker from North London. This was said to be the biggest military computer hack of all time by a prosecutor. Within a span of one year, the hacker attacked NASA computers and 97 US military by changing his name to Solo. Between 2001 and 2002, not only did McKinnon hack into 73,000 computers, he also erased important files from the operating systems, causing about 2000 systems of the US Military to crash for an entire day. He also sent a message criticizing their poor security. The Scottish system administrator has also been accused of stealing passwords, account files, copying and storing data on his own computer. However, the hacker claimed that he did not intend to cause damage and the reason behind the act was to find information on extraterrestrial objects to make common man aware of them. In a BBC interview, he also mentioned using the Perl script to find blank passwords. On 19th March 2002, the police confiscated his computer after an interview with him. Five months later, when interviewed by the UK National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU), McKinnon was charged with seven counts of computer crime, each of which required him to be imprisoned for ten years. 42 | P a g e

Gary was free for five years without restriction until June 2005 and was restricted from using internet. Law states that if extradited by the US, he could be charged with upto 70 years in jail. The hacker has also been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder with clinical depression. Currently, McKinnon is fighting extradition to the United States.

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THIRTEEN

1101. Jan de Wit

Jan was the creator of the Anna Kournikova virus. This was a virus very similar to the ILOVEYOU virus except that this did not corrupt files stored in computers. It came with a subject titled Here you have ;0) and pretended to have a picture of the famous tennis player Anna Kournikova where as it actually contained a malicious file. The file was a visual basic script with the name AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs Once opened, the message said Hi: Check This! along with a picture of the tennis player and this triggered the virus to forward a copy of the mail to the top 50 address from Microsoft Outlook. In order to duplicate itself, the worm was built by an Argentinean programmer [K]Alamar, using a Visual Basic 44 | P a g e

worm generator program. It was apparently created within a few hours. Jan de Wit was charged with 150 hours of community service for spreading information into computer networks with the intention of causing damage and creating the virus Anna Kournikova on 11th February 2001.

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FOURTEEN

1110. Joanna Rutkowska

Joanna is a security researcher from Poland. Her area of specialization is stealth malware and low level security. Hacking is her interest but her primary focus is on building security systems to prevent cyber crime. She started being talked about by people after the Black Hat briefings Conference in Las Vegas (USA) in August 2006. Here the lady demonstrated an attack against the security system of Windows Vista kernel protection mechanism by dismantling the components and planting a rootkit on the operating system. She also introduced Blue pill (a virtual machine rootkit) to the world that was 100 percent undetectable even on Windows Vista systems.

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She was published as one of the top Five Hackers who made a mark on 2006 by Eweek magazine. Ever since, the beautiful woman was often invited to several companies to talk about their security systems. In 2006, Rutkowska also pointed out the intrinsic weakness in Anti-virus softwares, explained the scope of stealth malware and its threat to the operating systems. Later in 2007 Joanna with a team member presented advanced research on virtualization malware. She established Invisible Things Lab in Warsaw, Poland. The company focuses on Operating System and Virtual Machine Manager Security research. In 2010, she and Rafal Wojtczuk created the Qubes security-centric operating system based on Disposable Virtual Machine.

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FIFTEEN

1111. John Draper


John Draper is a very popular name in the computer hacking world. The American hacker was the king of phone phreaking in the 1970s. In the absence of the internet, Draper was also skilled at dealing with phones. The computer programmer initially joined the Air Force in 1964. John understood the mechanism of getting access to a local telephone switchboard and facilitated his colleagues make free calls to their home when in Alaska. In 1967, he owned a pirate radio station WKOS, but he eventually closed down when a major radio station WDME was against him. Draper was also employed in San Francisco Bay Area where he did military related work. At that time, he owned his pirate station and operated it from his Volkswagen van. In order to give feedback to listeners, he distributed a telephone number to his audience. 49 | P a g e

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Draper accidentally entered the world of phone phreaks, when he was contacted by one of them to build a multifrequency tone generators for blind people. In the course of his attempt to build one, he created the blue box which was capable of producing other tones by a phone company. Draper was eventually arrested in 1972, when an article Esquire revealed information about the concept of phone phreaking. Around the time, he was also noticed by Steve Wozniak. He taught Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs the technique of phone phreaking after which, they set up Apple computers. While working with them for a short while, he created a telephone interface board for Apple II and was called the Charlie Board. But the hacker was sentenced to five years probation.

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SIXTEEN

10000. John Schiefer

John used the method of wiretapping to access information and intercept private information. The hacker used a malware named spybots that would behave as a wiretap on secure computers and steal data that travelled between the computer and bank accounts. With the help of this information, John made fraudulent purchases via Paypal, etc. Schiefer became well known when he used the same malware on Microsoft operating systems. It would access usernames and passwords from a secure place on the hard drive called PStore. He was also the first to use botnets to commit identity theft.

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Schiefer was hired by a Dutch online advertising Company to install company software on selected computers for which he was paid $20,000. But Schiefer and two other hackers installed the software on a botnet, without the company owners consent. In all, the hacker was found guilty and in 2009 he was sentenced to four years for counts of wire fraud, bank fraud, identity theft and retrieving private information.

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SEVENTEEN

10001. Jon Lech Johansen

Jon Lech Johansen, commonly known as DVD Jon, was accused of writing and spreading a software that allows users to copy protected DVD films.

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The accusers not only ordered that his computer be confiscated, but Jon was also required to pay a fine of $1,400 to the court. He is also well known for his work in reverse engineering data formats. Jon is a self trained programmer who dropped out of high school to concentrate on building the DeCSS software in 1999. Almost every DVD- video disc comes with a Content Scrambling System (CSS) that encodes the data on the disc. This system is used in order to license a DVD. The DeCSS was programmed to decrypt the CSS, thereby allowing the possibility of the contents to be copied. The Norwegian programmer only took responsibility for creating the GUI of the software. He refused to take blame for writing the decrypting program as a person in Germany was involved in creating this half of the software. It was also legal under the Norwegian law to copy DVDs for personal use. His denial was accepted by the court on 7th January 2003 and relieved from charges.

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EIGHTEEN

10010. Jonathan Joseph James

Jonathan James a.k.a c0mrade is a hacker from Miami, USA. The American hacker penetrated into the computers of NASA and Defence Department computers. NASA was forced to shut down its systems for three weeks, resulting in a loss of $41,000. James was extremely passionate about computers since the age of 6. He learnt C and Linux on his own by reading various books and in middle school he even switched to Linux from Windows on his personal computer. He was 15 when he was playing around and committed his first offence. He was the first juvenile to be imprisoned in the USA for cyber crime. James intruded the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Alabama, and downloaded the environmental control software for the International Space station. 56 | P a g e

This software contained programming about humidity and temperature control in living space. James was sentenced to six months house arrest and probation till the age of eighteen. Not only was he told to write apology letters to NASA and Defence Department, he was also not allowed to use the computers unnecessarily. But the judge revised her decision and permitted the boy to serve six months house arrest and probation until the age of twenty one. But, he later violated the probation when he was tested positive for drug abuse. Between August and October 1999, James aimed at interrupting high-profile organizations like the BellSouth and Miami-Dade school system. James created an unauthorized back door in the Defence Threat Reduction Agency Server that helped him view sensitive information and important emails. This enabled him sniff the usernames and passwords of employees. The computer geek mentioned that the source code was not worth $1.7 million as it was easily possible to hack into their systems. He also pointed out that they lack serious computer security. According to legal experts, James could have served a minimum of ten years in prison had he been an adult.

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Much later in 2007, a group of hackers interrupted systems like TJX, Forever21, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, BJs wholesale Club, DSW, OfficeMax, Dave & Buster's and compromised with customers credit card information. Although James was not involved in the crime, he turned out to be friends with a few of the hackers in the group. Hence, during investigation the police discovered a legally registered firearm and noted, it signalled he was considering suicide. Jonathan was afraid he would be accused of crimes he had not committed and therefore committed suicide with a selfinflicted gunshot on the 18th of May, 2008.

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NINETEEN

10011. Jeanson James Ancheta

Jeanson is a computer hijacker. The American boy was a drop out at school after which he joined a program designed for improperly behaved students. He was expected to join the army according to his parents but while working at a cyber caf, Jeanson discovered a computer worm named rxbot that could distribute his chain of infected computers. He later started working with botnets in June 2004. Ancheta, more often called Gobo, was the first to be accused of controlling thousands of infected computers or botnets. An Operation: Bot Roast was created by the FBI to trace Bot herders and other hackers in November 2005. Ancheta plead guilty to four felony charges that included violation of United States Code Section 1030, Fraud and Related Activity in Connection with Computers. 60 | P a g e

The hijacker must serve 60 years in prison, return US$15,000 to the U.S federal government for infecting military computers and surrender a 1993 BMW as penalty. 61 | P a g e

TWENTY

10100. Jeffrey Lee Parson

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Jeffrey is best known for creating the computer worm Blaster in August 2003. The worm spread only on Windows XP and Windows 2000. The worm would exploit the buffer flow and when it infected a computer, it would display a message: System Shutdown: This system is shutting down. Please save all work in progress and log off. Any unsaved changes will be lost. This shutdown was initiated by NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM Time before shutdown: hh:mm:ss Message: Windows must now restart because the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Service terminated unexpectedly. The system would then automatically reboot and this occurred every 60 seconds. This was first noticed on 11th August 2003. It replicated at a rapid rate within two days. Jeffrey Lee Parson was arrested for intentionally causing damage to a secure computer and creating the B-variant of the computer worm. The American boy served 18 months in jail in 2005.

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TWENTY ONE

10101. Jerome Heckenkamp

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Jerome is an Australian citizen who later moved to Wisconsin, USA with his family. The boy never attended school but when was educated at home, he proved to be an extraordinary kid. He learnt algebra at the 8 and was admitted to the University of Wisconsin when he was 14. Jerome worked as a network engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory after graduating in Computer Science. He intruded several large websites like ebay, Qualcomm, Juniper Networks, E-Trade and more that caused severe damage worth a lot. In 1999, the UNIX system administrator of Qualcomm realised that someone has been able to access their systems externally. After tracing the suspects IP address, the system administrators hacked into Heckenkamp's computer to notice that he has already gained access to the root passwords of the server. In 2004, Jerome pled guilty to two felonies. He spent 7 months in prison and was sentenced to time served.

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TWENTY TWO

10110. Kevin Mitnick

Kevin Mitnick is one of the most notorious hackers of his time. He managed to use the art of social engineering and coding to get his way. As a kid, Kevin manipulated his bus driver to get useful information on how he could by his own punching ticket punch and travel free of cost in any bus in Los Angeles. Ever since, Kevin used the art of social engineering to acquire usernames, sensitive information like passwords, etc to hack into systems. The first time the American intruded a computer system was at the age of 16 in 1979. With the help of a phone number of Ark, which is the computer system for DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) for building the RSTS/E operating system software, he hacked into DECs network to copy the software. 66 | P a g e

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Hence he was able to overhear conversations by tapping telephone calls. Kevin is also accused of breaking into computer networks of some large organizations like Nokia, Motorola, Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu Siemens and more. The American hacker was amused by the power of tapping telephone conversations to eavesdrop and soon joined a gang of phone phreaks. In the late 1980s he also dated a lady in the group named Susan Headley. In an interview with TIME magazine Kevin mentioned how he was a mischievous kid right from school days. In a class assignment, instead of writing a code that gives you the first 100 Fibonacci numbers, he alone wrote a correct program to steal students passwords and impressed his teacher. Kevin claimed that he was proudest when he hacked into Pac Bell Cellular to perform traffic analysis on the FBI agents who were to catch him. Tsutomu, a Japanese citizen brought up in New Jersey where he attended Princeton High School and became famous in no time. Kevin was then charged with 12 months imprisonment in 1988.

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TWENTY THREE

10111. Kevin Poulsen

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Kevin Poulsen a.k.a Dark Dante is an American black hat hacker. He is best known for hacking phone systems, particularly at radio stations. While he was working at the SRI International during the day, he also learnt the technique of lock picking. He would indulge in dangerous high- tech stunts that would subsequently make him one of Americas most known cyber criminals. He was most recognised in 1990 for hacking into telephone lines in the Los Angeles Radio Station KIIS FM, assuring that he would be the 102nd caller, for which he won a Porsche 944 S2. While he was put behind bars, Kevin also tasted celebrity charm in the tech world after the release of his book Watchman: The twisted life and Crimes of a Serial killer. Once Poulsen was out of prison, he took up journalism. In 2000 he joined SecurityFocus, a research organization, where he wrote on security and hacking news. Soon, he became well- known and his original research work would often get picked by the mainstream press. He left the company in 2005 to work as a freelancer and turn into an independent writer. In October 2006, Poulsen searched and released information on sex offenders who would fantasize sex with children on MySpace. The search listed about 744 sex offenders who owned a profile on Myspace. 70 | P a g e

The hacker turned journalist received a number of awards like the Knight-Batten Award for innovation in Journalism in 2008, Webby Award in 2011, and many more. He now works as a News Editor in Wired.com.

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TWENTY FOUR

11000. Kristina Vladimirovna Svechinskaya

A Russian by nationality, Kristina is actually a money mule maker. She used Zeus Trojans to hack into the computers of several banks and was also charged for using multiple false passports. In November 2010, she was arrested for stealing millions of dollars from various bank accounts in Britain and America. After Kristina lost her father, her family was living on just $400 USD. She chose a work and travel program in her third year and moved to Massachusetts (USA). Since her earnings were not much, the smart hacker later moved to New York where she chose to money mule. She earned the tag of the worlds sexiest hacker for her revealing clothes and casual appearance. Kristina was 21 when she, along with nine other people attacked thousands of banks. 72 | P a g e

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They successfully hacked at least five of them and took away $3 million in total. The hacker was released on a $25,000 bail. But, if declared guilty, then Svechinskaya may have to serve up to 40 years in prison. She has her personal page on VKontatke, A Russian Social Networking site very similar to Facebook. VKontatke is available in 5 different Languages and enables users to share large files using Torrent filesharing technology.

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TWENTY FIVE

11001. Mark Abene

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Mark belonged to New York based hacker groups named Master of Deception and Legion of Doom. He excelled at hacking telephone companies. The elite hacker was better known as Phiber Optik among his group. Ever since Mark was 9, he spent time on computers. He eventually got curious about hacking and learnt about dialup computers and DEC minicomputers. He also observed that programming in the DEC minicomputers were much simpler and user friendly than his home computers. After this, he chose to learn more about the complexities of nation-wide telephone network. Abene was a high profile hacker in the 1980s and early 1990s. He also has vast knowledge in system and network intrusion and 20 years of professional experience in the field of information and network security. In February 1991, he went to prison for 35 months charged with computer tampering and trespass. The computer security hacker has also featured in The New York Times, Harpers, Time Magazine and many more. Abene has also been chosen as the keynote speaker by both hacker and security conferences around the world to make students aware of Information security and its importance.

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TWENTY SIX

11010. Michael Calce

Calce was born in Montreal, Quebec. Since childhood, Michael was very fascinated by computers. After his parents separation, he often felt disconnected with friends and family. 77 | P a g e

Hence, his father bought a computer just for him. Computers gave him a sense of control and command. He is commonly known as Mafia Boy. Mafia boy mainly launched a series of very popular denial of service attacks in February 2000 and committed identity theft on the internet. He was the internet identity of Script kiddie Michael Calce, a high school student from west island, Canada, who crippled some of the large websites like Yahoo!, Dell, CNN, ebay etc. The boy was 15 years old when he made headlines by launching attacks that brought down these websites. He also tried attacking 9 to 13 root name servers simultaneously, but in vain. Michael pleaded guilty for 56 charges in the Montreal court on 18th January 2001. At the age of 16, he brought down the biggest website on the internet. He was also accused of several security breaches of other universities like Yale and Harvard. Mafia boy is one of the most well known and dangerous cyber criminals. In 2005, he wrote a column on the computer security topics in the largest French newspaper in North America which was also published in Montreal, Canada. It was named Le Journal de Montreal. Three years later, he also wrote a book How I cracked the internet and why its still broken.

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TWENTY SEVEN

11011. Nahshon Even-Chaim

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Nahshon was the first hacker to be convicted in Australia. He was one of the most powerful and well known hackers of his time. Even-chaim, better known as phoenix by his pseudonym, was part of a group of hackers known as The Realm in the 1980s. Even-Chaim mainly hacked into networks by directly dialling through X25 networks. He also made use of the internet once it was accessible. Nahshon also tapped into phone conversations and transmitted data through his modem, for which he was given rigorous imprisonment for 12 months in April 1990. He also spent hours tampering with computer systems. Records of phone taps revealed Nahshon laughing with two other hackers about how he had been f***ing with NASA. The hackers arrest and prosecution details have also been mentioned in a book called Hackers: Hunt for Australias Most Infamous Computer Cracker and he has also been profiled in Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier by Suelette Dreyfus and In the Realm of the Hackers, a film by Kevin Anderson. Even-Chaim pleaded guilty to 15 charges including Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana for inserting data, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Melbourne, for hacking and copying Zardoz, 80 | P a g e

a computer industry bulletin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California for altering data, interfering with a computer and many more. On 2nd April 1990, the Australian Federal Police raided Even- Chaims home and he was arrested. He was charged with 48 offences which later came down to 15, after an agreement in which he was sentenced to 500 hours of community service and 12 months of suspended jail term. The skilled hacker refused to discuss the offences he committed and has pursued music after working in the IT field for a while.

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TWENTY EIGHT

11100. Onel A. de Guzman

Onel De Guzman was the author of the famous ILOVEYOU virus. The virus made a world record in 2000 and is said to be the most virulent computer virus then. The virus came with a subject titled "LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.txt." and clicking the message downloaded a malicious file that sent the copy of it to all the contacts in the address book. Guzman was a college student from Philippines at the time of creating the virus. Onel de Guzman was one of the suspects in a criminal investigation by the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the other being another computer programmer named Reomel Ramores. A local internet service provider (ISP) had informed the NBI about receiving calls from people in Europe complaining about the malicious file. 82 | P a g e

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The love letter was a visual basic script that ran on Microsoft Outlook by default. It replaced all other files like MP3, JPEG, JPG, JSE, CSS, and DOC with a copy of its own virus thereby adding a VBS extension to it. The virus spread at an alarming rate causing damages worth $5.5 billion around the world and 50 million infections within a span of ten days. Guzman was convicted in absentia. But he was later released as there was no law in Philippines against creating the malware. In July 2000, soon after the ILOVEYOU virus, an E-Commerce law was enacted.

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TWENTY NINE

11101. Pieter Zatko

L0pht was a hacker policy institute formed in the year 1992 in Massachusetts, USA. It was a research organization that was active for eight years. Pieter, a.k.a Mudge was part of L0pht and the Cult of the Dead Cow. He worked at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) as a program manager. Out of all the members in the hacker committee, he was one of the first to take the initiative to build contracts and relationships with the government. He along with the other hackers showed the United States Senate committee that the internet security is so poor, that they could disable it within half an hour. Mudge also contributed extensively to DARPA and built the Cyber Analytical Framework and also runs a minimum of three Department of Defence programs Military Networking Protocol (MNP), Cyber-Insider Threat (CINDER), and Cyber 85 | P a g e

Fast Track (CFT). In 2011, he was featured in the SC magazine as one of the top 5 influential IT thinkers.

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THIRTY

11110. Raphael Gray

A British boy, who drew attention in 1999, hacked into computers as part of a multi-million pound credit card mission within 6 weeks. Raphael stole credit card details and personal information of over 26,000 customers from e-commerce websites and posted them online to point out how insecure these websites actually are. The then 19 year old purchased an 800 computer to hack into the secure websites and assumed that the police would be able catch him as they normally never do. Gray sent Bill Gates a bunch of Viagra tablets and posted online saying he had a billionaires personal number. After this incident, he was nicknamed as Bill gates hacker. The hacker was arrested by the FBI agents with the help of ex-hacker Chris Davis. Chris was humiliated by Grays 87 | P a g e

arrogance and took revenge by tracking him down within a day. In 2001, Gray was sentenced to three years of psychiatric treatment.

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THIRTY ONE

11111. Richard Jones

Richard along with two other hackers- Nahshon Even-Chaim and David John Woodwick were accused of breaking into the computer systems of the US government and defense in the 1980s and the early 1990s. Richard was a member of the hacker community The Realm and was popular by his handle, Electron. The three hackers were also accused of stealing files from an online computer security newsletter. He trespassed into the University of Texas computer. The police began their investigation by tracing the online activity and tapping phone calls between the hackers. They were able to gather pieces of information related to how they hacked into systems. This evidence made this case notable for being the first prosecution of hackers under the Australian computer crime legislation that was formed in June 1989. 89 | P a g e

Richard was ordered to complete 300 hours of community service and psychiatric treatment. He was sentenced to suspended six months imprisonment in 1993.

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THIRTY TWO

100000. Robert Tappan Morris

Morris is the son of the coauthor of UNIX. Morris created the Worm while he was a student at Cornell University (USA), but he made it look as if the worm was created in another university (MIT). According to him, initially the intent of the worm was to estimate the size of the internet, but this worm created considerable damage by exploiting the vulnerabilities and getting access to many systems. Amongst other vulnerabilities, the worm exploited the Unix Sendmail Program and buffer overrun vulnerability in the fingered network service. Although the worm replicated quickly and slowed computers to the extent of non-functionality of the internet, it had a design flaw. 91 | P a g e

The worm was programmed to find if other computers were already infected. But Morris anticipated that some administrators may beat the worm by instructing the computer to display a false positive.

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To make up for this possibility, Morris directed the worm to copy itself anyway, 14% of the time, regardless of the response to the administrators instructions. This lead to system loads that interrupted target computers. The loss incurred due to the worm and the efforts to remove it was anywhere from $200 to $53000 for each system. In December 1990, Morris was sentenced to three years probation, 400 hours of community service, a $10,050 fine and costs of his supervision. Morris is also highly educated as a person. In 1987 He completed his B.A from Harvard University (USA), released the worm while he was graduating in Cornell University in 1988. He was accused of spreading the worm in the following year. In 1995, he along with Paul Graham established a start up company Viaweb. Three years later they sold the company to Yahoo for $48 million. In 1999, he also pursued his PhD in Applied Sciences from Harvard. Robert is now a professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA). Morris was also awarded tenure in the year 2005. Because he created the first computer worm on the internet in 1988, he also became the first to be fined under the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. 93 | P a g e

THIRTY THREE

100001. Susan Headley

Susan Headley was one of the earliest female hackers. She was born in Altona, USA in 1959. After dropping out from school in the eight grade, she moved to California and worked as a prostitute. Susan was also a rock groupie at one point. In the 1970s and early 1980s Susan was one of the most successful and famous hackers popularly called Susan Thunder or Suzy Thunder. In the early 1970s she once used social engineering to get backstage passes for a concert by claiming to be an important person or close to the band. Social Engineering is the method of Psychological manipulation to get confidential information from a person.

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Thunder was part of a group of Cyberpunks. By the end of 1970s she had already mastered the art of manipulating people and mostly used it to hack into organizations. Susan later met other popular hackers like Kevin Mitnick in 1980. Soon after she learnt the process of attacking military computer services. She allegedly also used her "advantages as a woman" to get access to confidential information by "sleeping" with security guards in certain organizations, to prove female hackers could achieve goals that male hackers could not. Susan said this gave her a sense of power over men and the companies she hacked into. Meanwhile, the lady also began dating Kevin Mitnick. She became part of the Roscoe Gang with Mitnick and Lewis de Payne (a.k.a Roscoe). They formed a ring of phone phreaks. The group hacked into multiple network systems in California that included U.S Leasing in 1982 and the Digital Equipment Corporation. Susan was later employed at the American Telecommunications Corp in Los Angeles. In 1982, the smart girl had a deal with the police and provided evidence against Kevin and Lewis in a theft case associated to the Pacific Bell telephone company.

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Added to that, while she was working, she testified the key evidence against de Payne in the U.S Leasing case. Much later, Headley quit hacking and in the course of time moved to Las Vegas, USA to become a professional poker player. In 1994, the lady was elected to a public office in California as City Clerk of California city.

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THIRTY FOUR

100010. Vladimir Levin

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Vladimir is a Russian programmer, who got arrested while he was in the process of committing a bank fraud. The graduate of St. Petersburg Tecknologichesky University committed one of the biggest and best organized wire transfer fraud till date. Levin was employed as a mathematician at the AO Saturn, St. Petersburg Company when he committed the crime in 1994. The 23 year old stole access codes and passwords of wealthy corporate customers of Citibank and transferred US$ 10.7 million to bank accounts of other accomplices in Israel, USA and Europe via dial up wire transfer service. Citibank had detected two suspicious money transfers in August 1994 that amounted to US$ 4, 00,000, which is when they approached the FBI. Later with the help of Russian authorities, they tracked down the illegal money transfers. In order to reduce suspicion, Levin operated late nights during New York business hours. Citibank claimed that they had recovered US$ 4, 00,000 out of the US$ 10.7 million. They upgraded all their security procedures and systems to use Dynamic Encryption Card, a physical authentication token. In 1998, Levin was sentenced to three years imprisonment. He was also required to pay $240,000 to Citibank, so that most of the amount stolen was acquired. 98 | P a g e

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HACKER GROUPS

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ONE

1. ANONYMOUS

Anonymous is an independent Hactivist group that came into existence in 2003. The term Anonymous could mean anyone from any part of the world and so, its a disconnected group. 101 | P a g e

The benefit of being anonymous is that it does not reveal the identity or name of the hacker and each person, being entitled to their opinion can post their views online for or against a subject and not worry about being judged. Anonymous initially operated on an image board named 4chan. The virtual community mainly aims at protesting against internet censorship and internet surveillance. They can be identified in a crowd by their Guy Fawkes masks. Their method of hacking usually includes publicized web defacement and distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS). These controversial attacks and the members of Anonymous have significantly increased from 2008. Anonymous is linked to a range of internet platforms like Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Dramatica, 4chan and others. Their only motto is We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us. In the last few years, Anonymous has brought down websites of the FBI and the US Department of Justice. In protest against the government surveillances, Anonymous in April 2012, also hacked into government websites of UK, USA, Iran, Turkey, Australia, Libya, Chile, Columbia, Algeria, New Zealand and more. 102 | P a g e

Anonymous has also classified the campaign against Kony as a scam. However, they continue to support the Kony 2012 campaign by Invisible children. Recently, MTNL and Reliance Communications received John Doe orders to block file hosting on websites. Some of the most recent hacks by Anonymous with respect to India include Reliance Communications for them to stop blocking websites like Pirate Bay, Vimeo, etc. that allows file hosting. Apparently, Reliance was hacked within 5 minutes. ISPs like MTNL were hacked as they were responsible for restricting file sharing. Anonymous also established tie ups with Wikileaks for sharing their views and protesting against internet censorship more openly. The secret partnership was visible when Anonymous disabled corporate websites like Paypal, MasterCard, Sony and Visa after these companies discontinued business deals with Wikileaks. Many of these hackitivists from different countries have been suspects for participating in DDoS attacks and most of them have been sentenced to imprisonment and ordered to pay a fine of hundreds of dollars. The reason Anonymous is a group despite the fact that its members do not know one another is because they all work 103 | P a g e

for the same cause. If at any point, someone chooses to disagree with the agenda of the group they can voluntarily resign from the cause. The protest however is continued by the rest. Protest actions attributed to anonymous (Source: Wikipedia.org) The Pirate Bay In April 2009, after The Pirate Bay co-defendants were found guilty of facilitating extensive copyright infringement "in a commercial and organized form", Anonymous launched a coordinated DDoS attack against the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), an organisation responsible for safeguarding recording artists' rights. When co-founders lost their appeal against convictions for encouraging piracy, Anonymous again targeted the IFPI, labelling them "parasites". A statement read: "We will continue to attack those who embrace censorship. You will not be able to hide your ludicrous ways to control us." Anonymous supporters at an Occupy OKC rally near the Oklahoma State Capitol Building. 104 | P a g e

Megaupload On January 19, 2012, Megaupload, a website providing file sharing services, was shut down by the US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This led to what Anonymous called "the single largest Internet attack in its history".Barrett Brown, described as a spokesperson for the group Anonymous by news outlet RT, said the timing of the raid "couldnt have come at a worse time in terms of the governments standpoint". SOPA With the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) protests only a day old, it was claimed that internet users were "by-and-far ready to defend an open Internet". Brown told RT that the Department of Justice website was shut down only 70 minutes after the start of the attack. Days later many of the sites were still down or slow to load. The attack disabled a number of websites, including those belonging to the Justice Department, the FBI, Universal Music Group, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and Broadcast Music, Inc. "Even without SOPA having been passed yet, the federal government always had tremendous power to do some of 105 | P a g e

the things that they want to do. So if this is what can occur without SOPA being passed, imagine what can occur after SOPA is passed," Brown commented. Although the actions of Anonymous received support, some commentators argued that the denial of service attack risked damaging the anti-SOPA case. The attack included a new, sophisticated method whereby internet users who clicked on links placed in chat rooms and on Twitter participated, some without their knowledge, in a denial of service attack, thereby breaking existing US law. Anonymous used "Low Orbit Ion Cannon" (LOIC) to attack supporters of SOPA on January 19, 2012. Anonymous claimed this to be their largest attack with over 5,635 people participating in the DDoS attack via LOIC. LOIC was utilized by many attackers, despite the fact that a network firewall could easily filter out network traffic it generates, thus rendering it only partly effective. In addition, LOIC attacks were easily identified in system logs, making it possible to trace the attacker's IP address and allowing arrests to be made by these law enforcement agencies.

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Kony Anonymous has described the Kony 2012 campaign by Invisible Children as "propaganda". Although they support the campaign against Kony, they felt that the campaign is mainly a scam. Government websites Anonymous claimed responsibility for taking down government websites in the UK on April 2012 in protest against government extradition and surveillance policies. A message was left on Twitter saying it was "for your draconian surveillance proposals". Occupy movement Anonymous activists merged with Occupy Wall Street protesters. Anonymous members descended on New York's Zucotti Park and organized it partly. After it became known that some Occupy protesters would get violent, Anonymous used social networking to urge Occupy protesters to avoid disorder. Anonymous used Twitter trends to keep protests peaceful. A similar protest occurred outside the London Stock Exchange in early May 2012 during a May Day Occupy protest. 107 | P a g e

Wanted criminals Alleged Internet predator Chris Forcand, 53, was charged with child sexual and firearm offenses. A newspaper report stated that Forcand was already being tracked by "cybervigilantes before police investigations commenced. A television report identified a "self-described Internet vigilante group called Anonymous" who contacted the police after some members were "propositioned" by Forcand. The report stated this was the first time a suspected Internet predator was arrested by the police as a result of Internet vigilantism. In October 2011, "Operation Darknet" was launched as an attempt to cease the activities of child porn sites accessed through hidden services in the deep web. Anonymous published in a pastebin link what it claimed were the user names of 1,589 members of Lolita City, a child porn site accessed via the Tor network. Anonymous said that it had found the site via The Hidden Wiki, and that it contained over 100 gigabytes of child pornography. Anonymous launched a denial-of-service attack to take Lolita City offline.

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Religious Organizations The group gained worldwide press for Project Chanology, the protest against the Church of Scientology. The project was started in response to the Church of Scientology's attempts to remove material from a highly publicized interview with Scientologist Tom Cruise from the Internet in January 2008. The project was publicly launched in the form of a video posted to YouTube, "Message to Scientology", on January 21, 2008. The video states that Anonymous views Scientology's actions as Internet censorship, and asserts the group's intent to "expel the church from the Internet". As of early 2011, the organisation has also targeted the Westboro Baptist Church, releasing several videos on a range of related topics, such as their controversial preaching against Homosexuality. Several attacks have been made on the primary website, one that was even made while Shirley Phelps-Roper was debating a representative of Anonomous in a televised interview on the David Pakman show.

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LGBT issues On August 2012 Anonymous hacked into Ugandan government websites in protest of pending homophobic bills. A message stated: "Anonymous will continue to target Ugandan government sites and communications until the government of Uganda treats all people including LGBT people equally". Other activities In late May 2012 alleged Anonymous members claimed responsibility for taking down a GM crops website. In October 2011, Anonymous hackers threatened the Mexican drug cartel known as Los Zetas in an online video after one of their members was kidnapped. The group is responsible for cyber-attacks on the Pentagon, News Corp and has also threatened to destroy Facebook.

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TWO

10. CHAOS COMPUTER CLUB

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One of the worlds largest hacker organizations is known as the Chaos Computer club. This group is chiefly based out of Germany and other countries where German is principal spoken language. It was created in Berlin, in 1981. The group considers itself "a galactic community of life forms, independent of age, sex, race or societal orientation, which strives across borders for freedom of information..... They promote a transparent government, freedom of information, the fundamental human right for communication. The Chaos Computer Club rose to fame when they found and revealed the security flaws of the German Bildschirmtext computer network to the public. The system provider had failed to respond to the report regarding security flaws, which was submitted by the Chaos Computer Club. The group then caused a debit of 1,34,000 Deutsche Mark in a Hamburg bank in favour of the Chaos Computer Club. The very next day, the money was returned in front of the press. Many of the groups exploits are well documented.

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The group was involved in 1989 in the first cyber espionage case to make headlines internationally. They are also known for their public demonstrations of flaws in security systems. The Club also hosts yearly event known as the Chaos Communication Congress. The event is attended by at least 4500 participants yearly.

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THREE

11. CULT OF THE DEAD COW

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The Cult of the Dead Cow is also known as cDc or cDc Communications. It is a computer hacker organisation founded in Lubbock, Texas in June 1984 at slaughterhouse by Grandmaster Ratte, Franken Gibe, and Sid Vicious. The organisation is also a parent organisation of the Ninja Strike force and Hacktivismo. Ninja Strike force is a group of elite members who are dedicated to achieving goals both online and offline. In 2006 the organisation launched its own micro site. Hacktivismo is a group which is dedicated to the creation of anti censorship laws. The group also seeks to apply the Universal Declaration of human rights over the internet. Throughout the 1980s the group was also very well known for its underground e-magazine. Over the years, the Cult of the Dead Cow has also released several computer security and some Hacker tools. These include: + The Automated Prayed Project a Terminal connected to a Sun systems work station via a serial cable. + Back Orifice-a program designed for remote system administration.

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+ Back Orifice 2000 a very similar to Back Orifice. It was released in 1999. + Camera/Shy a Steganographic program. + NBName A program used to carry out Denial of service Attacks. + ScatterChat A secure Instant messaging client. + The Six/Four System a Censorship resistant network Proxy. + SMBRelay and SMBRelay 2 programs used to carry out Server message block man in the middle attacks. + Torpark A variant of a portable Firefox web browser with Tor built in. + Whisker A project to check for security vulnerabilities on web servers.

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FOUR

100. DIGITAL DAWGPOUND


The Digital DawgPound is a group of hackers who are popular for a series of articles in the hacker magazines. The group encourages new recruits who want to learn about hacking and tries to teach them the positive attributes in an attempt to deter them away from negative elements. The Digital DawgPound tries to prove that hackers can not only be an integral part the development of technology, but society as well. The Binary Revolution is one of the most popular projects done by the group. The project was meant to bring together hacker communities for a common and positive goal which would benefit the society. The Digital DawgPound also maintains a blog which they refer to as blawg.

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FIVE

101. GENOCIDE2600

Travis Ogden was the founder of genocide2600. His reason for the disturbing name was apparently to make people twitch so they react. The members came together in 1985 and their activities included telephone phreaking, developing codes for benefiting from telephony systems and sharing it with Bulletin Board systems. They eventually also got the hang of social engineering. Genocide2600 also actively fought pornography on AOL and other sites. against child

Few members of the group also joined other hackers, formed a community by the name Ethical Hackers against Paedophilia to battle against child pornography.

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The group also promoted software applications like Snort and Packetstorm. Currently, the members of the group cannot be traced. As they have worked on diverse attacks, even the publications about them are scattered.

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SIX

110. GLOBALHELL

Some of the most notable hacks performed by the globalHell are the intrusions into the White House, systems of the US military, US Cellular and postal systems. Apart from these, the members have also been accused of countless web defacements, leaking sensitive information and stealing financial information.

The globalHell comprised of about 60 members who fell apart after one- fifth of them were charged with computer intrusion and a few others for committing similar crimes.

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SEVEN

111. GOATSE SECURITY

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Goatse Security was a loosely associated group of about nine grey hat hackers formed in 2009. Their main target was to bring out defects in the security of different systems. The group is also affiliated to Gay Nigger Association of America. The hackers managed to gather email addresses of over one lakh iPad users and leaked the information. Later in June 2010, Goatse Security again brought out the security flaws in AT&T website. At that point, AT&T was the only was the only 3G service provider. There was an important argument regarding the procedures to sort out security problems after the attacks by Goatse security. The members of the group leaked chat logs and were able to get critical information by detecting the defects of various systems. In May 2011, Goatse security also pointed out the Denial of Service vulnerabilities that affect multiple Linux distributions. After the investigation of iPad user case, two members from the group were accused of criminal charges.

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EIGHT

1000. HACKER DOJO

Hacker Dojo is an organization that is located in Mount ain View, California, USA. David Weekly, Jeff Lindsay, Brian Klug, Melissalynn Perkins, Kitt Hodsden formed the community Center in 2009.

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Hacker Dojo is an open to all types of hackers and is mainly present to encourage working on software projects. Anybody is free to join as a member in the group. The members can feel free to organize events and the Dojo is considered to be an open communal space. They have also been sponsored by some of the large companies like Microsoft, Google, Palantir technologies and more. Over the years they have expanded their group and have affiliations with Noisebridge, NYC Resistor, Pumping Station One and SuperHappyDevHouse. The main purpose of the hackerspace is to conduct events, gather to socialize and create a pleasant working atmosphere. Professionals from different start up companies like SkyDera, NetworkedBlogs and MicroMobs in Silicon Valley work at the Hacker Dojo, which is approximately 1,200 square meters.

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NINE

1001. HACKWEISER

The Hackweiser was active for around five years, between 1999 and 2003. The group was a combination of grey hat and Black hat hackers. Some of the important members of the group were p4ntera, BigHawk, Squirrlman and R4ncid. However, p4ntera dropped out of the group in 2001.

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The underground hacker group has brought down several websites and been responsible for web defacements on sites like Walmart, Microsoft, Sony, DARE and plenty more. In April 2001, they claimed to have started an attack named Project China that targeted against the Mainland Chinese computer systems. The Hackweiser has also won several awards in the State of Hack awards. After the arrest of Hackah Jak in 2003, the group slowly discontinued working together.

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TEN

1010. HARFORD HACKERSPACE

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Harford hackerspace is a group that originated in earl2009. It was located in the Harford Country, Maryland which is how the name was born. David Powell, Miles Pekala, Chris Cockrum, Paul King, Gary Cygel are some of the founders of the hackerspace. They came together with an aim to make a social environment for individuals to share their ideas, exchange opinions and hence became a non-profit 501(C) (3) charitable organization. Some of their important achievements are the Project featured on MSDN Channel9, Red Bull Creation 2011 finalist; they were also the winner for the Best Hardware prototype- Group project in Baltimore Hackathon 2010. Their Do it yourself CNC was also featured in a book by John Baichtal named "Hack this: 24 Incredible Hackerspace Projects from the DIY Movement".

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ELEVEN

1011. HELITH

This is a hacker group that was active in Germany since 1999. The think tank was a combination of black hat, white hat and grey hat hackers. The term Helith in German meant the Heroes and was also affiliated to another hacker group Milw0rm. The group works on areas like malware and network security and is scattered worldwide. 129 | P a g e

Some of the members of Helith include Benkei, ConCode, Cyneox, Rembrandt, Rott_En, Skyout and Zarathu. The other locations where their members are present are Russia, Africa, Columbia and more. The reason for forming the community was so members could share their opinions and ideas without hesitating about being judged on any basis. They worked on computer hardware and came up with security advisories affecting PF firewall, Open SSH and others. They have apparently also been able to intrude into Deutsche Banks internal network. Very little information has been disclosed about the group. And hence, the rest of the members are not traceable.

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TWELVE

1100. HONKER UNION

The Honker Union were a bunch of Hackitivists. The word Honker came into existence in May 1999 after the USA attacked the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia. This is when the Honker Union was formed. The term Honker means Red Guest. It also goes with their logo and refers to the communist party. The Union was mainly formed to promote and support the Chinese Government against the United States. 131 | P a g e

The Honkers felt strongly patriotic and are presently paired up with the Red Hacker Alliance. The group claimed to have attacked the website of a Tibetan writer. She also opposed official policy and hence they hacked into her skype account and accessed her mails. There have been rumours about the Chinese government working with the Honker Union. However, there is no clear evidence so far.

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THIRTEEN

1101. IPHONE DEV TEAM


The iPhone development team were a bunch of intellectual individuals, mostly engineers, who came together to create softwares that would allow users to use application that were otherwise unauthorized by Apple. They created the ultrasn0w that allows an unofficial carrier unlock for jailbroken iphones. Redsn0w is another tool developed by the team that is used to jailbreak iPods, iPhones and iPads. By the help of these tools, users could use options like deep customization and international roaming. It was discovered that in 2008, over 1.6 million devices in the world used the tools developed by the iPhone Dev Team.

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FOURTEEN

1110. L0PHT

L0pht Heavy Industries was a hacker collective which operated from 1992 to 2000 in the Boston. It was originally started for its members to store their computer hardware and to simultaneously work on projects. Eventually, a business venture known as L0pht Heavy Industries was formed. 134 | P a g e

The hacker think tank developed several security advisories and produced very popular tools such as L0phtCrack. In 1998, all the seven members of the L0pht declared to the Congress of the United States of America that they could very easily shut down the entire internet within thirty minutes. In 1999 L0pht declared that their objective was to improve the state of the art in security. Eventually, L0pht merged with a start-up known as @stake, which was obtained by Symantec in late 2004. As of 2009, L0phtCrack version 6 contained support for 64-bit Windows platforms as well. The important members of the Group are Brian Oblivion, Count Zero, Dildog, Golgo, Joe Grand, Silicosis, Space Rogue, Stefan, Thomas Icom, Weld Pond, White Knight, and Mudge.

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FIFTEEN

1111. LULZRAFT
The lulzraft rose to fame internationally in 2011 after they attacked websites of the Conservative party of Canada, Husky Energy and other Canadian websites. It has been assumed that the hacker group strongly disliked the Conservative party of Canada as they broke into their systems twice consecutively. The first time, posted rumours about the Canadian president Stephen Harper, saying that he was admitted to the Toronto General Hospital as he choked on hash brown while having his breakfast. The news rapidly spread, and was believed by many. Once it was on twitter, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister denied the rumour. Lulzraft declared they committed the attack on 7th June 2011.

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The following day, they also admitted that since the Conservative Party had terrible security, they were also able to successfully access information about partys donors on 7th June 2011 from the database. On the same day, the group claimed to have attacked a company named Husky energy, where they assured free gas to anyone who used the code hash brown to pacify members of the Conservative who were disgruntled by their previous hacks.

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SIXTEEN

10000. LULZSEC

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Lulz Security or Lulzsec was a hacker community formed in May 2011. Some of the important members of the group were Sabu, Topiary, Kayla, T-flow, Avunit and Pwnsauce. Their first attack was on Fox.com. Before forming a group of their own, the seven members were a part of another community, Internet Feds, which was linked with Anonymous. The group hacked into various corporate as well as government systems. Lulzsec admitted that they hacked into American Public Broadcasting system (PBS) to indicate their support towards WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning. This made them internationally well known. Initially, they hacked into 3,100 ATMs (Automated Teller Machine) in the U.K and exposed their transaction logs. The members of the group stole passwords of Linked In profiles and names on 73,000 X Factor contestants to leak them. The group mainly became popular for their sarcastic messages and leaking sensitive information of people on other websites. Not only did they hack into networks of different companies, the hackers always released information to the public. It seemed like they did not really use their intelligence to gain profit. Instead, they only hacked for the fun of it.

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The hackers declared their pair up with Anonymous on June 2009 for Operation Anti-Security. Lulzsec attacked a series of companies one after the other between 8th June and 16th June. The list included websites of Black & Berg Cyber security consulting, pron.com, Bethesda Game Studios and messed up sites by posting random information on Mediafire and Amazon.com. In March 2012, two suspects from Britain were charged for being involved with Lulzsec. On 26th June 2012, the members came up with a 50 days of Lulz statement that ensured the group had 7 hackers and that they would terminate their website lulzsecurity.com.

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SEVENTEEN

10001. MASTERS OF DECEPTION


The Masters of Deception are a hacker group based out of New York. They were widely known for their attacks on telephone companies. The members of the group include Mark Abene, Paul Stira, Eli Ladopoulos, HAC, John Lee, and Julio Fernandez. The group also includes members from the Cult of the Dead Cow. The group functions in a fundamentally different manner from previous hacking groups. The group believed that members should earn their position through various levels of initiation. A public demonstration of skill was a necessary part of the initiation. The group was disbanded in 1992 when five of the members of the group were arrested as a part of a major nationwide investigation lead by the FBI. All the five members plead guilty and were sentenced.

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EIGHTEEN

10010. MILW0RM
The Milw0rm were Hackitivists who came together in 1998. They committed a series of hacks for political purposes like posting an anti-nuclear weapon agenda and peace message on the websites. The members of Milw0rm were from different parts of the world like New Zealanc, United States and the United Kingdom. They had also made the record for the largest hack of their time. Milw0rm became internally well known on 3rd June 1998 after they intruded systems of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) which is the main nuclear research facility of India. They later also pointed out the security flaws they found in the BARC systems. On the night of the attack, the hackers used a machine that was US military.mil and gained root access by breaking into their local area connection. They could observe the flaws in 142 | P a g e

the security and accessed confidential information stored in files and documents related to Indias nuclear weapons program. The case first made news on Wired.com. Forbes later called the attack potentially the most devastating incident of 1998. Apart from this, Milw0rm also hacked into Turkish nuclear facility and British Web hosting company Easyspace.

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NINETEEN

10011. NETWORK CRACK PROGRAM HACKER GROUP


The NCPH group comprises of four main members who are Wicked Rose, KuNgBim, Charles, and Rodag. The group in all had approximately ten hackers. The hacker group is situated in Sichuan Province, China and was led by Tan Dailin (Wicked Rose). Wicked Rose took part in the Chengdu Military Command Network Attack/Defense Competition. Once he won it, the group leader learnt how to design hacking tools, start attacks and the method to make network-infiltration strategies. The group is widely known for their free courses that they offer on remote network control programs. Eventually they hacked into over 40 percent of the hacker association websites in China and were looked upon by other hackers.

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The leader of the group, which started in 2006, also created a GinWui Rootkit that was used to attack on the USA and Japan. Two different versions of the rootkit were explained to the US to hack the Department of Defence. The rootkit replicated through Word documents and created a backdoor in the system. With the help of this, it was able to perform numerous functions like starting and killing processes, manipulating services, create, edit, delete or modify data in folders and also gather information about the damaged computers. They also actively blogged about Spear Phishing, targeted a workers of a US oil company and damaged power point documents and accessed Emails of the workers. The hackers were interviewed by Time which was documented in an article on Chinese governments cyber operations. The article was against the US government. Wicked Rose particularly claimed that he paid each member of the NCPH group and handled relationships with sponsors. In 2009, he was charged with Distributed denial of service attacks on 3800hk, HackerXfiles and hackbase. This resulted in him spending seven and half years in prison.

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TWENTY

10100. PHONE LOSERS OF AMERICA

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The Phone losers of America (PLA) came up with their first product PLA e-zine in 1990. The American group engaged in a range of activities like prank calling, phone phreaking and launched their website (http://www.phonelosers.org/) in 1994. The PLA first released their online magazine called e-zine that was electronically circulated via a dial-up bulletin board system (BBS). The issues of the magazine focused on subjects like call forwarding hacking, red box, BBS hacking and others. The other mischievous acts were Phone Mobbing where they also targeted a show called Loveline on MTV. They repeatedly called the same number to simply frustrate the party. Besides these, the PLA also released PLA Radio in 2006 that featured advertisements, shows, pranks and other comedy shows; PLA TV where there were videos and serials like EvilCal and RBCP. These shows were also on Youtube. The PLA tops the list in Alexas prank call category.

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