From phone phreaking with cereal box whistles to make free long distance phone calls to stealing credit card numbers and making millions in fraudulent purchases, hacking has certainly come a long way – both in technology and in motive. This week we look at some of history’s most notorious hackers, and the fate they met when the law caught up with their illegal activities.

1. History’s most notorious
hackers
From phone phreaking with cereal box
whistles to make free long distance phone
calls to stealing credit card numbers and
making millions in fraudulent purchases,
hacking has certainly come a long way –
both in technology and in motive.
This week we look at some of history’s
most notorious hackers, and the fate they
met when the law caught up with their
illegal activities.
By Jeff Jedras Image courtesy of chanpipat at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

2. Kevin Poulsen
Born in California in 1965, Poulsen’s
most well-known hack is his takeover
of the phone lines of a Los Angeles
radio station, ensuring he would win
the contest prize – a Porsche 944 S2
– as the 102nd caller.
Similarly, when he was sought by the
FBI and featured on the television
program Unsolved Mysteries, the
show’s tip line mysteriously crashed.
After his release from prison he
became a journalist, and is now an
editor for Wired News.

3. Robert Tappan Morris
Born in 1965, Morris, a computer
scientist, has the distinction of creating
the first computer worm on the Internet
in 1988. The Morris Worm also led to him
being the first person convicted under the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
After turning white hat, he would co-
found online store Viaweb and co-found
funding firm Y-Combinator.
He’s now a professor of electrical
engineering and computer science at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

4. John Draper
Born in 1943 as the son of a US Air
Force engineer, Draper is a former
phone phreak whose aliases included
Captain Crunch.
He helped design the first
multifrequency tone generator (known
as a blue box) that allowed the user to
make free calls from payphones – the
tone was the same as that emitted by
a whistle given away in Captain Crunch
cereal – hence, the nickname.
After serving his time, he briefly
worked for Apple, and he now writes
security software and is a developer
for a VoIP client.

5. Jonathan James
Born in 1983, James was the first
juvenile incarcerated for a cybercrime in
the US when, at age 15, he hacked into a
number of systems, including his local
school and a division of the Defence
Department.
He was investigated in connection to the
2007 TJX hacking, but no evidence was
found to linking him to the crime.
He would later commit suicide, citing
fear of being prosecuted for a crime he
didn’t commit.

6. Albert Gonzalez
Born in 1981, Gonzalez was
accused of being behind the largest
case of credit and debit card theft
in history, using a SQL injection to
deploy backdoors on corporate
systems to launch packet sniffers
and steal corporate data.
He was indicted in three cases –
Dave & Busters, TJ Maxx and
Heartland Payment – and he was
sentenced to 20 years in federal
prison in 2010.