How far is madness from genius? The following online crime stars managed to combine both and "pave" roads for the hackers of the future.
The FBI hated them, but also loved them as they pleased. That is, depending on whether they agreed to cooperate. The following five cybercriminals are those who operated at a time when the waters of the internet were still uncharted and the way to arrest them was more than difficult.
The article closes with the different story of the untimely death of Aaron Swartz.
Ultimately, prison bars are also for internet gossipers, even if they managed to remain digital "ghosts" for years.
Robert Tappan Morris: The pioneer
He is with his sword in the Top 5 of digital criminals. This hacker rose to fame in the 80s, when the Internet was still in its infancy. He is the son of a former NSA employee and became famous because he created the infamous Morris worm. The first worm to spread via the Internet. He is also the first digital fraudster to be prosecuted in the USA in 1986.
When he was arrested, he said he created his malware while studying at Cornell University because he wanted to check how safe the internet was at the time. Not at all. However, he was doing it without the hotelier. That is, his worm* itself. It was able to replicate itself uncontrollably, infecting thousands of computers.
US authorities reported at the time that 6,000 systems were infected. Morris was eventually sentenced to 3 years probation, 400 hours of community service, and a $10,500 fine. He went on to become a professor at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, specializing in network architecture. Not bad.
*Worm=”Computer worm”: It is a self-replicating and malicious computer program, which uses a computer network to send copies of itself to other nodes (computers on the network) and can do so without user intervention. This is due to security vulnerabilities in the target computer.
Computer worms are often confused with computer viruses, because they have many similarities in their function. However, there are some important differences in how they are transmitted and the area of the system they infect, which makes them stand out.
Unlike a computer virus, a worm does not need to attach itself to an existing program. Worms almost always cause at least some damage to the network, even if it means consuming bandwidth, while viruses almost always corrupt or modify files on a target computer, leaving the network unharmed.
Kevin Mitnick: The "star"
In his youth, he was the nightmare of Los Angeles and companies like Motorola, Nokia, Sun Microsystems Fujitsu Siemens, while the FBI itself "trembled" about him.
Born in 1963, he is the first person in history to successfully "break" a computer system. He was first arrested at the age of 17 and spent 6 months in prison in a maximum security wing.
Growing up, he managed to break into many telecommunications networks and steal data from them. He started with Amateur Radio, which later led him to phreaking the telephone network, that is, hacking and eavesdropping on telephone devices.
His phreaking skills helped him to apply them to computers, which in the late 1970s were vulnerable everywhere. In 1987, Mitnick was first arrested for computer hacking. He was released and a year later he was charged with hacking into a system by stealing source code from Digital Equipment Corporation.
His sentence was one year in prison. He was released and continued to hack, constantly changing his place of residence within the United States. In 1995, with the help of Tsutomu Shimomura, a computer security technician, and Times reporter John Markoff, Kevin Mitnick was arrested and sentenced to 5 years in prison. When he was released in 2000, he was banned from using devices with a keyboard for years.
Along the way, he wrote 2 books about his career and has founded his own company that deals with network security issues (Mitnick Security Consulting).
Mitnick is considered the most beloved hacker in history as he found many supporters and the "Free Kevin" activist campaign was launched in his favor.
It is worth noting that he remained imprisoned without trial for approximately five years, making him the defendant with the longest pretrial detention period in American history.
He was released on January 21, 2000. The spokesman for the Lombok federal prison announced that at 7:30 in the morning Mitnick walked through the gate and immediately left with his family, without speaking to reporters. The media has already begun to speculate and conspiracy theories. Some want him to be active in the secret services, others to remain an unrepentant hacker and others to become a new digital hero.
Mitnick's proven criminal offenses include hacking into DEC systems (for which he was sentenced to one year in prison in 1989), Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Sun, and Fujitsu Siemens. He also gained administrator rights to the IBM minicomputer at the Los Angeles Computer Academy, solely to win a bet. It is worth noting that Mitnick was not a typical hacker-programmer, but rather a master of social engineering, as he was basically able to extract useful information directly from the right people.
He has -officially- admitted that:
-He used Los Angeles' ticketing systems to avoid paying a ticket
-Hacking DEC systems to view the VMS source code, which cost DEC $160,000
-He took full administrative rights to an IBM minicomputer to win a bet.
-Hacked the systems of Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu Siemens
Adrian Lamo: The "betrayer"
He was born on February 20, 1981 and belongs to the "new generation".
His victims were Microsoft and the New York Times. He became known as the "homeless hacker" because he could not be traced. Why? He used to use public internet connections in coffee shops and internet cafes.
As he himself once said: "I have a laptop in Pittsburgh and a change of clothes in D.C. This kind of redefines the phrase 'multijurisdictional'.".
His "break-in" to the New York Times, however, was revealed and, in addition to the restrictive measures, he was punished with a fine of $65,000 in compensation. He had surrendered himself to the authorities in September 2003 after being reported by the Times. He himself was involved in the Wikileaks* revelations.
The dark element in his history for which he is criticized by internet users is that he became a "whistleblower" by giving evidence to the court about WikiLeaks informant, Bradley Manning.
Today Lamo works as an award-winning journalist and public speaker.
Gary McKinnon: The brilliant autistic hacker
Scottish hacker, born in 1966. He made his name under the code name "Solo". He was accused of the largest ever breach of US military computer systems, for 13 consecutive months from 2001 and 2002.
McKinnon hacked into American servers and deleted important files, rendering 2,000 computers useless at military bases and NASA, the US Army, Navy, Air Force, Pentagon and some educational institutions. Each time he knocked, he left the message “Your security is f@cked”.
The special element, besides his terrifying abilities and talent, is that the hacker has been diagnosed with “Asperger’s” syndrome. What was his motivation for hacking into computers? He was trying to find evidence of the existence of unidentified flying object activity and extraterrestrial technologies. He fished out photographs, films and other evidence of alien spacecraft, which were secretly owned by various American agencies, space fleets, secret programs and lists of code names.
NASA is hunting McKinnon but Britain refuses to extradite him to the US.
He has said in statements that he was looking for evidence of the existence of antigravity and "zero point energy" technology, which he believed was possessed by American agencies and hidden from the public. He also believed that this technology could lead to free energy, thus solving all the world's energy problems.
McKinnon has been a member of the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) since he was 15. His most significant discovery, he says, came in early 2002 when he hacked into the computers of Building 8 at the Johnson Space Centre. He found a NASA photograph of a cigar-shaped UFO with geodesic dome-like formations on all sides.
While downloading the photo on his slow connection, he was noticed by NASA system administrators. His connection was interrupted before the photo was completed, for which there is currently no evidence. In addition to evidence of secret advanced technology, McKinnon was also looking for evidence of possible involvement of the US government in the terrorist acts of September 11. However, he admitted that he found no evidence to support such a suggestion.
In Britain, he was arrested in March 2002. After his arrest, he was forced to report to the police station every day and was forbidden to use a computer with an Internet connection. With the charges brought against him, he risked a 6-month prison sentence in the worst case or compulsory community service, under British law. However, in November 2002, the US Department of Justice intervened in the case, requesting his extradition to America, due to the damage he caused to government computers. The strange and suspicious thing is that the procedures for his extradition to the US did not begin until three years later, in 2005. To this day, it has not been clear why the US authorities took so long. His extradition case is pending, with pressure from the US side for his extradition continuing. According to US law, if extradited, he risks being tried as a terrorist, facing a prison sentence that could reach 70 years, a fine of over $1,000,000, and even imprisonment in Guantanamo.
In support of him, the website freegary.org.uk has also been created
Raphael Gray: The "Saint"
He is also a member of the new generation of hackers, as he was born in 1982. He began his activities at the age of 19, and since then he has called himself "Saint".
According to him, he broke into databases in an attempt to help e-commerce sites. With his actions, he broke into the databases of online stores, stealing credit card numbers and personal data from approximately 26,000 Americans, Britons and Canadians, in 2000.
As he said, he wanted to draw attention to gaps in security systems, but no one understood why he made the credit card numbers public.
He was arrested in 2001 and sentenced to three years of psychiatric treatment. Using one of the credit cards he had stolen, he bought and sent Viagra pills to…. Bill Gates. The human soul is an abyss. Among others, a fanatical fan of the legend, Kevin Mitnick (see above), had also stated.
And for the end, Aaron Swartz
The case of Aaron Swartz is different and completely unique. He was a charismatic hacker and digital rights activist who committed suicide in his New York apartment, at the age of just 26, in January 2013.
At the age of 14, he was one of the creators of RSS (Rich Site Summary).
He later committed to his belief that information should be freely distributed on the Internet, while stating that "information is power. But as with all power, there are those who want to keep it to themselves.".
In a manifesto he had published in 2008, he had written that "the entire scientific and cultural heritage, which has been published over the centuries in books and magazines, is being converted into digitized material and held in the hands of a few private companies. Sharing information is not immoral but an imperative. Only those blinded by greed would deny a friend a copy.".
In July 2011, he was arrested by US federal authorities on charges of stealing millions of academic texts and books from MIT's digital archive. He pleaded not guilty during his trial, and faced 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted.
Swartz had stated several times that he suffered from depression, and had mentioned that he had considered suicide at many times in his life.
Source: defencenet.gr
