Hacking has always been inherently a young person’s game. The first usage of the word “hacker” was to describe pranksters meddling with the phones
at MIT. Many hackers have cited boredom, a desire for change, or the
thrill of going somewhere one is not supposed to go as their motivation
for hacking, all of which could apply to scores of common activities on
college campuses. While today’s hacking scene is dominated by large
hacking groups like Anonymous and Masters of Deception, many of the
greatest hacks ever have been pulled off by college, high school, and
even middle school kids who rose to infamy armed only with a computer
and the willingness to cross the bounds of legality.
1.) Sven Jaschan:
In the words of one tech expert,
“His name will always be associated with some of the biggest viruses in
the history of the Internet.” The viruses: the Sasser and NetSky worms
that infected millions of computers and have caused millions of dollars
of damage since their release in 2004. The man behind the viruses proved
to be not even a man at all, legally. Seventeen-year-old hacker Sven
Jaschan, a student at a computer science school in Germany, claimed to
have created the viruses to become a hero by developing a program that
would eradicate the rampaging Mydoom and Bagle bugs. Instead he found
himself the subject of a $250,000 bounty courtesy of Microsoft, for which some of his classmates turned him in.
2.) Jonathan James:
In
2000, at the age of 16, James, or “C0mrade” as he was known in the
hacker community, infamously became the first juvenile federally
sentenced for hacking. The targets of his notorious hack jobs were a
wing of the U.S. Department of Defense called the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency, NASA, and the Marshall Space Flight Center in
Huntsville, Ala. (By hacking the latter James gained the ability to
control the A/C in the International Space Station.) All of these were
pulled off “for fun” while James was still a student at Palmetto Senior
High in Miami. Unfortunately, the fun ran out when James was tied into a
massive identity theft investigation. Though insisting he was innocent, James took his own life, saying he had “no faith in the justice system.”
3.) Michael Calce:
Yahoo.
CNN. Ebay. Amazon. Dell.com. One by one in a matter of days, these huge
websites crashed at the hands of 15-year-old Canadian high school
student Michael Calce, aka “MafiaBoy.” Armed with a denial-of-service
program he called “Rivolta” that overloaded servers he targeted, the
young hacker wreaked $7.5 million in damages, according to court filings.
Calce was caught when he fell victim to a common ailment of teenage
boys: bragging. The cops were turned on to him when he began boasting in
chat rooms about being responsible for the attacks. On Sept. 12, 2001,
MafiaBoy was sentenced to a group facility for eight months on 56 counts
of cybercrime.
4.) Kevin Mitnick:
Before
performing hacks that prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to
declare him “the most wanted computer criminal in United States
history,” Kevin Mitnick had already made a name for himself as a hacker
in his school days, first at Monroe High School in LA and later at USC.
On a dare, Mitnick connived an opening into the computer system of
Digital Equipment Corporation, which some fellow hackers then used to steal proprietary source code
from the company before ratting on him. While still on probation for
that crime, Mitnick broke into the premises of Pacific Bell and had to
go on the run from police in the aftermath, during which time he hacked
dozens of systems, including those of IBM, Nokia, Motorola, and Fujitsu.
5.) Tim Berners-Lee:
“Scandalous”
is a synonym for “infamous,” and for this legendary computer scientist,
knight of the British Empire, and inventor of the World Wide Web to
have been a hacker in his school days is certainly a juicy factoid.
During his time at Oxford in the mid-’70s, Sir Tim was banned from using
university computers after he and a friend were caught hacking their
way into restricted digital areas. Luckily by that time he already knew
how to make his own computer out of a soldering iron, an old TV, and
some spare parts. And also luckily for him, he will always be revered as
the father of the Internet.
6.) Neal Patrick and the 414s:
In
the early ’80s, hacking was still a relatively foreign concept to most
Americans. Few recognized the enormous power hackers could hijack with a
few strokes on a keyboard, which explains why a young group of hackers
known as the 414s (after a Milwaukee area code) were virtual celebrities
after they hacked into the famous Los Alamos National Laboratory, the
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and elsewhere. While today
hacking a lab where classified nuclear research is conducted could earn
you a one-way ticket to Guantanamo, the 17-year-old ringleader and high
school student Neal Patrick was on the cover of Newsweek. The group members got light sentences but prompted Congress to take a stronger role in cybercrime.
7.) Robert T. Morris:
The
first ever Internet worm, the Morris Worm derived its name from Cornell
grad student Robert Tappan Morris. In 1988, Morris released the worm
through MIT’s system to cover his tracks, which would seem to contradict
his claims that he meant no harm with it. But that’s exactly what
resulted: the worm spread out of control, infecting more than 6,000
computers connected to the ARPANET, the academic forerunner to the World
Wide Web. The damages reached as high as an estimated $10 million, and
Morris earned the ignominious distinction of being the first person
prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Morris got community
service but was apparently not considered too infamous to be offered his
current job as a professor at MIT.
8.) George Hotz:
To
some, George Hotz (aka “geohot,” aka “million75,” aka “mil”) is a
public menace, a threat to electronic businesses everywhere. To many,
Hotz is a hero. The high-schooler shot to fame/infamy in 2007 at the
tender age of 17 by giving the world its first hacked, or “jailbroken”
iPhone. He traded it for a new sports car and three new iPhones, and the
video of the hacking received millions of hits. Apple has had to
grudgingly come to terms with jailbreaking, seeing as the courts have declared it legal,
but Sony Corp. is definitely not OK with such tampering. When Hotz
hacked his PlayStation 3 and published the how-to on the web, the
company launched a vicious lawsuit against him. In turn, the hacker
group Anonymous launched an attack on Sony, stealing millions of users’
personal info.
9.) Donncha O’Cearbhaill:
According
to the FBI, this 19-year-old freshman at Trinity College Dublin is one
of the top five most wanted hackers in the world. Well, he was; now that
he’s been arrested he’s not really “wanted” anymore. The Feds contend
the young man is a VIP member of the Anonymous and LulzSec hacking
groups that have already been mentioned and whose targets have included
the FBI, the U.S. Senate, and Sony (in the Hotz backlash). It seems
“Palladium” (O’Cearbhaill) took the liberty of listening in on a
conference call between the FBI and several international police forces
who were discussing their investigations of the hacking groups. He could
be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison if convicted for that hack
alone.
10.) Nicholas Allegra:
Just
as George Hotz moved on from the Apple hacking game, Brown University
student Nicholas Allegra is also hanging up his jersey. “Comex,” as he
is known to millions of rooted iPhone fans, created the simple-to-use
Apple iOS jailbreaking program JailbreakMe
in 2007 and has since released two newer versions of it. However, Comex
seems to have gone over to the dark side, accepting an internship with
the very company whose products he became famous exploiting. Still,
Allegra’s hacking skills are so advanced (one author puts him five years
ahead of the authors of the infamous Stuxnet worm that corrupted Iran’s
nuclear facilities) and so many people availed themselves of his
talents, he will forever live in hacking infamy.
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