Here is a list of notable

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

s who are known for their hacking acts.

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Mark Abene Mark Abene (born February 23, 1972) is an American information security expert and entrepreneur, originally from New York City. Better known by his pseudonym Phiber Optik, he was once a member of the hacker groups Legion of Doom and Masters of ...

(Phiber Optik) *

Ryan Ackroyd Ryan Ackroyd, Kayla and also lolspoon, is a former Black hat (computer security), black hat hacker who was one of the six core members of the computer hacking group "LulzSec" during its 50-day spree of attacks from 6 May 2011 until 26 June 201 ...

(Kayla) *

Mustafa Al-Bassam Mustafa Al-Bassam (born January 1995) is a British computer security researcher, hacker, and co-founder of Celestia Labs. Al-Bassam co-founded the hacker group LulzSec in 2011, which was responsible for several high profile breaches. He later went ...

(Tflow) *

Mitch Altman Mitch Altman (born December 22, 1956) is a Berlin-based hacker and inventor, best known for inventing TV-B-Gone, as featured speaker at hacker conferences, as international expert on the hackerspace movement, and for teaching introductory electr ...

Jacob Appelbaum Jacob Appelbaum (born 1 April 1983) is an American independent journalist, computer security researcher, artist, and hacker. He studied at the Eindhoven University of Technology and was a core member of the Tor project, a free software network des ...

(ioerror) *

Julian Assange Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army inte ...

(Mendax) * Trishneet Arora *

Andrew Auernheimer Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer ( ; born ), best known by his pseudonym weev, is an American computer hacker and professional Internet troll. Affiliated with the alt-right, the Southern Poverty Law Center has described him as being a neo-Nazi ...

(weev)

B

Loyd Blankenship Loyd Blankenship (born 1965), better known by his pseudonym The Mentor, is a computer hacker and writer. He has been active since the 1970s, when he was a member of the hacker groups Extasyy Elite and Legion of Doom. Writings Hacker Manifesto ...

(The Mentor) *

Erik Bloodaxe Eric Haraldsson ( non, Eiríkr Haraldsson , no, Eirik Haraldsson; died 954), nicknamed Bloodaxe ( non, blóðøx , no, Blodøks) and Brother-Slayer ( la, fratrum interfector), was a 10th-century Norwegian king. He ruled as King of Norway from ...

Barrett Brown Barrett Lancaster Brown (born 14 August 1981) is an American journalist, essayist, activist and former associate of Anonymous (hacker group), Anonymous. In 2010, he founded Project PM, a group that used a wiki to analyze Internet leak, leaks con ...

Max Butler Max Ray Vision (formerly Max Ray Butler, alias Iceman) is a former computer security consultant and hacker who served a 13-year prison sentence, the longest sentence ever given at the time for hacking charges in the United States. He was convicted ...

C

Brad Carter David Bradley Carter (born December 5, 1973) is an American film and television actor, guitarist, painter, sculptor, and photographer, known for playing Charlie Lange in ''True Detective'' and Leland Gruen in '' Sons of Anarchy''. After suffer ...

(RBCP, Red box Chili Pepper) *

maia arson crimew maia arson crimew (formerly known as Tillie Kottmann, and also known as deletescape and antiproprietary; born August 7, 1999) is a Swiss developer and computer hacker. crimew worked in information technology as a teenager, becoming the fou ...

Jean-Bernard Condat Jean-Bernard Condat (born 1963) is a French computer security expert and former hacker who became a consultant to the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DST). Using the name ''concombre'' (English: cucumber), he achieved status as one of ...

Sam Curry Sam Curry (born October 17, 1999) is an American ethical hacker, bug bounty hunter, and founder. He is best known for his contributions to web application security through participation in bug bounty programs, most notablfinding critical vulnerab ...

Cyber Anakin Cyber Anakin (also known by the handle cyberanakinvader) is the pseudonym of a computer hacktivist. Career In 2016, in retaliation against Russia for the shooting-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, Cyber Anakin, who was then a teen, started ...

D

Kim Dotcom Kim Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz; 21 January 1974), also known as Kimble and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, is a German-Finnish Internet entrepreneur and political activist who resides in Glenorchy, New Zealand. He first rose to fame in Germany in the 1990s ...

John Draper John Thomas Draper (born March 11, 1943), also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch, or Crunchman (after the Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal mascot), is an American computer programmer and former phreaking, phone phreak. He is a widely known figure wi ...

(Captain Crunch) *

Sir Dystic ''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as ...

E

Alexandra Elbakyan Alexandra Asanovna Elbakyan (russian: Алекса́ндра Аса́новна Элбакя́н, born 6 November 1988) is a Kazakhstani computer programmer and creator of the website Sci-Hub, which provides free access to research papers witho ...

* Mohamed Elnouby *

Farid Essebar Farid Essebar ( ar, فريد الصبار) (born in 1987, known as Diabl0) is a Moroccan black hat hacker. He was one of the two people (along with Turk Atilla Ekici) behind the spread of the Zotob computer worm that targeted Windows 2000 operat ...

Nahshon Even-Chaim Nahshon Even-Chaim (born May 1971), aka Phoenix, was the first major computer hacker to be convicted in Australia. He was one of the most highly skilled members of a computer hacking group called The Realm, based in Melbourne, Australia, from the ...

(Phoenix)

F

Ankit Fadia Ankit Fadia (born 1985) is an Indian self-proclaimed white-hat computer hacker, author, and television host. He is considered to be a security charlatan. His work mostly involves OS and networking tips and tricks and proxy websites. A numbe ...

* Bruce Fancher (Dead Lord)

G

Joe Grand Joe Grand is an American electrical engineer, inventor and hardware hacker known in the hacker community as Kingpin. He achieved mainstream popularity after his appearance on ''Prototype This!'', a Discovery Channel television show. He speciali ...

(Kingpin) * Richard Greenblatt *

Virgil Griffith Virgil Griffith (born 1983), also known as Romanpoet, is an American programmer. He worked extensively on the Ethereum cryptocurrency platform, designed the Tor2web proxy along with Aaron Swartz, and created the Wikipedia indexing tool WikiScan ...

(Romanpoet) *

Rop Gonggrijp Robbert (Rop) Valentijn Gonggrijp (born 14 February 1968) is a Dutch hacker and one of the founders of XS4ALL. Biography Gonggrijp was born in Amsterdam. While growing up in Wormer in the Dutch Zaanstreek area, he became known as a teenage hack ...

Guccifer Marcel-Lehel Lazăr (born ), known as Guccifer, is a Romanian hacker responsible for high-level computer security breaches in the U.S. and Romania. Lehel targeted celebrities, Romanian and U.S. government officials, and other prominent persons. ...

Guccifer 2.0 "Guccifer 2.0" is a persona which claimed to be the hacker(s) who gained unauthorized access to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer network and then leaked its documents to the media, the website WikiLeaks, and a conference event. S ...

H

Jeremy Hammond Jeremy Hammond (born January 8, 1985) is an American activist and former computer hacker from Chicago. He founded the computer security training website HackThisSiteLuman, Stuart. ''Chicago'' Magazine, July 2007"The Hacktivist" in 2003.Hayes, ...

Susan Headley Susan Headley (born 1959, also known as Susy Thunder or Susan Thunder) was a phreaker and early computer hacker during the late 1970s and early 1980s. A member of the so-called Cyberpunks, Headley specialized in social engineering, a type of hacking ...

(Susan Thunder) *

Markus Hess Markus Hess, a German citizen, is best known for his endeavours as a hacker in the late 1980s. Alongside fellow hackers Dirk Brzezinski and Peter Carl, Hess hacked into networks of military and industrial computers based in the United States, Euro ...

(

hunter Hunting is the human activity, human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to harvest food (i.e. meat) and useful animal products (fur/hide (skin), hide, ...

) *

George Hotz George Francis Hotz (born October 2, 1989), alias geohot, is an American security hacker, entrepreneur, and software engineer. He is known for developing iOS jailbreaks, reverse engineering the PlayStation 3, and for the subsequent lawsuit br ...

(geohot) * Andrew Huang *

Marcus Hutchins Marcus Hutchins (born 1994), also known online as MalwareTech, is a British computer security researcher known for stopping the WannaCry ransomware attack. He is employed by cybersecurity firm Kryptos Logic. Hutchins is from Ilfracombe in Dev ...

I

J

The Jester (hacktivist) The Jester (also known by the leetspeak handle th3j35t3r) is a self-identified grey hat hacktivist. He claims to be responsible for attacks on WikiLeaks and Islamist websites. He claims to be acting out of American patriotism. Identity and commu ...

Jonathan James Jonathan Joseph James (December 12, 1983 – May 18, 2008) was an American hacker (a gray hat ethical hacker) who was the first juvenile incarcerated for cybercrime in the United States. The South Florida native was 15 years old at the time of th ...

Joybubbles Joybubbles ( – ), born Josef Carl Engressia Jr. in Richmond, Virginia, was an early phone phreak. Born blind, he became interested in telephones at age four. He had absolute pitch, and was able to whistle 2600 hertz into a telephone, an operato ...

(Joe Engressia, Highrise Joe)

K

* Kyle Milliken *

Samy Kamkar Samy may refer to: *Samy (director) (active from 2006), Tamil film director *Samy (XSS), a computer worm *Samy (Mobile Marketing) * *Sami (disambiguation) Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning forma ...

* Karl Koch (hagbard) *

Alan Kotok Alan Kotok (November 9, 1941 – May 26, 2006) was an American computer scientist known for his work at Digital Equipment Corporation (Digital, or DEC) and at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Steven Levy, in his book '' Hackers: Heroes of th ...

Jan Krissler Jan Krissler, better known by his pseudonym starbug, is a German computer scientist and hacker. He is best known for his work on defeating biometric systems, most prominently the iPhone's TouchID. He is also an active member of the German an ...

Patrick K. Kroupa Patrick Karel Kroupa (also known as Lord Digital, born January 20, 1969) is an American writer, hacker and activist. Kroupa was a member of the Legion of Doom and Cult of the Dead Cow hacker groups and co-founded MindVox in 1991, with Bruce Fan ...

(Lord Digital) * Kris Kaspersky

L

Adrian Lamo Adrián Alfonso Lamo Atwood (February 20, 1981 – March 14, 2018) was an American threat analyst and hacker. Lamo first gained media attention for breaking into several high-profile computer networks, including those of ''The New York Times'', ...

Chris Lamprecht Chris Lamprecht (known as ''MinorThreat'' or ''mthreat'') is an American software developer based in Texas. Lamprecht was the original author of ToneLoc, a wardialing program written in the C programming language for the DOS operating system. ...

(Minor Threat) *

Gordon Lyon Gordon Lyon (also known by his pseudonym Fyodor Vaskovich) is an American network security expert, creator of Nmap and writer of books, websites, and technical papers about network security. He is a founding member of the Honeynet Project and wa ...

(Fyodor)

M

MafiaBoy Michael Calce (born 1984, also known as MafiaBoy) is a security expert and former computer hacker from Île Bizard, Quebec, who launched a series of highly publicized denial-of-service attacks in February 2000 against large commercial websites, incl ...

Moxie Marlinspike Moxie Marlinspike is an American entrepreneur, cryptographer, and computer security researcher. Marlinspike is the creator of Signal, co-founder of the Signal Technology Foundation, and served as the first CEO of Signal Messenger LLC. He is als ...

Morgan Marquis-Boire Morgan Marquis-Boire is a New Zealand-born hacker, journalist, and security researcher. In late 2017 he was accused of at least ten sexual assaults. He was the Director of Security at First Look Media and a contributing writer at ''The Intercept'' ...

Gary Mckinnon Gary McKinnon (born 10 February 1966) is a Scottish systems administrator and hacker who was accused in 2002 of perpetrating the "biggest military computer hack of all time", although McKinnon himself states that he was merely looking for evi ...

(Solo) *

Jude Milhon Judith udeMilhon (March 12, 1939 – July 19, 2003), in Washington D.C., best known by her pseudonym St. Jude, was a self-taught programmer, civil rights advocate, writer, editor, advocate for women in computing, hacker and author in the ...

(St. Jude) *

Kevin Mitnick Kevin David Mitnick (born August 6, 1963) is an American computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker. He is best known for his high-profile 1995 arrest and five years in prison for various computer and communications-related crim ...

(Condor) *

Mixter Mixter is a computer security specialist. Mixter first made the transition out of the computer underground into large-scale public awareness, in 2000, at which time newspapers and magazines worldwide mentioned a link to massively destructive and e ...

Hector Monsegur Hector Xavier Monsegur (born 1983), known also by the online pseudonym Sabu (pronounced Sə'buː, Sæ'buː), is an American computer hacker and co-founder of the hacking group LulzSec. Monsegur became an informant for the FBI, working with the a ...

(Sabu) * HD Moore *

Robert Tappan Morris Robert Tappan Morris (born November 8, 1965) is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is best known for creating the Morris worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet. Morris was prosecuted for releasing the ...

(rtm) * Dennis Moran (Coolio) *

Jeff Moss Jeffrey Arnold "Jeff" Moss (June 19, 1942 – September 24, 1998) was an American composer, lyricist, playwright and television writer, best known for his award-winning work on the children's television series ''Sesame Street''. Early life ...

(Dark Tangent) *

Katie Moussouris Katie Moussouris is an American computer security researcher, entrepreneur, and pioneer in vulnerability disclosure, and is best known for her ongoing work advocating responsible security research. Previously a member of @stake, she created the ...

Andy Müller-Maguhn Andy Müller-Maguhn (born 3 October 1971) is a member of the German hacker association Chaos Computer Club (CCC). Having been a member since 1986, he was appointed as a spokesman for the club in 1990, and later served on its board until 2012. He ...

* MLT (Matthew Telfer)

N

Craig Neidorf Craig Neidorf (born 1969), Knight Lightning, was one of the two founding editors of ''Phrack'' Magazine, an online, text-based ezine that defined the hacker mentality of the mid 1980s. Craig, along with ''Phrack'' co-founder Randy Tischler (aka ...

(Knight Lightning)

O

Beto O'Rourke Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke ( , ; ; born September 26, 1972) is an American politician who served as the U.S. representative for from 2013 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, O'Rourke was the party's nominee for the U.S. Senat ...

(Psychedelic Warlord) * Higinio Ochoa

P

* Justin Tanner Petersen (Agent Steal) *

Kevin Poulsen Kevin Lee Poulsen (born November 30, 1965) is an American former black-hat hacker and a contributing editor at ''The Daily Beast''. Biography He was born in Pasadena, California, on November 30, 1965. Black-hat hacking On June 1, 1990, Pouls ...

(Dark Dante)

Q

R

Eric S. Raymond Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is an American software developer, open-source software advocate, and author of the 1997 essay and 1999 book ''The Cathedral and the Bazaar''. He wrote a guidebook for the ...

(ESR) *

Christien Rioux Christien Rioux, also known by his handle DilDog, is the co-founder and chief scientist for the Burlington, Massachusetts based company Veracode, for which he is the main patent holder. Educated at MIT, Rioux was a computer security researcher ...

(DilDog) *

Leonard Rose Leonard Joseph Rose (July 27, 1918 – November 16, 1984) was an American cellist and pedagogue. Biography Rose was born in Washington, D.C.; his parents were Jewish immigrants, his father from Bragin, Belarus, and his mother from Kyiv, ...

(Terminus) *

Oxblood Ruffin Oxblood Ruffin is a Canadian hacker. He is a member of the hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc), for which he serves as "Foreign Minister." He is also the founder and executive director of Hacktivismo, an offshoot of cDc. Ruffin is active in ...

Joanna Rutkowska Joanna Rutkowska (born 1981 in Warsaw) is a Polish computer security researcher, primarily known for her research on low-level security and stealth malware, and as founder of the Qubes OS security-focused desktop operating system. She became kn ...

S

Peter Samson Peter R. Samson (born 1941 in Fitchburg, Massachusetts) is an American computer scientist, best known for creating pioneering computer software for the TX-0 and PDP-1. Samson studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) between 19 ...

* David Schrooten (Fortezza) * Roman Seleznev (Track2) *

Alisa Shevchenko Alisa Shevchenko (russian: Алиса Андреевна Шевченко), professionally known as Alisa Esage, is a Russian-born computer security researcher, entrepreneur and hacker with Ukrainian roots. She is known for working independently ...

Rich Skrenta Richard J. Skrenta Jr. (born June 6, 1967) is an American computer programmer and Silicon Valley entrepreneur who created the web search engine blekko.Arrington, Michael (2008-01-02). "The Next Google Search Challenger: Blekko". TechCrunch, 2 Janu ...

Dmitry Sklyarov ''United States v. ElcomSoft and Dmitry Sklyarov'' was a 2001–2002 criminal case in which Dmitry Sklyarov and his employer ElcomSoft were charged with alleged violation of the DMCA. The case raised some concerns of civil rights and legal proces ...

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and su ...

Space Rogue ''Space Rogue'' is a space flight simulation video game developed by Origin Systems and published by Origin Systems, Wave Brain, and Night Dive Studios. The game was released in 1989 for Apple II and Commodore 64; the series was later ported ...

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

(rms) Retrieved 17 March 2015. *

StankDawg David Blake (born 1971), also known as StankDawg, is the founder of the hacking group Digital DawgPound (DDP) and a long-time member of the hacking community. He is known for being a regular presenter at multiple Hacker con, hacking conferences, ...

Matt Suiche Matthieu Suiche (born September 22, 1988), also known as Matt and under the username msuiche, is a French hacker and entrepreneur widely known as the founder of MoonSols, and co-founder of CloudVolumes before it was acquired by VMWare in 2014. In ...

Peter Sunde Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi (born 13 September 1978), alias brokep, is a Swedish entrepreneur and politician. Sunde is of Norwegian and Finnish ancestry. He is best known for being a co-founder and ex-spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent sea ...

Gottfrid Svartholm Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (born 17 October 1984), alias anakata, is a Swedish computer specialist, known as the former co-owner of the web hosting company PRQ and co-founder of the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay together with Fredrik Neij and ...

(Anakata) * Kristina Svechinskaya *

Aaron Swartz Aaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. A prolific programmer, Swartz helped develop the web feed format RSS, the tech ...

T

Ehud Tenenbaum Ehud "Udi" Tenenbaum ( he, אהוד "אודי" טננבאום; born August 29, 1979), also known as The Analyzer, is an Israeli hacker. Biography Tenenbaum was born in Hod HaSharon in 1979. He became famous in 1998 when he was arrested for hack ...

Cris Thomas Cris Thomas (also known as ''Space Rogue'') is an American cybersecurity researcher and white hat hacker. A founding member and researcher at the high-profile hacker security think tank L0pht Heavy Industries, Thomas was one of seven L0pht memb ...

(Space Rogue) *

John Threat John Lee, a.k.a. John Threat, used the name "Corrupt" as a member of Masters of Deception (MOD), a New York based hacker group in the early '90s.Village Voice, "Rebel Hackers: The Computer Kids who Phreak Out the Feds," By Julian Dibbell, July 24 ...

Topiary Topiary is the horticultural practice of training perennial plants by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, whether geometric or fanciful. The term also refers to plants w ...

Tron ''Tron'' (stylized as ''TRON'') is a 1982 American science fiction action-adventure film written and directed by Steven Lisberger from a story by Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird. The film stars Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a computer programmer a ...

(Boris Floricic) *

Justine Tunney Justine Alexandra Roberts Tunney (born 1984) is a software developer and a former activist for Occupy Wall Street. Biography Tunney started publishing software in 1998. She built software for other hackers and fiddled with AOL. In 1999, at ...

U

V

Kimberley Vanvaeck Kimberley Vanvaeck, also known by her online moniker Gigabyte, is a virus writer from Belgium known for a long-standing dispute which involved the internet security firm Sophos and one of its employees, Graham Cluley. Vanvaeck wrote several viruse ...

(Gigabyte)

W

Steve Wozniak Stephen Gary Wozniak (; born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname "Woz", is an American electronics engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, inventor, and technology entrepreneur. In 1976, with business partner Steve Jobs, he c ...

Chris Wysopal Chris Wysopal (also known as Weld Pond) is an entrepreneur, computer security expert and co-founder and CTO of Veracode. He was a member of the high-profile hacker think tank the L0pht where he was a vulnerability researcher. Chris Wysopal was ...

(Weld Pond) * Robert Willis

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* YTCracker

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Peiter Zatko Peiter C. Zatko, better known as Mudge, is an American network security expert, open source programmer, writer, and hacker. He was the most prominent member of the high-profile hacker think tank the L0pht

(Mudge)Hacker Mudge Gets DARPA Job
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References

{{Reflist, 30em Hacker culture

Hackers A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

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See also

References