BY RAJESWARI

1. JONATHAN JAMES James cracked into NASA computers, stealing software worth approximately $1.7 million. According to the Department of Justice, "The software supported the International Space Station’s physical environment, including control of the temperature and humidity within the living space.” NASA was forced to shut down its computer systems, ultimately racking up a $41,000 cost. James explained that he downloaded the code to supplement his studies on C programming, but contended,” The code itself was crappy... certainly not worth $1.7 million like they claimed.”

JONATHAN JAMES

2.ADRIAN LAMO Adrian Lamo around computers as a very young child. He had a Commodore 64 when he was like 6 or so. And his first interest in seeing how things worked behind the scenes wasn’t all about technology necessarily, and his interest in what you might call hacking isn’t really primarily about. There’s a certain amount of tunnel vision there.” Last year, Lamo earned the disapproval of his probation officer in the closing months of his two year probation term when he refused to provide a blood sample for the FBI’s DNA database.

The Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, was created to catalog violent criminals and sexual predators, but the 2004 ustice for All Act expanded the system to include samples from all newly convicted federal felons, including drug offenders and white-collar criminals.

ADRIAN LAMO

3.KEVIN MITNICK Kevin David Mitnick (born August 6, 1963) is a computer security consultant and author. In the late 20th century, he was convicted of various computer- and communications- related crimes. At the time of his arrest, he was world- famous as the most-wanted computer criminal in the United States.Mitnick gained unauthorized access to his first computer network in 1979, at 16, when a friend gave him the phone number for the Ark, the computer system Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) used for developing their RSTS/E operating system software. He broke into DEC’s computer network and copied DEC’s software, a crime he was charged with and convicted of in 1988.

3.KEVIN MITNICK

4.KEVIN POULSEN Kevin Poulsen was among the most accomplished, multi- talented hackers. He worked for SRI International by day, and hacked at night under the handle "Dark Dante”. He trained to be the complete hacker, and even taught himself lock picking. Among other things, Poulsen reactivated old Yellow Page escort telephone numbers for an acquaintance that then ran a virtual agency. When the FBI started pursuing Poulsen, he went underground as a fugitive. When he was featured on NBC’s Unsolved Mysteries, the show’s telephone lines mysteriously crashed. He was finally arrested in February, 1995.

Kevin Poulsen

5. ROBERT TAPPAN MORRIS Morris, son of former National Security Agency scientist Robert Morris, is known as the creator of the Morris Worm, the first computer worm to be unleashed on the Internet. As a result of this crime, he was the first person prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Morris wrote the code for the worm while he was a student at Cornell.

ROBERT TAPPAN MORRIS

1.STEPHEN WAZNIAK Stephen Wazniak, one of the founders of Apple Computer and a long-time hacker hero, recalled the days when a young hacker could twiddle the phone system and make a free phone call to the pope without fear that a goofy prank would turn into an international incident. Steve Wozniak got the first inspirations by its father Jerry, which worked as an engineer at Lockheed, and by the fiktionalen miracle boy Tom Swift. Its father stuck on it with the fascination for electronics and examined frequently the inventions of its son.

1.STEPHEN WAZNIAK

TIM BERNERS-LEE Berners-Lee is famed as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the system that we use to access sites, documents and files on the Internet. He has received numerous recognitions, most notably the Millennium Technology Prize. While working with CERN, a European nuclear research organization, Berners-Lee created a hypertext prototype system that helped researchers share and update information easily. He later realized that hypertext could be joined with the Internet. Berners-Lee recounts how he put them together: "I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and "ta-da!” the World Wide Web.”

TIM BERNERS-LEE

LINUS TORVALDS In 1991 Linus Torvalds was a college student at the University of Helsinki. Starting with the basics of a UNIX system, he wrote the kernel — original code — for a new system for his x86 PC that was later dubbed Linux (pronounced Linux). Torvalds revealed the original source code for free — making him a folk hero among programmers — and users around the world began making additions and now continue to tweak it. Linux is considered the leader in the practice of allowing users to re-program their own operating systems.

LINUS TORVALDS

RICHARD STALLMAN Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16, 1953), often abbreviated "rms”,*1+ is an American software freedom activist, and computer programmer. In September 1983, he launched the GNU Project to create a free Unix-like operating system, and has been the project’s lead architect and organizer. With the launch of the GNU Project, he initiated the free software movement and, in October 1985, set up the Free Software Foundation. Stallman’s life continues to revolve around the promotion of free software. He works against movements like Digital Rights Management

RICHARD STALLMAN

TSUTOMU SHIMOMURA Shimomura reached fame in an unfortunate manner: he was hacked by Kevin Mitnick. Following this personal attack, he made it his cause to help the FBI capture him. Shimomura’s work to catch Mitnick is commendable, but he is not without his own dark side. Author Bruce Sterling recalls: "He pulls out this AT&T cellphone, pulls it out of the shrinkwrap, fingerhacks it, and starts monitoring phone calls going up and down Capitol Hill while an FBI agent is standing at his shoulder, listening to him.”