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Kevin David Mitnick 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 crimes.
Wardriving is the act of searching for Wi-Fi wireless networks, usually from a moving vehicle, using a laptop or smartphone. Software for wardriving is freely available on the internet.
Wireless security is the prevention of unauthorized access or damage to computers or data using wireless networks, which include Wi-Fi networks. The term may also refer to the protection of the wireless network itself from adversaries seeking to damage the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the network. The most common type is Wi-Fi security, which includes Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) and Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). WEP is an old IEEE 802.11 standard from 1997. It is a notoriously weak security standard: the password it uses can often be cracked in a few minutes with a basic laptop computer and widely available software tools. WEP was superseded in 2003 by WPA, or Wi-Fi Protected Access. WPA was a quick alternative to improve security over WEP. The current standard is WPA2; some hardware cannot support WPA2 without firmware upgrade or replacement. WPA2 uses an encryption device that encrypts the network with a 256-bit key; the longer key length improves security over WEP. Enterprises often enforce security using a certificate-based system to authenticate the connecting device, following the standard 802.11X.
The Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector is a wireless game adapter, developed jointly by Nintendo and Buffalo Technology, which allows Nintendo DSi and Wii users without a Wi-Fi connection or compatible Wi-Fi network to establish one via a broadband-connected PC. Inserted into the host PC's USB port, the connector functions with the Nintendo DS, Wii, and DSi, permitting the user to connect to the Internet to play Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection games and access various other online services. The product was the best selling Nintendo accessory to date, according to the official Nintendo site on 15 November 2007, but was discontinued in the same month until further notice. On September 8, 2008, Nintendo announced the Nintendo Wi-Fi Network Adapter, an 802.11g wireless router/bridge which serves a similar purpose.
Dennis Michael Moran, also known by his alias Coolio, was an American computer hacker from Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, who was accused in February 2000 of a series of denial-of-service attacks that shut down some of the most popular websites on the Internet. He was 17 years old when he committed the attacks. He was later arrested and pleaded guilty to defacing the websites of Drug Abuse Resistance Education and RSA Security, as well as unauthorized access of the U.S. Army and Air Force computer systems at four military bases. Moran died of a drug overdose in 2013.
Jonathan Joseph James was an American 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 the first offense and 16 years old on the date of his sentencing. He died at his Pinecrest, Florida home on May 18, 2008, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Samy Kamkar is an American privacy and security researcher, computer hacker and entrepreneur. At the age of 16, he dropped out of high school. One year later, he co-founded Fonality, a unified communications company based on open-source software, which raised over $46 million in private funding. In 2005, he created and released the fastest spreading virus of all time, the MySpace worm Samy, and was subsequently raided by the United States Secret Service under the Patriot Act. He also created SkyJack, a custom drone which hacks into any nearby Parrot drones allowing them to be controlled by its operator and created the Evercookie, which appeared in a top-secret NSA document revealed by Edward Snowden and on the front page of The New York Times. He has also worked with The Wall Street Journal, and discovered the illicit mobile phone tracking where the Apple iPhone, Google Android and Microsoft Windows Phone mobile devices transmit GPS and Wi-Fi information to their parent companies. His mobile research led to a series of class-action lawsuits against the companies and a privacy hearing on Capitol Hill. Kamkar has a chapter giving advice in Tim Ferriss' book Tools of Titans.
Laws regarding "unauthorized access of a computer network" exist in many legal codes, though the wording and meaning differs from one to the next. However, the interpretation of terms like "access" and "authorization" is not clear, and there is no general agreement on whether piggybacking falls under this classification. Some jurisdictions prohibit it, some permit it, and others are not well-defined.
Albert Gonzalez is an American computer hacker and computer criminal who is accused of masterminding the combined credit card theft and subsequent reselling of more than 170 million card and ATM numbers from 2005 to 2007: the biggest such fraud in history. Gonzalez and his accomplices used SQL injection to deploy backdoors on several corporate systems in order to launch packet sniffing attacks which allowed him to steal computer data from internal corporate networks. During his spree, he was said to have thrown himself a $75,000 birthday party and complained about having to count $340,000 by hand after his currency-counting machine broke. Gonzalez stayed at lavish hotels but his formal homes were modest.
Max Ray Vision 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 of two counts of wire fraud, including stealing nearly 2 million credit card numbers and running up about $86 million in fraudulent charges.
In United States v. Riggs, the government of the United States prosecuted Robert Riggs and Craig Neidorf for obtaining unauthorized access to and subsequently disseminating a file held on BellSouth's computers. The file, referred to as the E911 file, gave information regarding BellSouth's products implementing 911 emergency telephone services. Riggs and Neidorf were both indicted in the District Court of the Northern District of Illinois on numerous charges relating to the dissemination of the E911 text file. As Riggs had previously been indicted in the Northern District of Georgia in relation to the same incident, his charges from Illinois were transferred to Georgia. Riggs ultimately pleaded guilty in Georgia and was sentenced to 21 months in prison and two years' supervised release. Neidorf pleaded not guilty in Illinois and the government dropped all charges against Neidorf four days after the trial began.
The Sarah Palin email hack occurred on September 16, 2008, during the 2008 United States presidential election campaign when vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin's, Yahoo! personal email account was subjected to unauthorized access. The hacker, David Kernell, obtained access to Palin's account by looking up biographical details, such as her high school and birthdate, and using Yahoo!'s account recovery for forgotten passwords. Kernell then posted several pages of Palin's email on 4chan's /b/ board. Kernell, who at the time of the offense was a 20-year-old college student, was the son of longtime Democratic state representative Mike Kernell of Memphis.
United States v. Ivanov was an American court case addressing subject-matter jurisdiction for computer crimes performed by Internet users outside of the United States against American businesses and infrastructure. In trial court, Aleksey Vladimirovich Ivanov of Chelyabinsk, Russia was indicted for conspiracy, computer fraud, extortion, and possession of illegal access devices; all crimes committed against the Online Information Bureau (OIB) whose business and infrastructure were based in Vernon, Connecticut.
Hunter Moore is an American convicted criminal from Sacramento, California. Rolling Stone called him "the most hated man on the Internet". In 2010, he created the revenge porn website Is Anyone Up? which allowed users to post sexual and explicit photos of people online without their consent, often accompanied by personal information such as their names and addresses. He refused to take down pictures on request. Moore called himself "a professional life ruiner" and compared himself to Charles Manson. The website was up for 16 months, during which Moore stated several times he was protected by the same laws that protect Facebook. Moore also paid a hacker to break into email accounts of victims and steal private photos to post. The FBI started an investigation on Moore in 2012 after receiving evidence from the mother of one of the victims. The site was closed in April 2012 and sold to an anti-bullying group. In February 2015, Moore pleaded guilty to felony charges for aggravated identity theft and aiding and abetting in the unauthorized access of a computer. In December 2015, Moore was sentenced to two years and six months in prison, a $2,000 fine, and $145.70 in restitution. He was released from prison in May 2017.
In United States of America v. Aaron Swartz, Aaron Swartz, an American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist, was prosecuted for multiple violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA), after downloading academic journal articles through the MIT computer network from a source (JSTOR) for which he had an account as a Harvard research fellow. Facing trial and the possibility of imprisonment, Swartz committed suicide, and the case was consequently dismissed.
Marcel Lazăr Lehel, 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.
On August 31, 2014, a collection of almost 500 private pictures of various celebrities, mostly women, with many containing nudity, were posted on the imageboard 4chan, and later disseminated by other users on websites and social networks such as Imgur and Reddit. The leak has been popularly dubbed The Fappening and also Celebgate. The images were initially believed to have been obtained via a breach of Apple's cloud services suite iCloud, or a security issue in the iCloud API which allowed them to make unlimited attempts at guessing victims' passwords. Apple claimed in a press release that access was gained via spear phishing attacks.
Xbox Underground was an international hacker group responsible for gaining unauthorized access to the computer network of Microsoft and its development partners, including Activision, Epic Games, and Valve, in order to obtain sensitive information relating to Xbox One and Xbox Live.
Shahid Imran Awan is a Pakistani-American information technology worker. From 2004 to 2017, he worked as a shared employee for Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
References
- ^ "Second hacker who entered Lowe's computers gets 26 months." December 16, 2004. Detroit Free Press .
- ^ Kevin Poulsen (2009). "Michigan Wi-Fi hacker jailed for nine years". The Register . Retrieved June 22, 2009.
- ^ "Wardriving guilty plea in Lowe's wi-fi case", SecurityFocus, August 5, 2004. Article
- ^ "Judgement in a Criminal Case, 5:03CR53-02, Western District of North Carolina" December 16, 2004. Judgment in a Criminal Case