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 popular culture with a security hacker – someone who utilizes their technical know-how of bugs or exploits to break into computer systems and access data which would otherwise be inaccessible to them – hacking can also be utilized by legitimate figures in legal situations. For example, law enforcement agencies sometimes use hacking techniques in order to collect evidence on criminals and other malicious actors. This could include using anonymity tools to mask their identities online, posing as criminals themselves. Likewise, covert world agencies can employ hacking techniques in the legal conduct of their work. On the other hand, hacking and cyber-attacks are used extra- and illegally by law enforcement and security agencies, and employed by state actors as a weapon of both legal and illegal warfare.
WarGames is a 1983 American science fiction techno-thriller film written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes and directed by John Badham. The film, which stars Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood, and Ally Sheedy, follows David Lightman (Broderick), a young hacker who unwittingly accesses a United States military supercomputer programmed to simulate, predict and execute nuclear war against the Soviet Union.
L0pht Heavy Industries was a hacker collective active between 1992 and 2000 and located in the Boston, Massachusetts area. The L0pht was one of the first viable hackerspaces in the US, and a pioneer of responsible disclosure. The group famously testified in front of Congress in 1998 on the topic of ‘Weak Computer Security in Government’.
DEF CON is a hacker convention held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first DEF CON took place in June 1993 and today many attendees at DEF CON include computer security professionals, journalists, lawyers, federal government employees, security researchers, students, and hackers with a general interest in software, computer architecture, hardware modification, conference badges, and anything else that can be "hacked". The event consists of several tracks of speakers about computer- and hacking-related subjects, as well as cyber-security challenges and competitions. Contests held during the event are extremely varied, and can range from creating the longest Wi-Fi connection to finding the most effective way to cool a beer in the Nevada heat.
Kevin Lee Poulsen is an American former black-hat hacker and a contributing editor at The Daily Beast.
Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and apply a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as FOSH. The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned so that others can make it – coupling it closely to the maker movement. Hardware design, in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released under free/libre terms. The original sharer gains feedback and potentially improvements on the design from the FOSH community. There is now significant evidence that such sharing can drive a high return on investment for the scientific community.
Jeff Moss, also known as Dark Tangent, is an American hacker, computer and internet security expert who founded the Black Hat and DEF CON computer security conferences.
George Francis Hotz, 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 brought against him by Sony. Since September 2015, he has been working on his vehicle automation machine learning company comma.ai.
Andrew "bunnie" Huang is an American researcher and hacker, who holds a Ph.D in electrical engineering from MIT and is the author of the freely available 2003 book Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering. As of 2012 he resides in Singapore. Huang is a member of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, and a resident advisor and mentor to hardware startups at HAX, an early stage hardware accelerator and venture capital firm.
A hackerspace is a community-operated, often "not for profit", workspace where people with common interests, such as computers, machining, technology, science, digital art, or electronic art, can meet, socialize, and collaborate. Hackerspaces are comparable to other community-operated spaces with similar aims and mechanisms such as Fab Lab, men's sheds, and commercial "for-profit" companies.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet civil liberties.
A computer security conference is a convention for individuals involved in computer security. They generally serve as meeting places for system and network administrators, hackers, and computer security experts.
The maker culture is a contemporary subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture that intersects with hardware-oriented parts of hacker culture and revels in the creation of new devices as well as tinkering with existing ones. The maker culture in general supports open-source hardware. Typical interests enjoyed by the maker culture include engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of computer numeric control tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and, mainly, its predecessor, traditional arts and crafts.
Noisebridge is an anarchistic maker and hackerspace located in San Francisco, inspired by European hackerspaces Metalab and c-base in Berlin. It describes itself as "a space for sharing, creation, collaboration, research, development, mentoring, and learning," and outside of its headquarters forms a wider community around the world. It was organized in 2007 and has had permanent facilities since 2008.
Limor Fried is an American electrical engineer and owner of the electronics hobbyist company Adafruit Industries. She is influential in the open-source hardware community, having participated in the first Open Source Hardware Summit and the drafting of the Open Source Hardware definition, and is known by her moniker ladyada, an homage to Lady Ada Lovelace.
HackMiami is a formal organization of information security professionals who host the annual international hacker conference that takes place in Miami Beach, FL known as the 'HackMiami Conference.'
Itzik Kotler is an Israeli entrepreneur, inventor, and information security specialist who is the co-founder and CTO of SafeBreach, an Israeli cybersecurity firm. Kotler was previously the Security Operation Center Team Leader at Tel Aviv-based Radware. He has given multiple talks at DEF CON, the world's largest hacker convention.
Liberating Ourselves Locally is a makerspace/hackerspace in the Fruitvale district of Oakland, California. It is part of the Bay Area Consortium of Hackerspaces (BACH).
Iftach Ian Amit is an Israeli Hacker/computer security researcher and practitioner. He is one of the co-founders of the Tel Aviv DEF CON Group DC9723, the Penetration Testing Execution Standard, and presented at hacker conventions such as DEF CON, Black Hat, BlueHat, RSA Conference. He has been named SC Magazine's top experts and featured at Narratively's cover piece on Attack of the Superhackers and is frequently quoted and interviewed
Eva Galperin is the Director of Cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and technical advisor for the Freedom of the Press Foundation. She is noted for her extensive work in protecting global privacy and free speech and for her research on malware and nation-state spyware.
