The hacker culture is a subculture of individuals who enjoy—often in collective effort—the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming the limitations of software systems or electronic hardware, to achieve novel and clever outcomes. The act of engaging in activities in a spirit of playfulness and exploration is termed hacking. However, the defining characteristic of a hacker is not the activities performed themselves, but how it is done and whether it is exciting and meaningful. Activities of playful cleverness can be said to have "hack value" and therefore the term "hacks" came about, with early examples including pranks at MIT done by students to demonstrate their technical aptitude and cleverness. The hacker culture originally emerged in academia in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Hacking originally involved entering restricted areas in a clever way without causing any major damage. Some famous hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were placing of a campus police cruiser on the roof of the Great Dome and converting the Great Dome into R2-D2.
Steven Levy is an American journalist and editor at large for Wired who has written extensively for publications on computers, technology, cryptography, the internet, cybersecurity, and privacy. He is the author of the 1984 book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which chronicles the early days of the computer underground. Levy published eight books covering computer hacker culture, artificial intelligence, cryptography, and multi-year exposés of Apple, Google, and Facebook. His most recent book, Facebook: The Inside Story, recounts the history and rise of Facebook from three years of interviews with employees, including Chamath Palihapitiya, Sheryl Sandberg, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Kimberly Ann Komando is an American radio personality and the host of two daily radio shows and one weekend radio show about consumer technology. On her weekly call-in show, she provides advice about technology gadgets, websites, smartphone apps, and internet security.
A security hacker is someone who explores methods for breaching defenses and exploiting weaknesses in a computer system or network. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, protest, information gathering, challenge, recreation, or evaluation of a system weaknesses to assist in formulating defenses against potential hackers.
Mwende Window Snyder, better known as Window Snyder, is an American computer security expert. She has been a top security officer at Square, Inc., Apple, Fastly, Intel and Mozilla Corporation. She was also a senior security strategist at Microsoft. She is co-author of Threat Modeling, a standard manual on application security.
Charles Alfred Miller is an American computer security researcher with Cruise Automation. Prior to his current employment, he spent five years working for the National Security Agency and has worked for Uber.
Apache Cordova is a mobile application development framework created by Nitobi. Adobe Systems purchased Nitobi in 2011, rebranded it as PhoneGap, and later released an open-source version of the software called Apache Cordova. Apache Cordova enables software programmers to build hybrid web applications for mobile devices using CSS3, HTML5, and JavaScript, instead of relying on platform-specific APIs like those in Android, iOS, or Windows Phone. It enables the wrapping up of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript code depending on the platform of the device. It extends the features of HTML and JavaScript to work with the device. The resulting applications are hybrid, meaning that they are neither truly native mobile application nor purely Web-based. They are not native because all layout rendering is done via Web views instead of the platform's native UI framework. They are not Web apps because they are packaged as apps for distribution and have access to native device APIs. Mixing native and hybrid code snippets has been possible since version 1.9.
Michael Gregg is an American computer security specialist, businessman, author and co-author of several books, including Build Your Own Network Security Lab and Inside Network Security Assessment. He has also served as an expert witness before a congressional committee on cyber security and identity theft.
John Viega is an American computer security author, researcher and professional.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim is a Korean-American theologian and Professor of Theology at Earlham School of Religion, Richmond, Indiana. She is best known for books and articles on the social and religious experiences of Korean women immigrants to North America.
Enid Gabriella Coleman is an anthropologist, academic and author whose work focuses on politics and cultures of hacking and online activism, and has worked on distinct hacker communities, such as free and open-source software hackers, Anonymous and security hackers, among others. She holds the rank of full professor at Harvard University's Department of Anthropology.
Grace Jung is a Korean American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and filmmaker. She is the author of the non-fiction book K-Drama School: A Pop Culture Inquiry into Why We Love Korean Television published by Running Press and Hachette Book Group. The book is an extension of her podcast K-Drama School.
Terry Cutler is a Canadian cyber security expert and teacher, often described as an "ethical hacker" for his long term work with cyber security and protection. Cutler is the founder, former CTO, and current CEO of Cyology Labs and the vice-president of cyber security at SIRCO. He is also the creator of "The Course On Internet Safety". Cyology Labs's focal point is cyber security and data safety. Prior to founding Cyology Labs in 2015, Cutler founded Digital Locksmiths, Inc. focusing on data security of cloud and mobile solutions. Cutler is an often cited source on Cyber security and has been featured on various televisions shows across Canada. He describes himself as a "cyologist", a trademarked term of his own invention for a person who works in cyber security.
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.
Jennifer Marie Arcuri is an American technology entrepreneur. She lived in London from 2011 to 2018, before moving back to California. Self-described as an "ethical hacker", she founded the white hat consultancy Hacker House in 2016 and organised the Innotech Network from 2012. Her connection to then Mayor of London Boris Johnson from 2012 came to national attention in the UK in September 2019 when he became Prime Minister, triggering investigations into alleged conflicts of interest. She said in 2021 that she had an affair with him from 2012 to 2016.
Mariarosaria Taddeo is an Italian philosopher working on the ethics of digital technologies. She is Professor of Digital Ethics and Defence Technologies at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford and Dslt Ethics Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, London.
Charles Edge was an American computer scientist, author, podcaster, and a contributing author for Inc.com and Huffington Post.
Robert Willis, also known as rej_ex, is an American hacker and comic book writer. He is known for his work with the Sakura Samurai white-hat hacking group, and his contributions to the Wiley Tribe of Hackers book series. In 2015, he helped build a platform and strategy for news syndication for his client Natural News, a fake news website. The site was ultimately used to promote the candidacy of Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton across hundreds of sister websites; the pieces would reach over 30 million people a week prior to the 2016 election.
vx-underground also known as VXUG, is an educational website about malware and cybersecurity. It claims to have the largest online repository of malware. The site was launched in May, 2019 and has grown to host over 35 million pieces of malware samples. On their account on Twitter, VXUG reports on and verifies cybersecurity breaches.
