Nicholas Jacobsen is a hacker who had illegal access to the private information of T-Mobile customers for at least a year. [1] [2] He was arrested after an investigation by the United States Secret Service in October 2004 and pleaded guilty at trial as part of a plea agreement. [3] [4] [5]
Jacobsen's cyber targets were reported to include Paris Hilton's T-Mobile Sidekick II, [6] in addition to exposing documents emailed to an agent by the Secret Service. [7]
Adrián Alfonso Lamo Atwood 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, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, culminating in his 2003 arrest.
Kevin David Mitnick was 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. Mitnick's pursuit, arrest, trial, and sentence along with the associated journalism, books, and films were all controversial. After his release from prison, he ran his own security firm, Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC, and was also involved with other computer security businesses.
Kevin Lee Poulsen is an American former black-hat hacker and a contributing editor at The Daily Beast.
Rizon is a large Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network with an average of around 20,000 users. The IRC network itself ranks number 5 among the largest IRC networks. Rizon is popular with many anime fansubbing groups who work online, many of whom provide their content through XDCC via IRC bots in their distribution channels. It is also used by many users of eRepublik as a means of communication. File sharing of other copyrighted material such as Warez is also common in some channels on the network.
The TJX Companies, Inc. is an American multinational off-price department store corporation, headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts. It was formed as a subsidiary of Zayre Corp. in 1987, and became the legal successor to Zayre Corp. following a company reorganization in 1989.
Adam Botbyl is an American computer hacker from Michigan. He gained unauthorized access to the Lowes corporate computer network via an open, unsecured wireless access point used by the Lowe's chain of home improvement and hardware stores. The access point was initially discovered inadvertently by his then-roommate, Paul Timmins. Months later, Botbyl and Salcedo returned to explore and exploit the network at a store located in Southfield, Michigan. They then attempted to install a program that could have allowed them to capture the credit card information of customers conducting transactions through the Southfield store.
Ehud "Udi" Tenenbaum, also known as The Analyzer, is an Israeli hacker.
Albert Gonzalez is an American computer hacker, computer criminal and police informer, 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.
The Gay Nigger Association of America (GNAA) was an internet trolling group. They targeted several prominent websites and internet personalities including Slashdot, Wikipedia, CNN, Barack Obama, Alex Jones, and prominent members of the blogosphere. They also released software products, and leaked screenshots and information about upcoming operating systems. In addition, they maintained a software repository and a wiki-based site dedicated to internet commentary.
Phone hacking is the practice of exploring a mobile device, often using computer exploits to analyze everything from the lowest memory and cpu levels up to the highest file system and process levels. Modern open source tooling has become fairly sophisticated as to be able to "hook" into individual functions within any running App on an unlocked device and allow deep inspection and modification of their functions.
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.
Matthew Weigman is a blind American man who has used his heightened hearing ability to help him deceive telephone operators and fake various in-band phone signals. Before his arrest at the age of 18, Weigman had used this ability to become a well known phone phreaker, memorizing phone numbers by tone and performing uncanny imitations of various phone line operators to perform pranks such as swatting on his rivals.
The Federal Correctional Institution, Oakdale is a low-security United States federal prison for male inmates in Louisiana. It is part of the Oakdale Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) and operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice.
Freedom Hosting was a Tor specialist web hosting service that was established in 2008. At its height in August 2013, it was the largest Tor web host.
Carding is a term describing the trafficking and unauthorized use of credit cards. The stolen credit cards or credit card numbers are then used to buy prepaid gift cards to cover up the tracks. Activities also encompass exploitation of personal data, and money laundering techniques. Modern carding sites have been described as full-service commercial entities.
Mirai is malware that turns networked devices running Linux into remotely controlled bots that can be used as part of a botnet in large-scale network attacks. It primarily targets online consumer devices such as IP cameras and home routers. The Mirai botnet was first found in August 2016 by MalwareMustDie, a white hat malware research group, and has been used in some of the largest and most disruptive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, including an attack on 20 September 2016 on computer security journalist Brian Krebs' website, an attack on French web host OVH, and the October 2016 Dyn cyberattack. According to a chat log between Anna-senpai and Robert Coelho, Mirai was named after the 2011 TV anime series Mirai Nikki.
Harold Thomas Martin III is an American computer scientist and former contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton who pleaded guilty to illegally removing 50 terabytes of data from the National Security Agency. The United States government reportedly failed to note or effectively respond to a number of issues with Martin's security practices and behaviors over a period of 10 to 20 years. The motive for the crime has been a subject of debate, investigators reportedly had difficulty determining if Martin was engaged in conventional espionage or digital hoarding since throughout his decades of work, he appeared not to have ever accessed any of the files once he removed them from government facilities.
Hack Forums is an Internet forum dedicated to discussions related to hacker culture and computer security. The website ranks as the number one website in the "Hacking" category in terms of web-traffic by the analysis company Alexa Internet. The website has been widely reported as facilitating online criminal activity, such as the case of Zachary Shames, who was arrested for selling keylogging software on Hack Forums in 2013 which was used to steal personal information.