Hacking For Beginners – Manthan Desai

4) Kevin Poulsen

2010

Kevin Poulsen was among the most accomplished, multi-talented hackers. He worked for SRI International by day, andhacked at night under the handle " Dark Dante”. He trained to be the complete hacker, and even taught himself lockpicking. Among other things, Poulsen reactivated old Yellow Page numbers for an acquaintance thatthen ran a virtual agency. When the FBI started pursuing Poulsen, underground as a fugitive. When he wasfeatured on NBC’s Unsolved Mysteries, the show’s 1 -800 telephone mysteriously crashed. He was finally arrested inFebruary, 1995.

Poulsen’s best known hack was a takeover of all of the telephone Angeles radio station KIIS-FM, guaranteeingthat he would be the 102nd caller, and winning a Porsche 944 Poulsen pleaded guilty to seven counts ofmail, wire and computer fraud, money laundering, and obstruction was sentenced to 51 months in prisonand ordered to pay $56,000 in restitution. It was the longest sentence ever given for hacking up to that time. He also laterpleaded guilty to breaking into computers and obtaining information on undercover businesses run by the FBI.

5) Robert Tappan Morris

Morris, son of former National Security Agency scientist Robert Morris, is known as the creator of the Morris Worm, thefirst computer worm to be unleashed on the Internet. As a result of this crime, he was the first person prosecuted underthe 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Morris wrote the code for the worm while he was a student at Cornell. Heasserts that he intended to use it to see how large the Internet was. The worm, however, replicated itself excessively,slowing computers down so that they were no longer usable. It is not possible to know exactly how many computers wereaffected, but experts estimate an impact of 6,000 machines. He was sentenced to three years’ probation, 400 hours ofcommunity service and a fined $10,500.

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