Most Wanted Black Hatters of all Time

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The Black hatters have extensive computer knowledge and the intention to breach or bypass internet security. These dark-side hackers have been notorious for siphoning off millions of credit card data to infiltrating Government networks.

The term “black hat” comes from Spaghetti Westerns where the bad guys wore black hats and the good guys the white ones. Apart from black and white there are grey and blue hat hackers as well.

These black hat hackers are also associated with many hacking groups like Anonymous and LulzSec but many of them work independently as well. Here is a list of top five black hatters of all time.

Kevin Mitnick

The U.S. Department of Justice termed him as the “most wanted computer criminal in U.S. history.” Relying on social engineering and dumpster diving he infiltrated into various computer networks and gained unauthorized access.

After serving a year in prison for hacking into the Digital Equipment Corporation’s network, he was let out for 3 years of supervised release. At the end of the serving period he became a fugitive and was involved in breaching the national defense warning system and stealing corporate secrets. Mitnick was later caught and convicted which ended with a 5-year prison sentence. He is currently a consultant and public speaker for computer security and runs Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC.

Jonathan James

Known as “c0mrade” on the Internet James was an American hacker who was the first juvenile incarcerated for cybercrime in the United States. James penetrated into various systems, including those of BellSouth and the Miami-Dade school system but it was his intrusion into the computers of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a division of the United States Department of Defense which brought him under the government radar.

He used a backdoor to obtain the International Space Station's source codes which were meant to control critical life-sustaining elements. This intrusion caused NASA to shut down its computers for three weeks costing $41,000 to fix its systems.

James committed suicide in 2008 after he was suspected of being the guy behind a massive wave of malicious network attacks which targeted some big companies.

Kevin Poulsen

Known as “Dark Dante,” Poulsen hacked a radio station’s phone lines and earned a brand new Porsche by fixing himself as the winning caller. Dubbed by the media as the “Hannibal Lecter of computer crime”, he made his way into the FBI’s wanted list when he hacked into federal systems and stole wiretap information.

After serving his prison sentence he became a reformed man and began working as a journalist and is now the editor of WIRED.com.

Gary McKinnon

The largest ever hack of United States government computer networks — including Army, Air Force, Navy and NASA systems is attributed to Gary. According to the US authorities he deleted critical files from operating systems, which shut down the United States Army’s Military District of Washington network of 2,000 computers for 24 hours. Interestingly, McKinnon claims that he was only searching for UFO information as he believed that the US government was hiding such information in its military computers. The American government called for his extradition from UK which later was blocked.

Albert Gonzalez

Accused of credit card theft Gonzalez stole more than 170 million credit card and ATM numbers. He also was the administrator of a website Shadowcrew which served as a forum for members to buy stolen credit card numbers.

As of now he is serving 20 year prison sentence.