Benjamin Blouin is a former computer engineering student at Florida State University Panama City who reportedly admitted to "hacking" the school's wireless Internet network, causing all users to be automatically redirected to the infamous shock website meatspin.com. He wanted to make a point about the dangers of having an open wifi network, that's why he attacked the school's wireless network.
Samy Kamkar is a security researcher who is known for releasing the Samy worm, the first self-propagating cross-site scripting worm, onto MySpace. The worm caused MySpace to crash. Kamkar pled guilty to a felony charge of computer hacking in Los Angeles Superior Court, and he agreed to not use a computer for three years. Since 2008, Kamkar has been doing independent computer security research and consulting. He is also responsible for discovering that the Apple iPhone, Google Android and Microsoft Windows Phone mobile devices transmit GPS and Wi-Fi information to their parent companies.
Matthew Delorey was the owner of the defunct website Massmodz.com, where hacked modems were sold. The modems had been modified in order to spoof the device's MAC (Media Access Control) address which allows free internet access.
He posted tutorial videos with titles such as "Massmodz.com How to Get Free Internet Free Cable Internet Comcast or any Cable ISP - 100% works" and "Massmodz.com How to bypass Comcast registration page with premod cable modem SB5100, SB 5101."
Dmitry Vitalevich Sklyarov is a Russian computer programmer and crypto expert who created "The Advanced eBook Processor" (AEBR) software - a program that cracks the encryption protection on Adobe's eBook format, converting it to Adobe PDF format. He created the program for his employer : ElcomSoft. On July 16, 2001, due to a complaint from Adobe Systems, a US company, that copy protection arrangements in its e-book file format were being violated by ElcomSoft's product, Sklyarov was arrested after giving a presentation called "eBook's Security - Theory and Practice" at the DEF CON convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. Sklyarov and his employer, ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. of Moscow, were charged with releasing a program that let readers disable restrictions on Adobe's electronic-book software.
Aaron Swartz was an American computer programmer, writer, archivist, political organizer, and Internet activist. He was a member of the RSS-DEV Working Group that co-authored the "RSS 1.0" specification of RSS, and built the Web site framework web.py and the architecture for the Open Library. He also built Infogami, a company that merged with Reddit in its early days, through which he became an equal owner of the merged company. He also focused on sociology, civic awareness and activism. In 2010 he was a member of the Harvard University Center for Ethics. He cofounded the online group Demand Progress (known for its campaign against SOPA) and later worked with US and international activist groups Rootstrikers and Avaaz.
A 39 year old Korean that was very well known for hacking into Hyundai Financial Services systems. He was able to attain details on 1.75 million customers by hacking into a proxy server that the administrators used in that firm. Once he gained this information he contacted Hyundai and blackmailed them for over $500,000 dollars or else he would release this information to the public. Hyundai decided to pay him $100,000 dollars for him to not release the data, he agreed. After that event he was wanted by Interpol and to elude them he passed himself off as Japanese. A Korean accomplice known as Heo was arrested and ratted him out. Shin was arrested by the Philippine authorities in the Batangas province in 2011. He was released on December 14, 2012 and repatriated back to Korea.
A 25 year old Canadian, best known for pleading guilty to hacking into Carly Rae Jepsen's email and social media accounts. In the process, he also obtained nude photographs of her. In September 2013 he received a four-month "conditional" sentence where he wouldn't serve jail time, but was restricted to work, school and home. In addition, he was banned from attending any of Jepsen's concerts and trying to make contact with her in any way.
Christopher Weatherhead a.k.a Nerdo has been convicted in a London court on one count of conspiracy to impair the operation of computers under the 1977 Criminal Law Act. He was arrested in January 2011 in connection with "Operation Payback", a series of prolonged Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that targeted PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and other web sites after they refused to process payments to Wikileaks. He is said to have coordinated the DDoS attacks through IRC chat rooms as the "communications manager" for a group of hackers belonging to the Anonymous collective, according to a report in The Guardian.
Jesse William McGraw is a former contract security guard at the North Central Medical Plaza on North Central Expressway in Dallas, who admitted hacking into that hospital’s computer systems by putting malware on a dozen machines. He also installed the remote-access program LogMeIn on the hospital’s Windows-controlled HVAC system. McGraw admitted that he intended to use the bots and the compromised computers to launch DDoS attacks on the websites of rival hacker groups. He was sent to jail after a security expert named Wesley McGrew tipped off the FBI in 2009.
He became a two-time fugitive and attempted to flee the country. He broke into a US Customs-controlled shipyard and blackmailed the captain of a cargo ship into taking him to Nigeria after discovering that they were disabling their AIS tracking beacon while in international waters.
Benjamin Nichols is one of the members of an anarchistic hacking group called the Electronik Tribulation Army that harassed a security expert Robert Wesley McGrew of McGrew Security who helped put the group’s leader in jail, according to an unsealed search warrant affidavit.
Nichols Harvested email addresses from Mississippi State University where Wesley Mcgrew was attending. Nichols spammed invitations to the website wesleymcgrew.com to entire campus ( a website Nichols registered as a platform to harass Wesley Mcgrew) from [email protected] with the Subject line "Hey everyone check out my new website!"
The website featured photo-shopped images of Wesley Mcgrew's face on gay bondage photos and an order form where users could mail dildos to Mcgrews home address titled "Show your support for the whitehat community, Mail Wesley Mcgrew a dildo!" Nichols himself has also sent sex toys to Wesley Mcgrews residence. His home was raided by the FBI last June 23, 2010. He has a dox in pastebin.
On April 5th 2016, Nichols pleaded guilty to “knowingly and purposefully launching a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack” on or before May 2010 against mcgrewsecurity.com. News articles have stated that the attack caused a $6,500 loss and that Nichols faces up to 10 years in federal prison along with a $250,000 fine.