Famous Hacks that made Headlines

Computer and network hacks have been accomplished, well for as long as computers and networks have existed. Hacks have been made all along and with different intentions, ranging from curiosity to paranoia to spying on the enemy. Even today the most high profile hacks are done with selfish motives such as greed and for some hackers its the door to that temporary limelight. Here are some of the hacking incidents that made waves around the globe and climbed the top of the ladder into the headlines.

Markus Hess (KGB)

Markus Hess was a German citizen recruited by KGB to spy for the Soviets in the 1980’s. The task; to break into American military computers and procure classified information. He was successful in hacking 400 military computers before his hack was eventually detected by Clifford Stoll, an astronomer turned systems administrator of the computer center of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, California. Found guilty Hess was sentenced to one to three years in prison.

Robert Morris (Internet)

In 1988, a student at Cornell University, Robert Morris created what would eventually be termed as the first worm on the Internet. The objective was not to create devastation and impairment but to access the size and spread of the internet. Exploiting the vulnerabilities in UNIX, a flaw in the worm design caused the worm to replicate at a level far higher than intended by Morris, which overloaded the systems and caused considerable damage. Robert Morris was the first person convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 1990 and was sentenced to three years of probation, 400 hours of community service, a fine of $10,050, and the costs of his supervision.

Vladimir Levin  (Citibank)

The first high profile instance of hacking with financially motivated motives, Vladimir Levin gained access to Citibank network and stole millions of dollars. The FBI caught  Levin at a London airport and he was tried and convicted in the U.S. and sentenced to three years in jail in 1998. He was also ordered to pay Citibank $240,015 in rebate. Officials say Levin was able to transfer $3.7 million illegally.

Jonathon James (NASA)

Known as cOmrade in the hackers community, Jonathon James hacked the Marshall Space Flight Center, Alabama at the age of 16 in 1999 and downloaded the software for the International Space Station which was meant for the ECS (Environmental Control System) responsible for controlling the humidity and temperature for living in space. This forced NASA to shut down its computer systems for three weeks and cost them about $41,000 to fix.

LulzSec (Sony)

An outgrowth of Anonymous, hacker group LulzSec hacked into Sony pictures and stole data that included username, passwords as well as home addresses of Sony customers. This move was in retaliation to Sony’s legal action against hacker George Hotz for jailbreaking into the PlayStation 3, which compromised over a million accounts.