# The most famous hackers in history

From "the Condor" Kevin Mitnick to the teenager who took down Yahoo and Amazon, by way of Anonymous: the hackers whose attacks made headlines around the world. Who was the boldest?

- 94 votes · 12 items
- Mar 26, 2023 · Renzo Vásquez Quispe
- https://even.best/en/l/2389/the-most-famous-hackers-in-history

## Top 12

1. **Anonymous** (12 · ▲13 ▼1) — The Guy Fawkes-masked collective born on 4chan.
2. **Gary McKinnon** (10 · ▲10 ▼0) — He broke into NASA and US military systems looking for UFOs.
3. **Adrian Lamo** (10 · ▲10 ▼0) — The "homeless hacker" who got into the networks of big companies.
4. **Albert González** (8 · ▲8 ▼0) — He stole the details of more than 180 million payment cards.
5. **Kevin Mitnick** (7 · ▲9 ▼2) — "The Condor", once America's most wanted computer criminal, later a security consultant.
6. **Jonathan James** (6 · ▲6 ▼0) — At 15 he got into Department of Defense systems.
7. **Matthew Bevan and Richard Pryce** (4 · ▲5 ▼1) — Two Britons who broke into US military networks in 1996.
8. **Michael Calce (Mafiaboy)** (4 · ▲5 ▼1) — At 15 he took down Yahoo, eBay, CNN and Amazon in 2000.
9. **ASTRA** (2 · ▲5 ▼3) — A Greek mathematician who stole weapons software from Dassault for years.
10. **Jeanson James Ancheta** (2 · ▲4 ▼2) — He built a network of 400,000 infected computers and rented it out.
11. **Kevin Poulsen** (2 · ▲3 ▼1) — "Dark Dante", later a Wired journalist.
12. **Robert Tappan Morris** (1 · ▲3 ▼2) — The author of the 1988 Morris worm, the first to spread across the internet.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.