5 ms·

Legendary Hackers (2010)

67 points by avinassh 12y ago

ChuckMcM 12y ago
Interesting that Kevin is on that list, Kevin, Bob, and Mark were the three who were some of the first indicted using federal hacking laws [1]. Bob took a plea, Mark plead innocent and eventually they just dropped the case, and Kevin ran away, to be caught later. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/08/us/hacker-indicted-on-spy-charges.html http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/08/us/hacker-indicted-on-spy-...
simplicio 12y ago
Yea, Dennis Ritchie is alive again!
- DevUps 12y ago
  And Jonathnan James!
- hamhamed 12y ago
  OP may want to add the (2010) tag &_&
- xxs 12y ago
  He may not walk the Earth but he will be alive in many hearts. It also stoke me that his death was not noticed there.
AceJohnny2 12y ago
List last updated in 2010. I believe Fabrice Bellard deserves to be added. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard In short, created LZEXE at 17, went on the create QEMU (general CPU emulator, also used as a frontend of KVM), and FFMPEG (which pretty much every open-source (and many not) multimedia app uses). Less famous, but still quite the accomplishment, are jsLinux, the first in-browser full Linux emulator, at one point holding the record for calculating the most digits of Pi (using a desktop computer!), creating the first software 4G LTE base station (that runs on a standard PC), and more.
- jsnk 12y ago
  I want to nominate John Carmack. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack
  - Forbo 12y ago
    I would nominate Jacob Appelbaum and Moxie Marlinspike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Appelbaum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Appelbaum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie_Marlinspike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie_Marlinspike
  - xxs 12y ago
    Me too :) I very much expected him to be on the list.
  - koonsolo 12y ago
    Yes, I was also missing his name. The hacks he pulled off for side-scrolling in Commander Keen on PC, '3D' of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, and of course his inverse square root implementation: http://www.codemaestro.com/reviews/9 http://www.codemaestro.com/reviews/9. He definitely deserves to be in this list.
pudo 12y ago
This should be a document of shame to us as a community. There's not a single woman or person of color on this page, from what I can tell. We're doing something seriously wrong.
- jsnk 12y ago
  Corrupt from Masters Of Deception is black.
- nos4A2 12y ago
  I'm currently a CS student at a top tier university, and I can assure you that the tide is changing, half the class is female, and a most new research (at least undergraduate) has quite a good balance in terms of representation. Give it 20 or so years :)
- jes 12y ago
  I'm a white, 55 year old software engineer. I've been hacking since I was maybe 15 or 16 years old. I don't think I've done anything to keep women or people of color down, or from entering this field. Do you think I should feel shame, and if so, for what?
  - throwawayaway 12y ago
    that's an interesting approach, to just ask! perhaps the question would be better directed at female colleagues former and present using an anonymous submission system like wikileaks set up, and newspapers currently use. i have a feeling though it would be seen as narcissistic.
- pvaldes 12y ago
  Brian Fox If the author of Bash is not in the list, yes, we are doing something wrong.
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  margaret hamilton and ladyada of the x0xb0x are some notables.
- 12y ago
formerhacker97 12y ago
I was surprised to see someone on the list that I used to know. Around 1996-1998 I knew Ehud Tenenbaum (Analyzer) from Undernet IRC. When I knew him, he was a standard script kiddie. He had rudimentary programming skills and only used exploit code (buffer overflow, race condition, etc) that others wrote. Basically he collected exploits, ran them against servers, used the hacked servers to sniff network packets to get more passwords as well as to scan additional systems. He would spend probably 80% of each day doing this. Unlike many hackers that would secure the systems they hacked into, he had a habit of putting a root privileged shell onto a high port with inetd. He lost a lot of systems to other hackers because of this. Since he "owned" hundreds of systems at any one time, it never seemed to bother him much though. The fact that he is on the "legendary hacker" list makes me believe a better name for it might be, "sloppy hackers that got caught" list. Excuse the throw-away. While the statute of limitations is probably a decade past for me I don't like to take chances.
throwawayaway 12y ago
is "autistici" a plural of "austistic"? it's interesting that registering it as a domain seems to be a way of reclaiming something that is becoming derogatory - as a badge of honour instead. like civil rights movements.
- Dewie 12y ago
  Manifesto: > We called ourselves Autistici, instead, for the passion we have for understanding the technical tools and for exposing the politics implicit in the digital world; even if software is created in a virtual world it doesn't mean it doesn't have a political impact on reality. Starting from the technical tools we use we came to develop a clear array of political stances, crucial to both cyber and material world and lives: privacy, anonymity, free sharing of knowledge just to mention a few. ... > Autism with invention generates sharing So uh, yeah, that actually seems to kind of be the case. Inasmuch as "passion for understanding technical tools" is about autism. http://www.autistici.org/en/who/manifesto.html http://www.autistici.org/en/who/manifesto.html
  - throwawayaway 12y ago
    thanks for that! i find it fascinating that it's become so hopelessly broad now that a group have felt the need to do that. maybe they are taking the piss, but i don't think so. EDIT: ...and they did so in 2002? they must have seen the whole thing coming a mile off. the etymology is interesting anyway. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=autism http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&searc...
teqdruid 12y ago
This list is missing Tridge!
Elizer0x0309 12y ago
Add John Carmack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack Single handedly inspired legions of coders to join the fold with his 3d democratization.
blfr 12y ago
Perfect list for naming servers.
drallison 12y ago
The list of notables is way longer. I am surprised that Bill Gates and Paul Allen were missing. And Aaron Swartz. And Paul Graham. And ....
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Bill Gates, a hacker? Never. He wrote bad code and marketed it aggressively.
cinsk 12y ago
I want to nominate Jamie Zawinski, for his great work on Mozilla, XEmacs, XScreensaver, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski

67 points by avinassh 12y ago

Interesting that Kevin is on that list, Kevin, Bob, and Mark were the three who were some of the first indicted using federal hacking laws [1]. Bob took a plea, Mark plead innocent and eventually they just dropped the case, and Kevin ran away, to be caught later. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/08/us/hacker-indicted-on-spy-charges.html http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/08/us/hacker-indicted-on-spy-...

simplicio 12y ago

Yea, Dennis Ritchie is alive again!

DevUps 12y ago
And Jonathnan James!
hamhamed 12y ago
OP may want to add the (2010) tag &_&
xxs 12y ago
He may not walk the Earth but he will be alive in many hearts. It also stoke me that his death was not noticed there.

AceJohnny2 12y ago

List last updated in 2010. I believe Fabrice Bellard deserves to be added. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard In short, created LZEXE at 17, went on the create QEMU (general CPU emulator, also used as a frontend of KVM), and FFMPEG (which pretty much every open-source (and many not) multimedia app uses). Less famous, but still quite the accomplishment, are jsLinux, the first in-browser full Linux emulator, at one point holding the record for calculating the most digits of Pi (using a desktop computer!), creating the first software 4G LTE base station (that runs on a standard PC), and more.

jsnk 12y ago
I want to nominate John Carmack. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack
- Forbo 12y ago
  I would nominate Jacob Appelbaum and Moxie Marlinspike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Appelbaum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Appelbaum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie_Marlinspike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie_Marlinspike
- xxs 12y ago
  Me too :) I very much expected him to be on the list.
- koonsolo 12y ago
  Yes, I was also missing his name. The hacks he pulled off for side-scrolling in Commander Keen on PC, '3D' of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, and of course his inverse square root implementation: http://www.codemaestro.com/reviews/9 http://www.codemaestro.com/reviews/9. He definitely deserves to be in this list.

pudo 12y ago

This should be a document of shame to us as a community. There's not a single woman or person of color on this page, from what I can tell. We're doing something seriously wrong.

jsnk 12y ago
Corrupt from Masters Of Deception is black.
nos4A2 12y ago
I'm currently a CS student at a top tier university, and I can assure you that the tide is changing, half the class is female, and a most new research (at least undergraduate) has quite a good balance in terms of representation. Give it 20 or so years :)
jes 12y ago
I'm a white, 55 year old software engineer. I've been hacking since I was maybe 15 or 16 years old. I don't think I've done anything to keep women or people of color down, or from entering this field. Do you think I should feel shame, and if so, for what?
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  that's an interesting approach, to just ask! perhaps the question would be better directed at female colleagues former and present using an anonymous submission system like wikileaks set up, and newspapers currently use. i have a feeling though it would be seen as narcissistic.
pvaldes 12y ago
Brian Fox If the author of Bash is not in the list, yes, we are doing something wrong.
throwawayaway 12y ago
margaret hamilton and ladyada of the x0xb0x are some notables.
12y ago

formerhacker97 12y ago

I was surprised to see someone on the list that I used to know. Around 1996-1998 I knew Ehud Tenenbaum (Analyzer) from Undernet IRC. When I knew him, he was a standard script kiddie. He had rudimentary programming skills and only used exploit code (buffer overflow, race condition, etc) that others wrote. Basically he collected exploits, ran them against servers, used the hacked servers to sniff network packets to get more passwords as well as to scan additional systems. He would spend probably 80% of each day doing this. Unlike many hackers that would secure the systems they hacked into, he had a habit of putting a root privileged shell onto a high port with inetd. He lost a lot of systems to other hackers because of this. Since he "owned" hundreds of systems at any one time, it never seemed to bother him much though. The fact that he is on the "legendary hacker" list makes me believe a better name for it might be, "sloppy hackers that got caught" list. Excuse the throw-away. While the statute of limitations is probably a decade past for me I don't like to take chances.

throwawayaway 12y ago

is "autistici" a plural of "austistic"? it's interesting that registering it as a domain seems to be a way of reclaiming something that is becoming derogatory - as a badge of honour instead. like civil rights movements.

Dewie 12y ago
Manifesto: > We called ourselves Autistici, instead, for the passion we have for understanding the technical tools and for exposing the politics implicit in the digital world; even if software is created in a virtual world it doesn't mean it doesn't have a political impact on reality. Starting from the technical tools we use we came to develop a clear array of political stances, crucial to both cyber and material world and lives: privacy, anonymity, free sharing of knowledge just to mention a few. ... > Autism with invention generates sharing So uh, yeah, that actually seems to kind of be the case. Inasmuch as "passion for understanding technical tools" is about autism. http://www.autistici.org/en/who/manifesto.html http://www.autistici.org/en/who/manifesto.html
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  thanks for that! i find it fascinating that it's become so hopelessly broad now that a group have felt the need to do that. maybe they are taking the piss, but i don't think so. EDIT: ...and they did so in 2002? they must have seen the whole thing coming a mile off. the etymology is interesting anyway. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=autism http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&searc...

teqdruid 12y ago

This list is missing Tridge!

Elizer0x0309 12y ago

Add John Carmack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack Single handedly inspired legions of coders to join the fold with his 3d democratization.

blfr 12y ago

Perfect list for naming servers.

drallison 12y ago

The list of notables is way longer. I am surprised that Bill Gates and Paul Allen were missing. And Aaron Swartz. And Paul Graham. And ....

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Bill Gates, a hacker? Never. He wrote bad code and marketed it aggressively.

cinsk 12y ago

I want to nominate Jamie Zawinski, for his great work on Mozilla, XEmacs, XScreensaver, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski