Top 5 Most Famous Black Hat Hackers of All Time

1. Kevin David Mitnick (born on August 6, 1963) is a computer security consultant, author, and former computer hacker.

In the late 20th century, he was convicted of various computer- and communications-related crimes. At the time of his arrest, he was the most-wanted computer criminal in the United States.

His exploits were detailed in two movies: Freedom Downtime and Takedown.

2. Jonathan James ( born on December 12, 1983) gained notoriety when he became the first juvenile to be sent to prison for hacking. He was sentenced at the age of 16. In an anonymous PBS interview, he professes, "I was just looking around, playing around. What was fun for me was a challenge to see what I could pull off." James also cracked into NASA computers, stealing software worth approximately $1.7 million.

3. Adrian Lamo (born o  February 20, 1981) whose claim to fame is his break-ins at major organizations like The New York Times and Microsoft. Dubbed the "homeless hacker", he used Internet connections at Kinko's, coffee shops and libraries to make his intrusions. In a profile article, "He Hacks by Day, Squats by Night," Lamo reflects, " I have a laptop in Pittsburgh, a change of cloths in D.C. It kind of redefines the term

 multi-jurisdictional."

4. Kevin Lee Poulsen (born 1965) Also Known as Dark Dante, he gained recognisation for his hack of LA radio's KIIS-FM phone lines, which earned him a brand new Porsche, among other items. His hacking specialty, however, revolved around telephones.

5. Robert Tappan Morris (November 8, 1965), son of  former National Security Agency scientist Robert Morris, is known as the creater of the Morris Worm, the first computer worm unleashed on the internet. As a result of this crime, he was the first person prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.