My Favorite Hackers

:: source http://news.discovery.com/tech/my-favorite-hackers.html

Thu Dec 3, 2009 05:30 AM ET | content provided by Ryan Draga
as a self-proclaimed hacker, who means you no harm, I stand on the shoulders of giants. The following people have set the standard for hacking and have given all of us newbies something to the strive for. These are some of the Great Ones, the ones we admire, emulate. These are my favs.

1. Kevin Mitnick

The Man. The Myth. The Legend. This guy was the top hacker in the world for a good part of the late 70s and early 80s. He was one of the first, and in his time, gave the pre-silicon valley tech bigwigs a good shakedown. He broke into systems owned by Sun Microsystems, IBM, DEC, Motorola, and even managed (allegedly) to wiretap FBI conversations. He did time for it, but now works as a security consultant. Though most hackers today consider his technical knowledge to be archaic, he has one of the sharpest minds in social engineering even today.

WATCH VIDEO: Darren Kitchen, hacker and host of tech show Hak5, says why hacking isn't the same thing as cyber crime.

2. Fyodor

Fyodor, aka Gordon Lyon, gave us hackers one of our greatest tools. NMAP. NMAP is a powerful piece of software that lets us analyze the topography of any given network. With a quick nmap session, we can tell what Operating System is running on a given machine or set of machines, we can tell what services are running on the network, and we can tell what IP Addresses are active or inactive within any given network, among an infinite number of other functions. NMAP is indispensible and hackers would be virtually shooting in the dark without it. Today, Fyodor is responsible for overseeing the Honeynet Project, a distributed computing project that uses false open access points in a network (honeypots), to gather data regarding intrusion attempts on networks all over the world.

3. Michal Zalewski

Michal is currently in the employ of Google as a security researcher, but has been active in the hacker community since the early 90s as someone known for finding vulnerabilities where no one else could. His knowledge of web browser security is unparalleled.

4. Eric Corley

Eric founded the H.O.P.E. hacker conference as well as 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, a quarterly magazine about hacker culture. He's been an active member in the community since the 80s.

5. Solar Designer

Solar, aka Alexander Peslyak, is a Russian hacker responsible for the Openwall GNU/Linux project. Openwall is a Security-hardened Linux distribution meant for servers. In addition to his responsibilities with Openwall, he has been responsible for some of the most influential exploits within the Open Source community.

6. Robin Wood

Robin may be new to the scene, but he's definitely been talked about. You might remember me mentioning man-in-the-middle attacks and a piece of firmware called Jasager? Well, that's his baby. He wrote it and designed it. The man is a genius with anything wireless. Jasager's popularity though, is owed largely to the next name on the list.

7. Darren Kitchen

Darren is the host of Hak5, a web show dedicated to information security and generally making electronic devices do things they weren't intended to do. The show is hosted by Darren, Shannon Morse (aka Snubs) and Matt Lestock. Darren is to our community what Flava Flav was to Public Enemy, only, with more talent and without the myriad drug addictions. He always has his ear to the ground and always knows what's going on in the scene.

Ryan Draga lives in the suburbs of Toronto, Ontario, Canada and works as a system administrator for an insurance company, Kanetix, Ltd., and is also as a freelance IT/Information Security consultant under his own brand, Straylight Solutions. Visit his Web site, send a Twitter to @TuxOtaku or E-Mail at ryan.draga@tuxotaku.com.