Famous White-Hat Hackers

White-hat hackers use their powers for good. They help out organizations that might have security breaches before the organizations get hacked. Hacking doesn't always mean hacking into someone else's system.

"The use of 'hacker' to mean 'security breaker' is a confusion on the part of the mass media," said Richard Matthew Stallman, a well-known white-hat hacker and software developer.

"We hackers refuse to recognize that meaning, and continue using the word to mean someone who loves to program, someone who enjoys playful cleverness or the combination of the two," Stallman said.

1. Tim Berners-Lee

Famous not for hacking but inventing the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee nevertheless is undeniably a member of the white-hat hacking camp. As a student at Oxford University, Berners-Lee was banned from using the university computers after he and a friend were caught hacking to gain access to restricted areas.

Berners-Lee moved on and built his own computer from spare parts. After college, he hacked a few other things including HTML.

2. Steve Wozniak

The "other Steve" of Apple, Steve Wozniak got started as a white-hat hacker by making something called blue boxes. Wozniak and Steve Jobs built blue boxes, which essentially hack the phone system so users can make free long-distance calls.

Wozniak and Jobs then sold the blue boxes to their classmates in college. Of course, you know the rest of the story. From blue boxes, they moved on to bigger and better things. Those early days of white-hat hacking are what started them off.

3. Kevin Mitnick

Kevin Mitnick started as a black-hat hacker and ended up serving time after hacking into some of the biggest companies in the world. Now he has left the dark side and works as a consultant and a writer.

Mitnick's own hacking experience gives him hands-on expertise. An article on CNN describes Mitnick's early hacking days.

"Mitnick first received national attention in 1982 when he hacked into the North American Defense Command (NORAD), a feat that inspired the 1983 film War Games. Also during the 1980s, he gained temporary control of three central telephone offices in New York City and all the phone switching centers in California. None of these incidents resulted in criminal charges," states the article.

4. Tsutomu Shimomura

Back in the days when Mitnick was a black-hat hacker, he hacked computer-security expert, Tsutomu Shimomura. This didn't go over well. Shimomura decided to take his own revenge by using his hacking skills to assist the FBI in tracking and locating Mitnick. With Shimomura's help, they were successful, and Mitnick was arrested. Now they're on the same team.

5. Jeff Moss

Jeff Moss is better known in the computer world as Dark Tangent, though he's now well known apart from his hacking handle. Moss founded the Black Hat security conferences, which still draw thousands of computer security experts. Moss also founded DEF CON, which is a hugely popular annual hacker conference.

Moss served as the chief security officer for ICANN and as an adviser to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He continues to run the Black Hat security conferences and Defcon.

6. Jon Lech Johansen

Even though they often help big companies protect themselves from malicious hackers, white-hat hackers are far from being passive cogs in the system. White-hat hackers often embrace the idea of independent and freely shared resources, such as open source, open access, and free sharing of software and protocols.

Like Wozniak building boxes to allow college peers to get free long-distance phone calls, Jon Lech Johansen is a younger, newer hacker who has used his skills to aid others in beating a closed system. His hacking skills enabled him to hack an encryption system used on DVD movies.

As a result, users of Linux or other open-source operating systems are able to play DVDs encoded with Microsoft's proprietary codec, which is supposed to prevent non-Microsoft systems from running the DVDs.

7. Richard Matthew Stallman

Richard Stallman founded the GNU Project. The GNU project is both an open-source operating system and a mass collaborative project. According to Stallman, GNU includes programs that are not GNU software but rather programs that were developed by other people for their own purposes. Stallman continues to work on the GNU Project and is an advocate for free and open software.

The Bottom Line

White-hat hacking has become more and more important as businesses and individuals depend on computers and the internet. Since computer security isn't something all of us understand, it's vital to have those who do share their expertise.