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4. Kevin Poulsen

Alias: Dark Dante

Age: 49

Kevin Poulsen was the first American to be banned from the Internet and computers after being released from prison.

In the late '80s and early '90s, Poulsen hacked into phone lines. He became famous when he hacked into the lines of L.A. radio station KIIS FM so that he would be the 102nd caller—winning him a Porsche.

When the FBI went looking for him, he went on the run (and when he appeared on the show Unsolved Mysteries, the phone lines for the television station crashed by, you know, coincidence).

When he was caught, he served five years in prison and was banned for three years from using the Internet or computers.

He's now a writer for Wired, and wrote an article about sex offenders on MySpace that got one person arrested. Tweet him here.

5. Albert Gonzalez

Alias: CumbaJohnny, Segvec, SoupNazi, KingChilli

Age: 33

Albert Gonzalez founded Shadowcrew.com, which amassed some 4,000 members.

Members of the site could buy or sell stolen bank account numbers or fakepassports, drivers' licenses, Social Security cards, credit cards, debit cards, birth certificates, college student identification cards, and health insurance cards.

It's said that more than 170 million credit and debit cards were swapped on the site from 2005 to 2007.

Gonzalez, from Florida, wasn't low-key about spending his money; he was known for booking stays in high-class hotels for days and once throwing a $75,000 party.

He was charged with having 15 fake bank cards while in New Jersey, but avoided serving time when he gave evidence to the Secret Service about 19 other ShadowCrew members.

He then returned to Miami and, with a team of 10 others, hacked TJX Companies (which own T.J. Maxx and a bunch of other stores), and stole 45 million credit and debit card numbers over 18 months until 2007.

He was arrested in May 2008 and won't be out of prison until 2025. There's a great The New York Times Magazineprofile of him here.

6. Kevin Mitnick

             Image Credit: Knowb4

Alias: The Condor, The Darkside Hacker

Age: 51

Kevin Mitnick didn't refer to what he was doing as hacking—instead, he liked to call it "social engineering."

He started "social engineering" when he was 15, when he learned how to bypass the punch card system for Los Angeles city buses by finding tickets in a dumpster and getting a bus driver to tell him where he could buy his own ticket punch.

Later he graduated to the big time by breaking into the networks of Pacific Bell, Nokia, IBM, Motorola, and a few other companies.

When he was arrested in 1995, his skills were so threatening to the judge ruling over his case that he was placed in solitary confinement because it was thought he could start a nuclear war by whistling codes into a payphone.

After serving 12 months in prison and going on three years of supervised release, he continued hacking, and went on the run for almost three years using cloned cell phones to hide his location.

He was sentenced to prison for four years in 1999, and was the most-wanted computer criminal in the country at the time.

Now he's a security consultant (aka: White hat) and is the author of two books. You can tweet him here.

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