List of Famous Hackers in Computer History Both White Hat and Black Hat

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This is a very complete list, probably the most complete one I’ve seen and it includes pictures – pictures of people who rarely have their pictures taken or allow them out on the Internet.

The list is according to the proper original definition of a Hacker, as taken from the New Hacker’s Dictionary:

1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users’ Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.
2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming.
3. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.

The list itself is described as:

The following list is presented in chronological order, except for those entries where the date of birth is unknown. It includes academic hackers working on early minicomputers, prominent hackers from the open source software movement, the computer underground/hacker scene, and security experts.

There is also a second section containing Black Hats & Phreakers. I’m pretty familiar with most of the names on the list, so I guess it’d be interesting for people who aren’t so familiar with hacker culture and history to browse through and get to know some of the people who have impacted how we use computers and the Internet.

Most of those in the list have Wikipedia entries too, so if you feel like researching further that’s a good place to move to using the list as a reference.

You can find the entire list here:

Legendary Hackers