Stephen Wozniak

Woz" is famous for being the "other Steve" of Apple. Wozniak, along with current Apple CEO Steve Jobs, co-founded Apple Computer. Woz got his start in hacking making blue boxes, devices that bypass telephone-switching mechanisms to make free long-distance calls. After reading an article about phone phreaking in Esquire, Wozniak called up his buddy Jobs. The pair did research on frequencies, then built and sold blue boxes to their classmates in college. Wozniak even used a blue box to call the Pope while pretending to be Henry Kissinger.

Jonathan James

The youth, known as "cOmrade" on the Internet, pleaded guilty to intercepting 3,300 email messages at one of the Defense Department's most sensitive operations and stealing data from 13 NASA computers, including some devoted to the new International Space Station. James gained notoriety when he became the first juvenile to be sent to prison for hacking. He was sentenced at 16 years old. He installed a backdoor into a Defense Threat Reduction Agency server. The DTRA is an agency of the Department of Defense charged with reducing the threat to the U.S. and its allies from nuclear, biological, chemical, conventional and special weapons. The backdoor he created enabled him to view sensitive e-mails and capture employee usernames and passwords.James also cracked into NASA computers, stealing software worth approximately $1.7 million. According to the Department of Justice, “The software supported the International Space Station’s physical environment, including control of the temperature and humidity within the living space.” NASA was forced to shut down its computer systems, ultimately racking up a $41,000 cost.

Robert Tappan Morris

Morris, son of former National Security Agency scientist Robert Morris, is known as the creator of the Morris Worm, the first computer worm to be unleashed on the Internet. As a result of this crime, he was the first person prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.  Morris wrote the code for the worm while he was a student at Cornell. He asserts that he intended to use it to see how large the Internet was. The worm, however, replicated itself excessively, slowing computers down so that they were no longer usable. It is not possible to know exactly how many computers were affected, but experts estimate an impact of 6,000 machines. He was sentenced to three years’ probation, 400 hours of community service and a fined $10,500.Morris is currently working as a tenured professor at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He principally researches computer network architectures including distributed hash tables such as Chord and wireless mesh networks such as Roofnet

Onel A. de Guzman

He's the student that created the "I love you" virus that caused 10 billions of dollars in damage worldwide. Love bug Virus is considered one of the most spectacular virus outbreaks in cyberhistory. It was supposedly a password-stealing thesis proposal(was rejected by his school).
el A. de Guzman, a Filipino computer student, Greatest Hacker of all time. He was creator of "Love Bug" virus that crippled computer e-mail systems worldwide.

Chen Ing-hau

He was the creator of one of the deadly virus of all time "Chernobyl computer virus " which had melted down many computers worldwide.

Havrosh Naik

Havrosh, the computer psychic. At the age of 17 he shut down an entire system of network on an island. 30,458 computers crashed simultaneously, each of them with corrupted operating system and bios. All banks, ATM, communication device including cell phones & services were disabled. He did this as a challenge. He was considered the dictionary of language, from the "old school". He made every computer on that network boot from his server and to display his message: "do not challenge me". He strongly believes computers can communicate as they make logical and arithmetic decision everyday. For his beliefs, he proved data can never be deleted and sniffed from distance. Icon of his time, but quit for a more stable life. He stayed one of the most respected and admired hackers so far.

Johansen, who became a hero to computer hackers and was deemed a villain by Hollywood, is on trial for writing and distributing a program called DeCSS, software which makes it possible to copy protected DVD films. Prosecutors have asked to have his computers confiscated and called for him to pay $1,400 in court costs.

Linus Torvalds

A true hacker in the classic sense, Linus Torvalds was a computer science student at the University of Helsinki when he wrote the operating system Linux (a contraction of "Linus' Minix") in 1991. The software has proven to be tremendously popular worldwide -- and best of all it's FREE!

Torvalds modestly attributes much of Linux's success to the Net and to Richard Stallman's GNU: Both have facilitated development of his original kernel by fostering collaboration among software programmers and developers.

He's humble, he's brilliant, he gave us all access to Unix -- no wonder Linus Torvalds received more votes than any other nominee