Section V. - Mini Essay - Hacker Keven Poulsen

Title: Profile of a Hacker: Kevin Poulsen
Topic: Dark Side of the Net
Since the dawn of the computer age, there have been experts who choose to use their abilities in ways that work for their own benefit or amusement rather than for others. These people are called hackers, and there are several notorious hackers in history. One of the most notorious hackers is Kevin Poulsen, aka Dark Dante.
Poulsen received his first computer, a TRS-80, from his parents as a child, and he just kept going from there to become the first espionage case for law enforcement. Poulsen became an expert at hacking into telephone lines and military and government systems. When he was offered a job testing Pentagon security he hacked to protect government security during the day and hacked for fun at night, with his action becoming progressively more criminal. In November 1989 he fled from 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud, wiretapping, and money laundering. When he was featured on the television show "Unsolved Mysteries" he hacked into the phone system and crashed the phone lines. He is also reported to have reactivated old yellow pages escort service phone numbers for a virtual agency. Perhaps the most famous of Poulsen's exploits came on June 1, 1990 when he hacked into a radio station's 25 telephone lines so that could be the 102nd caller. He won a $50,000 Porsche 944 S2 from the Los Angeles radio station. He was arrested in February 1995 and served 51 months in prison, which is one of the longest sentences for computer hacking. Since then he has worked as a journalist and public speaker against hackers.

Notes:
(1) Arkin, Ofir. "Tracing Hackers: Part 1" Computer Fraud and Security, Volume 2001, Issue 4,
1 April 2002, 12-17. Database on-line. Available from ScienceDirect
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/>
(2) Barber, Richard. "Hackers Profiled - Who are they and what are their motivations?"
Computer Fraud and Security, Volume 2001, Issue 2, 1 February 2001, 14-17. Database
on-line. Available from ScienceDirect < http://www.sciencedirect.com/>

(3) Yasin, Rutrell. "Think Twice about becoming a Hacker Attacker." Computers and Security,
Vol 18, Issue 2, 1999, 150. Database on-line. Available from ScienceDirect <
http://www.sciencedirect.com/>

Three Web Sites:
Title of Web page: Hackers
Web address: http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:HZ0zJpk0yJUC:www.mscd.edu/~acc/acc330/projects/inclass/530/hacker_bios.doc+dark+dante+hacker&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Description: This web site is a student paper, but I think it's credible because there is a list of resources that were used in the paper. The paper is about famous hackers, Kevin Poulsen making up a small section.
Source: Metropolitan State College of Denver

Title: Famous Media Hackers
Web address: http://www.cs.usask.ca/undergrads/kwm519/490/project/details/famous.htm
Description: This site gives brief biographies with pictures of famous hackers throughout the history of hacking.
Source: Univeristy of Saskatchewan Computer Science Department

Title: Greatest Hackers in the Whole World
Web address: http://www.geocities.com/vienna/4345/kevinp.htm
Description: This site also gives a brief biography on Poulsen with odd little facts, as well as other famous hackers, but it also goes a little deeper into the history of hacking.
Source: personal page: Hackers Hall of Fame, Orly Selim

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Last updated 4/10/03