Julian Assange
Before he became a controversial publisher and (so say U.S. authorities) alleged international criminal, Julian Assange was your typical teenage hacker, hellbent on notoriety and achievement. Under the name “Mendex,” Assange began hacking in 1987 at the age of 16. While the exact exploits of early era Assange are not totally confirmed (he is rumored to have helped hack into NASA and he and his friends are said to have boasted of hacking a “who’s who of the U.S. military-industrial complex”), what is known is that, in 1991, he and his cyber comrades were caught hacking into Nortel, a large Canadian telecom. As a result, Assange was arrested and charged by Australian authorities with 31 related charges.
Assange would later graduate to bigger things, founding WikiLeaks, the famous hacktivist organization. Since its founding, it has leaked millions of documents—including a video that indicates signs of U.S. war crimes in Iraq. Assange is currently in custody in the U.K., with American authorities seeking his extradition so he can be tried in a U.S. court. If convicted of his current charges, he could face up to 175 years in prison.
