Every year we witness cybercrimes, discuss it with others, try to tweak the setting of our social accounts, and then forget about it. We hardly pay attention to the hackers who are basically the masterminds behind it. This is mostly because it’s challenging to track the culprit immediately, and in most cases, organisations fail to identify the hacker. Besides, companies often do not disclose the breach to avoid taking a hit on brand value. More notably, companies like Uber and Facebook prefer to hide their breaches for years. Thus, one of the prime reasons why we do not get information about hackers is that organisations often do not attempt to track the sources.

Analytics India Magazine has compiled a list of most famous cybersecurity lawbreakers who are under trial or have been caught and convicted:

1. Edward Joseph Snowden

Edward is an American whistleblower who got access to classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013. He revealed the mass surveillance programs that were run by the NSA in collaboration with other intelligence alliance. 

The US government then filed a civil lawsuit, citing that the publication was a violation of the agreements he signed with CIA and NSA. However, he got away by getting Asylum in Russia.

2. Mark Vartanyan

Mark Vartanyan is known as Kolypto, was involved in developing, improving, and maintaining the Citadel malware toolkit from 2012 to 2014. “Citadel caused a vast amount of harm to financial institutions and individuals around the world,” said US Attorney John Horn. “Mark Vartanyan utilised his technical expertise to enable Citadel into becoming one of the most pernicious malware toolkits of its time, and for that, he will serve significant time in federal prison.”

The malware helped him stole account credentials from nearly 11 million computers and was responsible for $500 million in loses. On pleading guilty he was sentenced for five years in jail on 19 July 2017.

3. Kerem Albayrak 

A 22-year old self-proclaimed hacker tried to fake his crime and asked $100,000 to Apple in 2017. He emailed Apple that they got access to 319 million iCloud accounts and threatened them of selling in the dark web.

He also sent a YouTube video as a proof for Apple that he can access any iCloud accounts. However, Apple reported to the National Crime Agency (NCA), and they arrested the guy at his home in London. Later, they found out that he was associated with a hacker group called Turkish Crime Family. Albayrak on 20 December was given a two-year suspended jail term for this childish Gambino.

4. Stanislav Saigin

A Russian court convicted the owner of Pirate Site Operator for cloning websites pirate CDN platform know as Moonwalk. The site was functional on Kinogb.guru, kinokot.biz, and fosa.me, and offered around 10,000 movies and TV shows to the public for free.

However, cybersecurity firm Group-IB notified him about the copyright infringement, but he ignored and used another domain on blocking the site by ISPs. Consequently, he was investigated by law enforcement agencies for a two-year suspended sentence. 

5. Marcus Hutchins

The hacker was behind stopping WannaCry ransomware attack, which took the globe by storm infecting more than 300,000 computers in over 150 countries worldwide. The attack started in 2017 by a hacker for stealing online banking credentials. However, the hero was in august he was arrested by FBI in Las Vegas on suspicion of authoring and selling Kronos – a malware designed to steal online banking credentials.

In April this year, he accepted his cybercrime and wrote “I regret these actions and accept full responsibility for my mistakes. Having grown up, I have since been using the same skills that I misused several years ago for a useful purpose.” Having helped in stopping the WannaCry helped him in getting only one year of supervised release.

6. Olayinka Olaniyi

Olayinka, along with his team, attempted theft of millions of dollars by stealing personal information to infiltrate into users’ computers. They tried to target college and university employees through pissing in the U.S. He used to send emails that looked as if it was comping from legitimate enterprises for asking personal information. After receiving the details, they logged into university systems and bank account and attempted theft which is believed to be $6 million. The Nigerian hacker committed the crime while they were staying in Malaysia. They were tracked by FBI and extradited to the U.S. to face trial, where Olayinka was sentenced to 11 months in prison and three years of supervised released on October 2018.  

7. Anton P. Bogdanov

Anton P. Bogdanov, a Russian citizen, identified and exploited a flaw in remote access used by accountants at Americas tax firms. He, with his team, changed clients’ personal information, which leads the tax return to their accounts. Russia was accused of stealing $1.5 million and was arrested while on vacation in Thailand in November 2017. Currently, he is undergoing trial and is expected to enter a guilty plea by February 2020. 

8. Daniel Kelley

A 17-year-old determined a potential flaw in the TalkTalk’s internal servers, which was posted on hacker forums. Around 14,000 hackers tried to penetrate TalkTalk’s sever, Daniel Kelley in 2016 pleaded guilty for stealing personal data from the website and blackmailed the uses; 157,000 TalkTalk’s subscribers’ information was compromised. Kelley was arrested in 2015 and was convicted in June this year for four years in detention.