3. Kevin Poulsen
Kevin Poulsen, known for using his hacking skills mainly for fun, once hacked a radio station’s phone lines to win a Porsche. He also reactivated phone numbers for escort services listed in the Yellow Pages. After the FBI caught him, Poulsen spent five years in prison.
Following his release, he became a journalist and a white hat hacker. Poulsen exposed the names of 744 people who tried to use MySpace to exploit children.
Today, he’s an editor at Wired and helped develop SecureDrop, a platform for secure communication between journalists and their sources.