What Hackers Can Teach Us About Bigoted Behavior and Redemption

Last week I wrapped up my lectures in my cybercrime class on hacking. A major component of those lectures is the different types of hackers, ranging from the “bad hackers” who hack for criminal reasons to the “good hackers” who try and anticipate potential hacks and prevent them. Sometimes I like to highlight famous hackers who went from bad to good.

One example is Kevin Poulsen:

“Kevin Poulsen is a former computer hacker, whose best-known hack involved penetrating telephone company computers in the early 1990s to win radio station phone-in contests. By taking over all the phone lines leading to Los Angeles radio stations, he was able to guarantee that he would be the proper-numbered caller to win, for example, $20,000 in cash, and a Porsche 944 S2 Cabriolet.”

When the FBI caught wind of Poulsen’s activities, he went underground as a fugitive. He was arrested in 1991 after 18 months on the run. Paulsen spent a little over five years in prison.

But today, Poulsen is a respected author and journalist. I read his 2011 book Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion Dollar Cybercrime Underground, found it excellent, and assigned it for my class a few times.

Or consider Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick is a seminal figure in the history of hacking and arguably the most famous hacker. Like Poulsen, he was on the run from the FBI for several years in the 1990s. After being captured, Mitnick pleaded guilty to four…