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7. Jonathan James

Alias: comrade

Age: 24 (at the time of his death)

Jonathan James was the first juvenile to be convicted and jailed for hacking in the United States.

Starting at 15, he hacked into Bell South, the Miami-Dade school system, NASA, and the Department of Defense, and stole software said to have been worth $1.7 million from the government.

He intercepted the source code of the International Space Station, which, when discovered, caused NASA to shut down its computers for three weeks, costing $41,000.

He was sentenced to six months of house arrest and probation until he turned 18. Even worse? The court required him to write letters of apology to NASA and the Department of Defense.

After Albert Gonzalez's hacker team stole credit and debit card information from TJX in 2007, the Secret Service investigated James, who claimed he had nothing to do with the thefts.

Out of fear of being prosecuted for crimes he didn't commit, James killed himself in his shower in May 2008. "I have no faith in the 'justice' system," his suicide note said.

"Perhaps my actions today, and this letter, will send a stronger message to the public. Either way, I have lost control over this situation, and this is my only way to regain control."

8. Vladimir Levin

Alias: Unknown

Age: Unknown

Levin's story is like Casino Royale in real life; working with three others, the hacker transferred a portion of $10.7M to his bank account from a handful of large Citibank accounts from all over the world—all while sitting in his apartment in St.

Petersburg. Yet, he didn't use the Internet; instead he usedtelecommunications systems, and listened to customers phone calls to get their account numbers and PINs.

Authorities were able to recover only $400,000 from Levin's theft after his accomplices gave him up when they were arrested. In 1998 he was ordered to pay back $240,000 to Citibank and sentenced to three years in jail.

His whereabouts are unknown today.

9. Gary McKinnon

Alias: Solo

Age: 46

Gary McKinnon hacked nearly 100 American military and NASA servers from February 2001 to March 2002. What's even crazier is he did it all from his girlfriend's aunt's house in London.

He managed to delete sensitive data, software, and files, and the U.S. government spent over $700,000 to recover from the damage.

He taunted the military while he was at it, posting this message to their website: "Your security system is crap. I am Solo. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels."

McKinnon is an interesting guy. He's said his main inspiration for the attack was The Hacker's Handbook by Hugo Cornwall.

While hacking NASA, he purposely looked for files that contained evidence of extraterrestrials.

He told Wired in 2006 that he found them, too. "A NASA photographic expert said that there was a Building 8 at Johnson Space Center where they regularly airbrushed out images of UFOs from the high-resolution satellite imaging," he said. "I logged on to NASA and was able to access this department.

They had huge, high-resolution images stored in their picture files. They had filtered and unfiltered, or processed and unprocessed, files." He currently still lives in Britain.

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