Linus Torvalds

Linus Benedict Torvalds, born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer best known for having initiated the development of the Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator. Born in Helsinki Finland,He is son of journalists Anna and Nils Torvalds, and the grandson of poet Ole Torvalds. His family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority (5.5%) of Finland's population. Torvalds was named after Linus Pauling, the American Nobel Prize-winning chemist, although in the book Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution, Torvalds is quoted as saying, "I think I was named equally for Linus the peanut-cartoon character," noting that this makes him half "Nobel-prize-winning chemist" and half "blanket-carrying cartoon character." Both of his parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s. Torvalds attended the University of Helsinki from 1988 to 1996, graduating with a master's degree in computer science. His M.Sc. thesis was titled Linux: A Portable Operating System. From 1997 to 1999 he was involved in 86open helping to choose the standard binary format for Linux and Unix. His interest in computers began with a Commodore VIC-20. After the VIC-20 he purchased a Sinclair QL which he modified extensively, especially its operating system. He programmed an assembler and a text editor for the QL, as well as a few games. He is known to have written a Pac-Man clone named Cool Man. In 1990 he purchased an Intel 80386-based IBM PC and spent a few weeks playing the game Prince of Persia before receiving his MINIX copy which in turn enabled him to begin his work on Linux. Linus Torvalds is married to Tove Torvalds – a six-time Finnish national Karate champion – whom he first met in the autumn of 1993. Torvalds was running introductory computer laboratory exercises for students and instructed the course attendants to send him an e-mail as a test, to which Tove responded with an e-mail asking for a date. Tove and Linus were later married and have three daughters, Patricia, Daniela, and Celeste. After a visit to Transmeta in late 1996, he accepted a position at the company in California, where he would work from February 1997 through June 2003. He then moved to the Open Source Development Labs, which has since merged with the Free Standards Group to become the Linux Foundation, under whose auspices he continues to work. In June 2004, Torvalds and his family moved to Portland, Oregon to be closer to the consortium's Beaverton, Oregon-based headquarters. Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading developers of Linux-based software, presented Torvalds with stock options in gratitude for his creation. In 1999, both companies went public and Torvalds' net worth shot up to roughly $20 million. His personal mascot is a penguin nicknamed Tux, which has been widely adopted by the Linux community as the mascot of the Linux kernel. Unlike many open source icons, Torvalds maintains a low profile and generally refuses to comment on competing software products. Torvalds generally stays out of non-kernel-related debates. Although Torvalds believes that "open source is the only right way to do software", he also has said that he uses the "best tool for the job", even if that includes proprietary software. He has been criticized for his use and alleged advocacy of the proprietary BitKeeper software for version control in the Linux kernel. However, Torvalds has since written a free-software replacement for BitKeeper called Git. Torvalds has commented on official GNOME developmental mailing lists that, in terms of desktop environments, he encourages users to switch to KDE. Linus Torvalds was just 21 when he changed the world. Working out of his family's apartment in Helsinki in 1991, he wrote the kernel of a new computer operating system called Linux that he posted for free on the internet and invited anyone interested to help improve it. 15 years later, Linux powers everything from supercomputers to mobile phones around the world, and Torvalds has achieved fame as the godfather of the open-source movement, in which software code is shared and developed in a collaborative effort rather than being kept locked up by a single owner. Some of Torvalds' supporters portray him as a sort of anti-Bill Gates, but the significance of Linux is much bigger than merely a slap at Microsoft. Collaborating on core technologies could lead to a huge reduction in some business costs, freeing up money for more innovative investments elsewhere. Torvalds continues to keep a close eye on Linux's development and has made some money from stock options given to him as a courtesy by two companies that sell commercial applications for it. But his success isn't just measured in dollars. There's an asteroid named after him, as well as an annual software-geek festival. Torvalds' parents were student radicals in the 1960s and his father, a communist, even spent a year studying in Moscow. But it's their son who has turned out to be the real revolutionary.

Michał Zalewski

prominent security researcher Michał Zalewski is a Hacker white hat Polish born the January 19th 1981. As of half of the Years 1990, it takes an active part in Bugtraq, and it writes programs for Unix (fenris, p0f). It was also one of the authors of the Argante system. Its research on the protocol TCP/IP aroused a great interest, just as its analyzes of the safety of the navigators Web. At the time of its stay to the the United States, he worked as a researcher within BindView Corporation, a specialized company in the computer security. After its return in Poland, it published a book, Silence one the Wire . One of its centers of interest is the Artificial intelligence. On Internet, it uses the pseudonym lcamtuf . He has been a frequent Bugtraq poster since mid-1990s and has authored a number of programs for Unix-like operating systems. During his years in the United States, he's been a researcher with BindView Corporation (a computer security firm). Zalewski authored a book, Silence on the Wire. Besides computer security, Michał's interests include artificial intelligence, applied mathematics, robotics, physics, chemistry, electronics, and photography. In October 2004, he won the Daniel Horn Obfuscated Challenge (Obfuscated Voting Contest).

Johan Helsingius

Johan "Julf" Helsingius, born in 1961 in Helsinki, Finland, started and ran the Anon.penet.fi internet remailer. Anon.penet.fi was one of the most popular Internet remailers, handling 10,000 messages a day. The server was the first of its kind to use a password-protected PO box system for sending and receiving e-mails. In the eighties he was the system administrator for the central Finnish news node as well as one of the founding members of the Finnish UNIX User Group. In February 1995, the Church of Scientology called in Interpol and Finnish prosecutors in order to find out user an144108's real identity, an online critic of Scientology. Pressured by possible police measures which would have meant disclosing not one but all of the registered names in the database, Julf revealed the identity of the person Scientology was looking for. One year later, on August 30, 1996, he announced his remailer would shut down. The American Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an Internet civil rights initiative, reported continuously on the incidents concerning anon.penet.fi. The EFF collected donations to cover legal costs should Helsingius be involved in a court case to settle whether Finnish law could force him to reveal the identity of anon.penet.fi users. The closing down of anon.penet.fi led to an outbreak of outrage and solidarity with Helsingius throughout the Internet in order to protect freedom on the Internet. Helsingius went on to help found EUnet in Finland and was part of the team of people that established the first Internet link to a Soviet country. Later, when EUnet was acquired by Qwest Communications and soon after moved into KPNQwest, Qwest's joint venture with KPN International, Julf became Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for KPNQwest. He is now an Internet entrepreneur and is serving on the board of various companies (e.g. BaseN, which is based in Finland). Helsingius lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Helsingius has studied music and traveled widely. His interests include active sports, like mountain climbing, and aviation.

Eric Corley

Eric Corley also known as Emmanuel Goldstein is the long standing publisher of 2600, The Hacker Quarterly and founder of the H.O.P.E. conferences. He has been part of the hacker community since the late '70s. Eric Corley, Born 1959, also frequently referred to by his pen name of Emmanuel Goldstein, is a figure in the hacker community. He and his non-profit organization 2600 Enterprises, Inc., together publish a magazine called 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, which Corley founded in 1984. Corley's pseudonym, Emmanuel Goldstein, is taken from the George Orwell book Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the book, Emmanuel Goldstein is the mysterious, and questionably existent leader of the opposition to Big Brother and the totalitarian state. In 1999, Corley was named as a defendant in Universal v. Reimerdes, the movie industry's attempt to squelch DeCSS. DeCSS is a computer program capable of decrypting content on a DVD video disc encrypted using the Content-Scrambling System (CSS). 2600.com had provided links to websites which contained the DeCSS code. Corley was the only defendant who chose to fight the industry in court. United States District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled against Corley. In 2001, Mr. Corley released the full length documentary Freedom Downtime (which he wrote, directed and produced), which was about convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick and the Free Kevin movement, among other things. Furthermore, he was creative advisor to the movie Hackers. He was arrested on August 31, 2004 in New York City, while trying to videotape a demonstration against the Republican National Convention, in which Corley asserts he was not a participant. After being detained for more than 30 hours, he was charged with disorderly conduct. At a hearing on November 29, 2004, the city dropped all charges against Corley. Corley hosts a radio show Off The Hook on WBAI, and is concerned with legal matters related to social engineering and other issues affecting the hacker world. Corley also hosts a show on WUSB 90.1 FM called Off the Wall, a semi call-in show that discusses current world topics, and usually whatever is on his mind. He has done other radio shows there, including The Voice of Long Island, News Of The World and Brain Damage. Corley is an alumnus of Ward Melville High School and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, which is host to WUSB. He attended from 1977 to 1982, graduating with a degree in English. No stranger to the film world, Corley was featured as "The Outside Man" in the film Urchin,[2] completed August 2006. Corley has also testified[3] before the United States Congress. Mr. Corley recently wrote a book titled The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey which was released July, 2008. The book consists of articles from the magazine 2600 set in chronological order to show the evolution of the internet and technology. one of corley mistaken such as: Judges Seek Answers on Computer Code as Free Speech In what may signal a heightened significance for a case testing the constitutionality of a 1998 digital copyright law, a panel of appeals court judges has asked both sides of a case to answer a list of 11 questions on whether computer code can qualify as free speech.The case pits the major Hollywood studios against Eric Corley, the publisher of an online magazine, 2600. A federal judge has prohibited Mr. Corley from distributing a computer program that can break the security lock on a digital videodisc. Once the lock is broken, an individual could copy the movie from the DVD to a computer hard drive or send it over the Internet.Lawyers for Mr. Corley have appealed, asserting that the judge's injunction violates his First Amendment right to free speech. The judge, Lewis Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan, also prohibited Mr. Corley from placing a link on his World Wide Web site, www.2600.com, to other sites distributing the program.At the end of oral arguments earlier this month, the three-judge panel at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit told both sides to submit their final briefs on May 10. But in what appears to be an unusual move, this week the panel instead invited responses to 11 questions that seek to determine how to apply the First Amendment to computer code.The judges also asked for arguments on the validity of Judge Kaplan's test for determining whether banning an online publication from linking to other sites infringed on the right to free speech.''I've never seen this happen before,'' said one of Mr. Corley's lawyers, Martin Garbus of the law firm of Frankfurt Garbus Kurnit Klein & Selz. ''What's clear is that neither Judge Kaplan's decision nor the briefs nor the oral arguments have given them the answer to the questions they think are the most important.''Mr. Garbus said the detailed questions indicated that the three judges -- Jon O. Newman, Jose A. Cabrenes and Alvin W. Thompson -- were preparing to write a definitive opinion on the case, rather than limiting themselves to ruling on Judge Kaplan's decision. The questions also suggested that the judges were thinking beyond Mr. Corley's specific circumstances to how the ruling might apply more generally.The statute Mr. Corley is challenging, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, criminalizes the distribution of any device that can be used to break a security code intended to protect digital movies, music and books from being copied. The computer program Mr. Corley distributed, known as DeCSS, is such a device.One question raised in the case is whether a computer program is more like a list of instructions -- traditionally protected by the First Amendment -- or a machine that simply happens to be built with speech, which would not fall under the scope of the First Amendment. Even if the judges decide that a computer program has elements of speech, they could rule that the government's interest in preventing the illegal copying of digital works is great enough to restrict it in certain instances. But Mr. Garbus said the more the panel sees the case in terms of the First Amendment, the better it will be for Mr. Corley. Charles Sims, a lawyer for the Motion Picture Association of America, the film industry trade group that sued Mr. Corley, said the questions were unremarkable. ''Any one law clerk can persuade any one judge to propound questions like these,'' said Mr. Sims, of the law firm of Proskauer Rose. ''I think it would be a mistake to read anything into them.'' the others corley mistake:

Web Site for Hackers Will Not Appeal

2 Copyright Cases Decided in Favor of Entertainment Industry

Judges Weigh Copyright Suit On Unlocking DVD Shield

Judge Halts Program to Crack DVD Film Codes

Free Speech Rights For Computer Code; Suit Tests Power of Media Concerns To Control Access to Digital Content

DVD SOFTWARE TRIAL ENDS

SOFTWARE; DVD PROGRAMMER SPEAKS

SOFTWARE; REMOVAL OF JUDGE SOUGHT

Movie Studios Seek to Stop DVD Copies

Trial Involving DVD Software And Copyrights Set to Begin

John William Draper

The Phone Hacker

John William Draper John Draper was one of the first well known phone hackers, and the first famous "phone phreak". He was honorably discharged from the US Air Force in 1968 after a posting in Vietnam, and then became an engineer at the electronics company National Semiconductor. One day he noticed that some blind kids, named Dennie and Jimmie, were using the whistle from a "Cap'n Crunch" box to make free long distance telephone calls. They glued one of the holes shut in the whistle, and then blew it into the telephone. The modified whistle produced a pure 2600 Hz tone, which was the standard used by telephone electronics to signal that a call was over. When the telephone system heard the whistle it stopped all long distance charges, even though the call continued until one of the parties hung up. John popularized the use of this whistle, and became known by the hacker handle "Cap'n Crunch". John became infamous, and was arrested in May, 1972 for illegal use of the telephone company's system. He received probation, and then was arrested again in 1976, convicted on wire fraud charges, and spent four months in Lompoc Federal Prison in California. Since then, he has held a variety of positions and given interviews on his experiences during the earliest days of long distance hacking. was born May 5, 1811 in St. Helens, Merseyside, England to John Christopher Draper, a Wesleyan clergyman and Sarah (Ripley) Draper. He also had three sisters, Dorothy Catherine, Elizabeth Johnson, and Sarah Ripley. On June 23, he was baptized by the Wesleyan minister Jabez Bunting. His father often needed to move the family due to serving various congregations throughout England. John William was home tutored until 1822, when he entered Woodhouse Grove School. He returned to home instruction (1826) prior to entering University College London in 1829 On September 13, 1831, John William married Antonia Coetana de Paiva Pereira Gardner (c.1814-1870), the daughter of Daniel Gardner, a court physician to John VI of Portugal and Charlotte of Spain. Antonia was born in Brazil after the royal family fled Portugal with Napoleon's invasion. There is dispute as to the identity of Antonia's mother. Around 1830, she was sent with her brother Daniel to live with their aunt in London. Following his father's death in July, 1831, John William's mother was urged to move with her children to Virginia. John William hoped to acquire a teaching position at a local Methodist college. In 1832, the family settled in Mecklenburg County, Virginia 7 1/2 miles (12 km) east (on Virginia State Route 47) from Christiansville (now Chase City). Although he arrived too late to obtain the prospective teaching position, John William established a laboratory in Christiansville. Here he conducted experiments and published eight papers before entering medical school. His sister, Dorothy Catherine Draper provided finances through teaching drawing and painting for his medical education. In March 1836, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. That same year, he began teaching at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. He did important research in photochemistry, made portrait photography possible by his improvements (1839) on Louis Daguerre's process, and published a textbook on Chemistry (1846), textbook on Natural Philosophy (1847), textbook on Physiology (1866), and Scientific Memoirs (1878) on radiant energy. He was also the first person to take an astrophotograph; he took the first photo of the Moon which showed any lunar features in 1840. Then in 1843 he made daguerreotypes which showed new features on the moon in the visible spectrum. In 1850 he was making photo-micrographs and engaged his then teenage son, Henry, into their production. He developed the proposition in 1842 that only light rays that are absorbed can produce chemical change. It came to be known as the Grotthuss-Draper law when his name was teamed with a prior but apparently unknown promulgator Theodor Grotthuss of the same idea in 1817. Contributions to the discipline of history: He is well known also as the author of The History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (1862), applying the methods of physical science to history, a History of the American Civil War (3 vols., 1867-1870), and a History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874). The last book listed is among the most influential works on the conflict thesis, which takes its name from Draper's title. He served as the first president of the American Chemical Society between 1876 and 1877. in 1976, New York University founded the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master's Program in Humanities and Social Thought (Draper Program)in honour of his life-long commitment to interdisciplinary study. In 2001, Draper was designated an ACS National Historical Chemical Landmark in recognition of his role as the first president of American Chemical Society.

John "Captain Crunch" Draper

Formerly a Phone Phreak, now a dentally-challenged and odorous wreck, John Draper once gained fame (and prison sentences) from his skills in manipulating the telephone system. His "handle" came from the inclusion of a plastic whistle in Captain Crunch cereal in the 1960's which could, with proper manipulation, send out a control tone that would affect telephone systems of the time. Of course, Draper didn't actually discover that fact (the honor goes to a blind phone phreak named Joe Engressia) but he was quite happy to not go out of his way to correct people when they claimed he had.This propensity to snag the spotlight got John the first of several prison sentences because of the publication of an article called "Secrets of the Little Blue Box", which was about a telephone device favored by Draper and others to fuck majorly with Ma Bell. Ultimately, Draper went to federal prison three times related to phone fraud and other such charges. The years were not kind for Mr. Draper, as he now resembles how Jim Henson would have looked if he'd lived a little longer and ceased taking any care of himself.For reasons that entirely escape logic, Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple Computer) has always held a great amount of respect and honor for Draper, and first sought him out as a student in Berkeley in the 1970's. Given the plans to the Blue Box, Wozniak improved them greatly and started selling them around campus, using a portion of the earned money to fund work that became Apple Computer.Life didn't go as well for Draper; 1980 happened and he ceased doing anything interesting. In this new millenium, he has transformed himself into "Johnny D", creepy old guy that you see at raves in California. He's huge on hugs and if you're a cute enough boy, you might even get one of his special "energy transfer" massages! Turn-offs include cigarette smoke and food that requires chewing.

The Hacker's Manifesto

The Conscience of a Hacker By The Mentor, 1986

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"... Damn kids. They're all alike. but did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world...

Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... Damn underachiever. They're all alike. I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..." Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike. I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me... Or thinks I'm a smart ass... Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here... Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all... Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike... You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert. This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

The Mentor

I also found this on the subject:

------------------------------- | The Ethics of Hacking | ------------------------------- written by Dissident

I went up to a college this summer to look around, see if it was where I wanted to go and whatnot. The guide asked me about my interests, and when I said computers, he started asking me about what systems I had, etc. And when all that was done, the first thing he asked me was "Are you a hacker?"

Well, that question has been bugging me ever since. Just what exactly is a hacker? A REAL hacker? For those who don't know better, the news media (and even comic strips) have blown it way out of proportion... A hacker, by wrong-definition, can be anything from a computer-user to someone who destroys everything they can get their evil terminals into. And the idiotic schmucks of the world who get a Commodore Vic-20 and a 300 baud modem (heh, and a tape drive!) for Christmas haven't helped hackers' reputations a damn bit. They somehow get access to a really cool system and find some files on hacking... Or maybe a friendly but not-too-cautious hacker helps the loser out, gives him a few numbers, etc. The schmuck gets onto a system somewhere, lucks up and gets in to some really cool information or programs, and deletes them. Or some of the more greedy ones capture it, delete it, and try to sell it to Libya or something. Who gets the blame?

The true hackers...that's who. So what is a true hacker? Firstly, some people may not think I am entirely qualified to say, mainly because I don't consider myself a hacker yet. I'm still learning the ropes about it, but I think I have a pretty damn good idea of what a true hacker is. If I'm wrong, let one correct me...

True hackers are intelligent, they have to be. Either they do really great in school because they have nothing better to do, or they don't do so good because school is terribly boring. And the ones who are bored aren't that way because they don't give a shit about learning anything. A true hacker wants to know everything. They're bored because schools teach the same dull things over and over and over, nothing new, nothing challenging. True hackers are curious and patient. If you aren't, how can you work so very hard hacking away at a single system for even one small PEEK at what may be on it? A true hacker DOESN'T get into the system to kill everything or to sell what he gets to someone else. True hackers want to learn, or want to satisfy their curiosity, that's why they get into the system. To search around inside of a place they've never been, to explore all the little nooks and crannies of a world so unlike the boring cess-pool we live in. Why destroy something and take away the pleasure you had from someone else? Why bring down the whole world on the few true hackers who aren't cruising the phone lines with malicious intent? True hackers are disgusted at the way things are in this world. All the wonderful technology of the world costs three arms and four legs to get these days. It costs a fortune to call up a board in an adjoining state! So why pay for it? To borrow something from a file I will name later, why pay for what could be "dirt cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons"? Why be forced, due to lack of the hellacious cash flow it would require to call all the great places, to stay around a bunch of schmuck losers in your home town? Calling out and entering a system you've never seen before are two of the most exhilarating experiences known to man, but it is a pleasure that could not be enjoyed were it not for the ability to phreak...

True hackers are quiet. I don't mean they talk at about .5 dB, I mean they keep their mouths shut and don't brag. The number one killer of those the media would have us call hackers is bragging. You tell a friend, or you run your mouth on a board, and sooner or later people in power will find out what you did, who you are, and you're gone...I honestly don't know what purpose this file will serve, maybe someone somewhere will read it, and know the truth about hackers. Not the lies that the ignorant spread. To the true hackers out there, I hope I am portraying what you are in this file... If I am not, then I at least am saying what I think a true hacker should be. And to those wanna-be's out there who like the label of "HACKER" being tacked onto them, grow up, would ya?

Oh yeah, the file I quoted from... It has been done (at least) two times. "The Hacker's Manifesto" or "Conscience of a Hacker" are the two names I've seen it given. (A file by itself, and part of an issue of Phrack) Either way, it was written by The Mentor, and it is absolutely the best thing ever written on the subject of hackers. Read it, it could change your life. Spread it around, but don't change anything please. . .

Vladimir Levin

The commonly known story

Vladimir Levin, a biochemistry graduate of St. Petersburg's Tekhnologichesky University in mathematics, led a Russian hacker group in the first publicly revealed international bank robbery over a network. Levin used a laptop computer in London, England, to access the Citibank network, and then obtained a list of customer codes and passwords. Then he logged on 18 times over a period of weeks and transferred $3.7 million through wire transfers to accounts his group controlled in the United States, Finland,the Netherlands, Germany, and Israel. Citibank later retrieved all but about $400,000. When Citibank noticed the transfers, they contacted the authorities, who tracked Levin down and arrested him at a London airport in March, 1995. He fought extradition for 30 months, but lost, and was transferred to the US for trial. He was convicted and sentenced to three years in jail, and ordered to pay Citibank $240,015. Four members of Levin's group pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and served various sentences. According to the coverage, in 1994 Levin accessed the accounts of several large corporate customers of Citibank via their dial-up wire transfer service (Financial Institutions Citibank Cash Manager) and transferred funds to accounts set up by accomplices in finland, the United states, the netherlands, germany and israel. Three of his accomplices were arrested attempting to withdraw funds in Tel Aviv, Rotterdam Interrogation of his accomplices directed investigations to Levin, then working as a computer programmer for St.Petersburg based computer company AO Saturn. However, at the time, there were no extradition treaties between the US and Russia covering these crimes. In March 1995 Levin was apprehended at London's stansted airport by scotland yard officers when making an interconnecting flight from moscow. Levin's lawyers fought against extradition to the US, but their appeal was rejected by the house of Lords in June 1997. Levin was delivered into U.S. custody in September 1997, and tried in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. In his plea agreement he admitted to only one count of conspiracy to and San francisco.defraud and to stealing US$3.7 million. In February 1998 he was convicted and sentenced to three years in jail, and ordered to make restitution of US$240,015. Citibank claimed that all but US$400,000 of the stolen US$10.7 million had been recovered. After the compromise of their system, Citibank updated their systems to use Dynamic Encryption Card, a physical authentication token. However, it was not revealed how Levin had gained access to the relevant account access details. Following his arrest in 1995, anonymous members of hacking groups based in St. Petersburg claimed that Levin did not have the technical abilities to break into Citibank's systems, that they had cultivated access to systems deep within the bank's network, and that these access details had been sold to Levin for $100.

The revelation a decade later

In 2005 an alleged member of the former St. Petersburg hacker group, claiming to be one of the original Citibank penetrators, published under the name ArkanoiD a memorandum on popular Provider.net.ru website dedicated to telecom market. According to him, Levin was not actually a scientist (mathematician, biologist or the like) but a kind of ordinary system administrator who managed to get hands on the ready data about how to penetrate in Citibank machines and then exploit them. ArkanoiD emphasized all the communications were carried over network and the internet was not involved. ArkanoiD's group in 1994 found out Citibank systems were unprotected and it spent several weeks examining the structure of the bank's USA-based networks remotely. Members of the group played around with systems' tools (e.g. were installing and running games) and were unnoticed by the bank's staff. Penetrators did not plan to conduct a robbery for their personal safety and stopped their activities at some time. One of them later handed over the crucial access data to Levin (reportedly for the stated $100).