Kevin Poulsen

lore

hacking

The hacker who seized a radio station's phone lines to be caller 102 and win a Porsche, then became a security journalist.

In June 1990, Poulsen and friends took over the incoming lines of Los Angeles station KIIS-FM so that he would be precisely the 102nd caller, winning a Porsche 944 S2; his deeper exploits against phone-company systems earned him years as a fugitive and, after capture, one of the era's heaviest hacking sentences. Barred from computers on release, he reinvented himself as an investigative journalist and became a senior editor at Wired, breaking major cybercrime stories. The full arc, phreak to felon to Fourth Estate, made him the redemption template his generation cites.

Also known as: Dark Dante

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