Adrian Lamo
termhackingsecurity
The itinerant intruder of the early 2000s - working from libraries and cafes, breaking into Microsoft, Yahoo!, WorldCom and the New York Times, then telling the victims how he did it and offering to help fix it.
Lamo is the awkward case the field cannot file cleanly. His method was intrusion followed by unsolicited disclosure, which some read as public service and courts read as crime; the Times added him to its expert source database, then pressed charges. In 2010 he reported Chelsea Manning to the US Army after she confided the WikiLeaks disclosures to him in chat, and much of the hacker community never forgave him. He died in 2018 at thirty-seven, remembered as the era's most contested conscience.
Also known as: the homeless hacker, new york times intrusion, manning informant