
Ask HN: Who is the best hacker of all time? - pooya13
Who do you consider the most talented and well rounded cyber hacker of all time?
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justforfunhere
I think Fabrice Bellard is one of the top computer programmers of our times.

[https://bellard.org/](https://bellard.org/)

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bjourne
Linus Torvalds. He appears to be good at almost everything; C programming,
project management, architecture, writing emails, etc.

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kgraves
how can you be good at "writing emails"?

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Jugurtha
Clear writing communicates complex ideas effectively and drives endeavors more
than we give it credit for. Most emails I receive are longer than they ought
to and makes N recipients spend T additional time to finally get the wrong
idea and diverge in execution. More rambling emails are sent to align people.
The sender can prevent this upstream by writing in a "clear, concise,
complete, correct" way.

This is valid for issues/bug reports/feature requests/user stories, etc.

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yewenjie
Richard Stallman, the last true MIT Hacker.

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sethammons
Assuming you mean breaking into systems, while I'm not immersed in that
culture, I did enjoy Kevin Mitnik's Ghost in the Wires. It may be a bit dated,
but some of the stories of early phone phreaking and social engineering was a
fun ride -- and helps add a decent level of paranoia to answering phone calls
today! Kevin Mitnik is a legend. He might not be the best of all time or
today, but he is up there.

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kratom_sandwich
Are you aware that hacking is in most parts social engineering? Are you
looking for the best hacker or social engineer? Are you aware of the
differences between a hacker, a cracker and a script kiddie? What about
participants in a hackathon - do you consider them hackers as well? I mean,
the event has "hacking" in its name, right?

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fabiomaia
Very ambiguous question indeed for a community called "Hacker News" that
targets a wide range of topics in technology and science, any of which can
easily be considered "hacking".

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giantg2
If you're using the media's definition of hacker to mean someone
breaking/exploiting computer stuff, then I would say we can't answer that. The
best people conceal their identity and don't get caught, so we wouldn't know
them.

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kleer001
My favorite is Jayson Street only because he does a great black hat with
little to no programming. Which, of course, goes against the "well rounded"
part of your question.

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krapp
The mysterious hacker called 4chan.

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person_of_color
Kevin Mitnick

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lihaciudaniel
Aaron Schwartz, the best freedom fighter

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yesenadam
Swartz
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=aaronsw](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=aaronsw)
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/)

