Hacking in the 2010s

Anonymous is a decentralized international hacktivist group that is widely known for its various DDoS cyber attacks against several governments, government institutions and government agencies, corporations, and the Church of Scientology.

George Francis Hotz (born October 2, 1989), alias geohot, is an American hacker known for unlocking the iPhone, allowing the phone to be used with other wireless carriers, contrary to AT&T's and Apple's intentions. He developed the limera1n jailbreak tool and bootrom exploit for iOS. He is also noted for his technical efforts and publicity with reverse engineering the PlayStation 3 video game console, and for subsequently being sued by and settling with Sony. As of December 2015, he is working on his vehicle automation machine learning company comma.ai.

Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer ( OR-ən-hy-mər; born September 1, 1985), best known by his pseudonym weev, is an American computer hacker and self-avowed Internet troll who is affiliated with the alt-right. He has identified himself using a variety of aliases to the media, although most sources indicate his real first name as Andrew.

Junaid Hussain (c. 1994 – 25 August 2015) was a British Pakistani black hat hacker and propagandist under the nom de guerre of Abu Hussain al-Britani who supported the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Hussain, who was raised in Birmingham in a family originally from Pakistan, was jailed in 2012 for hacking Tony Blair's accounts and posting his personal information online. Hussain left the UK around 2013 for Syria.

Jeremy Hammond (born January 8, 1985) is an American activist and computer hacker from Chicago. He founded the computer security training website HackThisSite in 2003. He was convicted of computer fraud in 2013 for hacking the private intelligence firm Stratfor and releasing data to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Elliott Gunton (born c. 1999), also known by his online pseudonyms Glubz and planet, is a convicted British cybercriminal from Norfolk.

Hector Xavier Monsegur (born 1983), known also by the online pseudonym Sabu (pronounced Sə'buː, Sæ'buː), is an American computer hacker and co-founder of the hacking group LulzSec. Monsegur became an informant for the FBI, working with the agency for over ten months to aid them in identifying the other hackers from LulzSec and related groups while facing a sentence of 124 years in prison. LulzSec intervened in the affairs of organizations such as News Corporation, Stratfor, UK and American law enforcement bodies and Irish political party Fine Gael.

Appin was an Indian cyber espionage company founded in 2003 by brothers Rajat and Anuj Khare. It initially started as a cybersecurity training firm, but by 2010, the company had begun providing hacking services for governments and corporate clients that was reported to have stolen secrets from executives, politicians, military officials and wealthy elites worldwide. Reuters, The New Yorker, Wired, SRF Investigativ, and Intelligence Online have reported on Appin's hack-for-hire operations and Rajat Khare's extensive efforts to suppress coverage through civil and criminal actions. Appin created the model that is still used by the Indian hack-for-hire industry.

On August 31, 2014, a collection of nearly five hundred private pictures of various celebrities, mostly women, with many containing nudity, were posted on the imageboard 4chan, and swiftly disseminated by other users on websites and social networks such as Imgur and Reddit. The leak was dubbed "The Fappening" or "Celebgate" by the public. The images were initially believed to have been obtained via a breach of Apple's cloud services suite iCloud, or a security issue in the iCloud API which allowed them to make unlimited attempts at guessing victims' passwords. Apple claimed in a press release that access was gained via spear phishing attacks.

APT40, also known as BRONZE MOHAWK (by Secureworks), FEVERDREAM, G0065, GADOLINIUM (formerly by Microsoft), Gingham Typhoon (by Microsoft), GreenCrash, Hellsing (by Kaspersky), Kryptonite Panda (by Crowdstrike), Leviathan (by Proofpoint), MUDCARP, Periscope, Temp.Periscope, and Temp.Jumper, is an advanced persistent threat operated by the Hainan State Security Department, a branch of the Chinese Ministry of State Security located in Haikou, Hainan, China, and has been active since at least 2009.