In 2021 , cybercrime is a normal part of everyday sprightliness . But back in the early days of the internet — that is , the 1980s and ‘ 90s — the hacker was a bizarre newfangled phenomenon that the American populace had never encounter before . Many of the trailblazers of this course were n’t cynical criminals but rather bespectacled teenagers — unadulterated wonk with a penchant for using their advanced computer superpower to cause mischief . Back in these days , hack was less about extortion and moneymaking than it was about hubristic achievement and the desire to do something that had never been done before .

With that in intellect , here are a few of the heavy names from that epoch .

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