Person of Interest2011

Chris Beckner:
"Hacker" used to refer to industrious coders who pushed the boundaries of modern computing. Then that word became misappropriated by those who pushed the boundaries so far that they ended up with jail time. Like Kevin Mitnick, back in the 1980s. He was just trying to see how stuff worked. Mitnick was looking for flaws in the system. And he did so by breaking the law. But he proved people were the flaw, not the code. Now they're paying him millions for the same thing that got him locked up in the first place. [Class laughs] Perhaps the most notorious hacker of them all was the one that got away. Back when Uncle Sam was trying to maintain IriTrip on the budding Internet Or Arpanet, as it was known then. This hacker, this coder, hacked into the system and laid its secrets bare, ensuring that the Internet would become an open forum.

Caleb Phipps:
Plus that hacker made his mark without ever getting busted.

Chris Beckner:
True. Whoever it was, that person's still out there.