Femme Fatale: 8 Of The Most Notorious Female Hackers

Bold and beautiful, these women have gone on to create some serious buzz and some great headlines time and again!

The fairer sex manages to inspire and amaze us all, no wonder they are giving men some serious competition on all fronts across domains. The world of technology too boast of some real inspiring women who have achieved rare milestones. However, hacking is what we are looking at today. We have compiled here a list of 8 of the most notorious female hackers that abound the digital world.

1.Susan Headley aka Susy Thunder/Susan Thunder

-A member of the notorious hacking group Cyberpunks (during the late 1970s and early 1980s), Headley was one of the first females to join the group and specialised in social engineering. Later, she created her own offshoot organisation known as the Roscoe Gang that hacked into various network systems based in California. However, she eventually gave up hacking and moved to Las Vegas where she became a pro poker player only later being elected as the City Clerk in California in 1994.

Susan Thunder

2. Joanna Rutkowska

-Polish computer security researcher Joanna Rutkowska came into prominence when she demonstrated an attack against Windows Vista kernel protection mechanism and a technique, called Blue Pill that made use of hardware virtualisation to move a running OS into a virtual machine. Both the shockers were delivered by her during the Black Hat Briefing Convention in Las Vegas in August 2006. She was later named as one of the 'Five Hackers who Put a Mark on 2006' by eWeek Magazine. 

Joanna Rutkowska

3.Jude Milhon aka St Jude

-Beginning her career as a computer programmer in 1967, Jude Milhon went on to become the founding member of the hacker group known as Cypherpunks. She went to author a number of books relating to hacking and computer programming: Cyberpunk Handbook (1995) and How to Mutate and Take Over the World (1996) for instance and was a member of 'Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility'.

Jude Milhon aka St Jude

4.Kristina Vladimirovna Svechinskaya

-Dubbed as 'the world's sexiest computer hacker', Kristina Vladimirovna Svechinskaya is a Russian hacker and student of the New York University who specialises in the use of Trojan horses. Kristina came into prominence when she used the Zeus trojan horse to attack thousands of bank accounts mostly in the US and opened at least five fake accounts in Bank of America and Wachovia. She then utilised nine other people to create fake passports. She went on to steal a reported $3 million in as little as a few months with the events.

Kristina Vladimirovna Svechinskaya

5.Xiao Tian

-Xiao Tian is the founding member of the notorious hacker group called China Girl Security Team that currently boasts of over 2,200 members, all females. The China Girl Security Team eventually grew to become one of the largest Chinese-based hacking groups, and has ties to some of the most renowned hacking groups across the globe. 

Xiao Tian

6. Kimberley Vanvaeck aka Gigabyte

-Kimberley Vanvaeck started writing viruses when she was 14 years old and is credited with a developing a number of high-end viruses including CQuis, Coconut, Sahay, Sharp, and YahaSux meant to target hardware with sensitive information. Originally written with the intent to send them to companies as a proof-of-concept, Gigabyte's creations were meant to destroy the information itself rather than stealing it. The Sharp virus created by her is credited as being the first virus to be written in C Sharp. 

Kimberley Vanvaeck aka Gigabyte

7.Adeanna Cooke aka Hacker Fairy

-An international model regularly featured in Playboy by day, a hacker and amateur computer programmer at night: now that's what a femme fatale is all about! Hold your horses though. A self tought hacker, Adeanna came into prominence when she hacked the website of her long-time partner who was illegally using her images to make money. She intricately got through the website and took back all that was hers. 

Adeanna Cooke aka Hacker Fairy

8.Raven Adler

-Hailed as the first female to ever give a presentation at DefCon, Adler specialises in securing data from end-to-end to protect sensitive information. Currently working as a senior security consultant for a number of companies, Adler continues to give lectures on hacking at prominent gatherings.

Raven Adler