Here's a name you may not be familiar with: Mark Abene. He never hacked into the D.O.D. nor did he steal millions of dollars in some Swordfish-style bank heist. What he did do was piss off AT&T. As a member of the hacker group Masters of Destruction, Abene was often poking around on AT&T's systems. When AT&T's telephone system crashed, leaving 60,000 customers without phone service for over 9 hours, they quickly blamed Abene. The Secret Service paid him a rather aggressive visit, confiscating his equipment, and
while AT&T eventually admitted that the crash was a mistake on its part, Abene was charged with computer tampering and computer trespassing in the first degree. Later, he would face more charges and ultimately serve a year in federal prison, making him the first hacker to do so.