Hackers: Under the hood

special report Adrenalin pumping through their veins as lines of code are crunched to perfection. Well, that's how it is in the movies anyway. Welcome to the real world of hackers.

ZDNet Australia  went on the hunt to track down some of the world's most prominent (and notorious) hackers. In this five-part series, we delve into the lives of five prominent hackers who reveal issues close to their heart.

Raven Alder, the first woman to deliver a technical presentation at the famed DefCon hacker conference, talks about "gender wars" in the hacking realm.

"One popular magazine's 'do you think girl hackers should date boy hackers?' left a bad taste in my mouth, too. Nobody asks the guys this stuff, and finding myself a 'boy hacker' is not really tops on my list of things to do this weekend," Alder says.

Kevin Mitnick shares his experience behind bars and recalls the days when he was treated like "Osama bin Mitnick".

For Adrian Lamo, the so-called "homeless hacker", there was no turning back after discovering how to make both sides of a 5.25in floppy disk writable at the tender age of eight.

Attrition.org co-founder Brian Martin aka Jericho, who dropped out of college during his second year at architecture school, shares his silliest hacks.

Peiter Mudge Zatko, better known simply as Mudge, talks about the origins of L0pht Crack -- a password cracker for Windows-based systems which he wrote to "prove a point and not for commercial purposes."

Hackers are often perceived as shady characters but securing your perimeter is about anticipating and understanding all forms of threats -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- to your network. Whatever their motives, we hope you will gain some insights into the psyche of a hacker.

Raven Alder Best known for tracing spoofed distributed denial of service attacks.

Jericho Creating computer security Web site attrition.org.

Adrian Lamo Best known for hacking into The New York Times network.

Kevin Mitnick Best known for being imprisoned three times for hacking.

Mudge Best known for creating L0phtCrack.