About Contribute GitHub
History of HackersThe free hacker-culture encyclopedia
Menu
Home » About

About History of Hackers

History of Hackers is a community-maintained historical archive documenting the people, groups, tools, vulnerabilities, events, and publications that shaped hacker culture and the security industry. It combines the density of an encyclopedia with the openness of a wiki, built as a static, dependency-free site so it can run forever on GitHub Pages.

Editorial principles

  • Historical accuracy over quantity. A smaller, correct archive beats a large invented one.
  • Primary sources over rumors. Every non-trivial claim carries a source.
  • Contributions over controversy. Pages emphasize research, discoveries, and impact.
  • Knowledge over sensationalism. No rankings of "best" or "most dangerous" hackers.

Full detail lives in Style Guide and Sources Policy.

How the site is built

Pure HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript — no framework, no backend, no build step at deploy time. Content lives as JSON records under data/, one file per person/group/tool/vulnerability/event/publication/field, and each has a matching static page. Search and filtering are client-side, reading data/manifest.json.

Contribute

New entries and corrections go through GitHub Pull Requests — see Contributing. Candidates being researched but not yet verified live in Research Backlog until they have enough sourced material for a page.

Content disclaimer, corrections and removal requests

History of Hackers is an independent, volunteer-run historical archive. Entries are compiled from publicly available sources cited on each page; they are not endorsed by, affiliated with, or reviewed by the people or organizations they describe. Despite our editorial process, an entry may contain errors, outdated details, or information you would rather not see published here.

If you are the subject of an entry (or represent one) and want content corrected, adjusted, or removed, or if you spotted a factual mistake, please open an issue on the GitHub repository. Include the page URL and what you would like changed. Removal requests from the subject of an entry are handled with priority. Every entry page shows who created it (Created by) together with a direct link to open an issue.

Credits

  • Joas Antonio dos Santos — Project Lead. LinkedIn

History of Hackers grows through community contributions — see Contributing to add your name here through a verified entry.