Hackers and Hacking
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50 free Hackers and Hacking trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hacking began as a compliment. Long before the word meant breaking into computers, it described clever tinkering by students who wanted to know how machines worked, and that curiosity still runs through the culture: the pranks, the handles, the conventions and the long argument over where exploring ends and crime begins. This quiz follows that story from the earliest wireless stunt and the age of phone trickery to teenage intruders, bank raids, leaked emails and state-backed operations. It also covers the slang hackers use for one another, the groups and gatherings that shaped the scene, and the films, novels, television dramas and video games that made the hacker a familiar character. It is written for curious players rather than security professionals, so no technical training is needed. Use it for a trivia night round, a classroom warm-up or a team social; every answer comes with a short explanation of what really happened.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which hacker film so alarmed Ronald Reagan that he ordered a national security review?
WarGames
WarGames led Reagan to quiz members of Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff about its plot. The first presidential directive on computer security followed 18 months later.
Q 02Which pair sold illegal 'blue boxes' for free phone calls before founding a tech company together?
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak sold about two hundred of the devices for $150 each. Jobs later said that without the blue boxes there would have been no Apple.
Q 03Hacker Gary McKinnon said he broke into US military and NASA computers looking for proof of what?
A UFO cover-up
A UFO cover-up was what he hoped to expose, along with suppressed 'free energy' technology. A US prosecutor called it the biggest military computer hack of all time, but Britain blocked his extradition in 2012.
Q 04The Guy Fawkes mask adopted by Anonymous hackers was designed for which graphic novel?
V for Vendetta
V for Vendetta artist David Lloyd drew the mask for the 1980s comic written by Alan Moore. After the film adaptation, mass-produced copies made it a protest symbol around the world.
Q 05Hacker Kevin Poulsen seized every phone line at a Los Angeles radio station to win which prize?
A Porsche
A Porsche 944 was his once he had made sure he would be the 102nd caller to KIIS-FM. He was jailed for 51 months and later became a senior editor at Wired News.
Q 06The computing sense of 'hack' grew out of slang at an MIT student club devoted to what?
Model railroads
Model railroads needed elaborate switching circuits, and the Tech Model Railroad Club members who built them popularized the word 'hacker' before moving on to computers and programming.
Q 07In 1987, a masked pirate hijacked Chicago TV stations WGN and WTTW dressed as which character?
Max Headroom
Max Headroom's impostor cut into a newscast and then, two hours later, an episode of Doctor Who. The statute of limitations expired in 1992 with nobody charged.
Q 08In 2020, hijacked Twitter accounts of Barack Obama and Bill Gates promoted a scam involving what?
Bitcoin
Bitcoin sent to the scammers would be doubled and returned, the tweets promised. A 17-year-old from Florida was among those charged over the takeover of 130 high-profile accounts.
Q 09Magician Nevil Maskelyne hacked a 1903 demonstration of which inventor's 'secure' wireless telegraph?
Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi had promised 'secure and private communication', so Maskelyne broadcast a message of his own into the demonstration to make that claim look foolish.
Q 10Guccifer, a Romanian taxi driver turned hacker, leaked a self-portrait painted by which US president?
George W. Bush
George W. Bush's new hobby became public after Guccifer broke into his sister's email account. The hacker was jailed in Romania in 2014 and later sentenced to 52 months in a US prison.
Q 11Which hacker blamed eight months in solitary on claims that whistling into a phone could start a nuclear war?
Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick said officials had convinced a judge he could dial into NORAD from a prison pay phone. Freed in 2000, he became a security consultant, speaker and author.
Q 12In The Matrix, programmer Thomas Anderson is known in hacking circles by which alias?
Neo
Neo's night-time hacking brings him to the attention of fellow hacker Trinity. The film's success led to two sequels in 2003, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions.
Q 13Which future Oscar winner played hacker Kate 'Acid Burn' Libby in the 1995 film Hackers?
Angelina Jolie
Q 21WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hacked as a teenager under which name, taken from the poet Horace?
Mendax
Mendax comes from a phrase of Horace's meaning 'nobly untruthful'. Assange was convicted of hacking in 1996, a decade before he set up his leak site.
Q 22The Chaos Computer Club, Europe's largest association of hackers, is based in which country?
Germany
Germany's best-known hackers made world news in 1984, when they exposed flaws in the Bildschirmtext network by making it pay 134,000 Deutschmarks into the club's account.
Q 23The 2016 Democratic National Committee email hack was traced to which country's military intelligence?
Russia
Russia's GRU ran the operation through Unit 26165, a 2018 US indictment said. Security researchers know the same hackers by the nickname Fancy Bear.
Angelina Jolie married her co-star Jonny Lee Miller shortly after filming ended. The film underperformed at the box office but has since built a devoted following.
Q 14Which actor won an Emmy for playing vigilante hacker Elliot Alderson in the TV drama Mr. Robot?
Rami Malek
Rami Malek took the lead-actor Emmy for the role, then won the Best Actor Oscar in 2019 for playing Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.
Q 15Which crime writer created hacker Lisbeth Salander, imagining her as a grown-up Pippi Longstocking?
Stieg Larsson
Stieg Larsson introduced her in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, where she hacks under the name Wasp. He died of a heart attack before any of the novels were published.
Q 16Hackers calling themselves the Impact Team leaked the user data of which dating website in 2015?
Ashley Madison
Ashley Madison was sold as a place for married people to arrange affairs, which made the release of more than 60 gigabytes of its data unusually damaging.
Q 17A 2011 hack exposed 77 million accounts and knocked which gaming service offline for more than three weeks?
PlayStation Network
PlayStation Network had never been down for so long, and the breach ranked among the largest then recorded. Sony suspended its Qriocity media service worldwide at the same time.
Q 18Phone hacker John Draper took his nickname from a toy whistle packed in boxes of which cereal?
Cap'n Crunch
Cap'n Crunch whistles happened to sound the 2600-hertz tone that told AT&T's switches a long-distance line was free, which let a caller take control of it.
Q 19Which term from Western films describes a hacker who breaks in with permission to find flaws?
White hat
White hat comes from the film convention that heroes dressed in white and villains in black. A grey hat sits between the two: good intentions, but sometimes no consent from the owner.
Q 20In leetspeak, the hacker habit of swapping letters for digits, 'leet' is short for which word?
Elite
Elite status on 1980s bulletin board systems unlocked hidden files, games and chat rooms, and the label stuck. Hackers often write the word as the number 1337.
Q 24Hackers tied to North Korea tried to steal nearly $1 billion from which country's central bank?
Bangladesh
Bangladesh lost $81 million that vanished into the Philippines. A further $20 million sent to Sri Lanka was reversed after a bank employee noticed the hackers had misspelled 'Foundation'.
Q 25George Hotz, alias geohot, was 17 when he became the first person reported to unlock which device?
The iPhone
The iPhone he freed from its SIM lock in 2007 was no longer tied to a single phone network. He traded his second unlocked handset for a Nissan 350Z sports car and three new phones.
Q 26Which actress played a systems analyst whose identity is erased in the 1995 thriller The Net?
Sandra Bullock
Sandra Bullock actively pursued the part of the reclusive analyst, whose troubles begin when she finds a backdoor in a widely used security program.
Q 27Project Chanology, a 2008 protest campaign by members of Anonymous, targeted which organization?
Church of Scientology
Church of Scientology efforts to scrub a Tom Cruise interview from the internet set the campaign off. The name 'Chanology' blends 4chan, where the plan began, with Scientology.
Q 28Which password-cracking method tries every possible combination until one works?
Brute force
Brute force needs no cleverness, only time, and the time needed grows exponentially with each extra character, which is why long passwords defeat it.
Q 29Which put-down do hackers use for an unskilled attacker who relies on programs written by others?
Script kiddie
Script kiddie is an insult because the person runs ready-made attack scripts without the skill to understand their effects. Shorter put-downs include 'skiddie' and 'skid'.
Q 30Which Las Vegas hacker convention began in 1993 as a farewell party Jeff Moss planned for a friend?
DEF CON
DEF CON went ahead even though the friend left the country before the party could happen. Its founder, 18 at the time, is known by the hacker handle Dark Tangent.