[8] Jeremy Alexander Hammond[9] was born and raised in the Chicago suburb of Glendale Heights, Illinois, with his twin brother Jason.

[2][11] As a student at Glenbard East High School in the nearby suburb of Lombard, Hammond won first place in a district-wide science competition for a computer program he designed.

His boss at Rome & Company wrote in 2010 that Hammond is "friendly, courteous and polite and while we suspect he has a low tolerance for corporate posturing, he has never demonstrated any contempt for business in the workplace".

[3] During the 2004 DEF CON event in Las Vegas, Hammond delivered a talk that encouraged "electronic civil disobedience" as a means of protest against the 2004 Republican National Convention and its supporters.

Freed after 18 months, Hammond was radicalized by the experience, although the terms of his probation prohibited him from associating with HackThisSite or anarchist groups for another three years.

[15] On March 5, 2012, Hammond was arrested by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago[16][17][18] for his involvement in the December 2011 cyberattack on Stratfor, a private intelligence firm.

[14] The intrusion compromised 60,000 credit card numbers, $700,000 in fraudulent charges, and involved the download of 5 million emails, some of which were subsequently published by WikiLeaks.

[27] Sabu was detained pending trial; in denying bail, Judge Loretta A. Preska described Hammond as "a very substantial danger to the community.

"[32] On November 17, 2020, Hammond was released from the Memphis Federal Correctional Institution and was transferred to a recovery house to serve the rest of his sentence.

[6] Like Chelsea Manning (who was also held in contempt for refusing to testify), Hammond said he was ideologically opposed to any grand jury probe which was not being conducted in "good faith" as the government already had the information it needed.

[8] In August 2024, Hammond was charged with spray painting an anarchist symbol on a police car during pro-Palestinian protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

"[32] Writing after his arrest, Hammond said, "I have always made it clear that I am an anarchist-communist – as in I believe we need to abolish capitalism and the state in its entirety to realize a free, egalitarian society.