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A man was gifted his dream car by Kevin Mitnick, who he helped put in prison
- kkaske 4mo agoI'm old enough to remember all the "Free Kevin" gifs scattered around the internet. This helps to fill in some of the details. It's a really nice story showing the humanity that can be found in situations when you look close.
- kstrauser 4mo agoAt DEF CON and related events now, you commonly see stickers saying "PUT KEVIN BACK".
- sudo_cowsay 4mo agoWell, he has passed so I don't know if that sticker is relevant anymore.
- kstrauser 4mo agoIt's probably not, but still usefully signals particular mindsets to others who might share them.
- sudo_cowsay 4mo agook
- devmor 4mo agoFrom what I can tell, defcon is largely law enforcement and companies that sell to them these days, so I'm not surprised at all to hear that.
- kstrauser 4mo agoI keep hearing that cynical, and wrong, dismissal but have zero idea where it comes from. Yes, there are cops. Some .govs even have booths in the info areas. The stated idea is that it's a good thing when cops and hackers can hang out and discuss ideas and opinions outside of interrogation rooms, and I agree with that. That's miles away from "largely law enforcement" though. I talked to an FBI agent at PyCon but people aren't claiming it's a LEO convention.
- firefax 4mo ago>I'm old enough to remember all the "Free Kevin" gifs scattered around the internet. A generation of hackers (specifically, the vBulletin generation) stayed as far away from the CFAA as possible after that fiasco, which I suspect is exactly the chilling effect that the DOJ intended.
- mindcrime 4mo agoCall me nostalgic or whatever, but my laptop to this very day... https://fogbeam.com/free-kevin.jpg https://fogbeam.com/free-kevin.jpg
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- netsharc 4mo agoHah, he social engineered the God of social engineering...
- mcfunley 4mo agoI worked at a company that had hired Mitnick as a security consultant. His report for a client that turned out to have been rife with SQL injection at the time was largely movie plot physical security stuff. Not wrong exactly, but not the center mass of the threat model they needed either. He seemed to lack systems thinking, producing a report that focused on calling out specific employees as dumb or incompetent. Counterproductive at best. It seemed like his PR exceeded his utility by a great deal. That trend continues beyond the grave, maybe.
- bawolff 4mo agoIsn't he famous for social engineering/physical security type things? If you hire an expert in X, you are probably going to get X.
- rixed 4mo agoIsn't he famous for getting caught?
- mcfunley 4mo agoYeah I agree, caveat emptor and all that. The blameful framing is bad work product though.
- antonymoose 4mo agoHow did he go about it? Giving a manager a report saying Foo and Bar are suck at security gives the manager good information on who needs training. If he walked into a conference room and called them out by name, that would be a touch abrasive.
- TurdF3rguson 4mo agoI heard he can launch nukes by whistling into a pay phone.
- jagged-chisel 4mo agoMaybe I'm mistaken, but that sounds more like Chuck Norris. Wait ... no fists involved. My mistake.
- alex1138 4mo agoIt's in his (Mitnick's) autobiography Ghost in the Wires. In his telling of the story they put him in a more restrictive environment exactly because of the reason given (launching nukes by whistling into a phone)
- bonesss 4mo agoAt the time people were using whistles to make free long distance calls, so I can understand where they were coming from. The part I can't understand is believing that phone-whistles are connected to our nuclear launch system and not simultaneously trying to put nuclear missile operators in jail for incompetence. "Oh the world might end with some whistling? Definitely punish the whistlers, that's where the problem is..."
- nunley 4mo agoThe Judge in the case was a complete luddite and actually claimed to believe this. I still don't know for sure if she was just saying it, or she was that dumb.
- uberex 4mo agoWith Chuck Norris, the nukes whistle at him, just to keep on his good side.
- DonHopkins 4mo ago[flagged]
- ww520 4mo agoI read the book by Tsutomu Shimomura, who caught Mitnick's hacking and tracked him down. It's a fascinating read. He was able to locate Mitnick in physical world based on his online activities and his cellular phone usage. In those early days, few people understood the cyber landscape and cellular technologies to exploit them.
- alex1138 4mo agoYes but AFAIUI Mitnick was upset Shimomura had the full weight of the police on his side, right? He used techniques that shouldn't have been available to him Interesting fact about Shimomura, he was a student of Feynman's
- Sleaker 4mo ago... All's fair in love and war?
- goodmythical 4mo agoGoogle says As Far As I Understand It. Seems a distinction without a difference from the traditional AFAIK As Far As I Know.
- Sleaker 4mo agoSorry, I didn't quote the relavent section. My reply was not an attempt at translating the acronym, but replying to the context of being mad at using 'unfair tactics'
- alex1138 4mo agoFor what it's worth I'm not necessarily 'mad'. I was just explaining the context of the situation because it's interesting
- ww520 4mo agoI think he didn't know cellular well enough and thought a wireless phone was unlocatable because it was mobile and not tied down to a landline. As a physicist, Shimomura would have known all about radio and signal. He just used old WW2 tech of radio triangulation to find the location of the cell phone radio transmitter. It didn't help that cell phones were rare back then and the signal of his cell transmitter frequency was standing out like a sore thumb. Regarding the full weight of the police, Shimomura did have an easier time to convince the ISP and phone companies to give him access to the logs. He was able to ask the cellular company to locate the cell tower where Mitnick's cell phone connected and traced him to the general area. If Mitnick had been careful, he could have hacked into the ISP/phone companies and erased all his access logs.
- nba456_ 4mo agoToo bad he wasn't colorblind.
- lovich 4mo agoI don’t need to know an iota of his activities as a hacker to hate him. I hate him because of how many times I had to be put through mind numbing security training with his mug as the opener. “I’m Kevin Mitnick” and KnowBe4 are seared into my brain at a ptsd level for terminal boredom.
- nunley 4mo agoI'm going to defend Kevin here because I see a lot of comments from people I am sure have no valid reason to be hating on him. Kevin was particularly annoying because he never failed to penetrate a target. The reason that's annoying is it just takes one slip, one weak point, one inattentive admin and it's over. People will stay mad about that. I get it. But those who say he had no talent are just ignorant. His goal was to make the world safer, and making people pay attention to risk didn't make him a lot of friends. All the hate I am reading here is just sad. If you hate Kevin and did not know Kevin, I feel bad for you. Hate is an expensive emotion, even when you're just being a keyboard warrior. It should be reserved for people who have really wronged you. Kevin is not with us anymore. The hate is hurting you, not him. And he has a son who will read this someday. Have a heart.
- reinitctxoffset 4mo agoI would petition all other community members to appreciate the gravity of the parent's comment. Speaking for myself as someone very early in my journey during the time when Mitnick was still active as a grey hat: he advanced our thinking about security and the nature of trust itself in ways that have never been more timely. Paradoxically he profited personally far more as a white hat than he ever did in the grey area, his motivations were clearly not extractive. The authorities compelled him to go do lucrative things! (after persecuting him mercilessly). RIP Kevin. We are ill equipped for the vulns of the AI, but without you we'd be helpless.
- jjulius 4mo agoIn case folk don't connect the dots, this appears to be Shawn Nunley from the article.
- Barrin92 4mo ago>But those who say he had no talent are just ignorant. I don't think anyone says he had no talent, what rubs people the wrong way is that the thing he had talent for is the same thing that the people have who try to scam call your grandmother out of her pension money. You can be the world's greatest burglar, you're still a burglar. The whole cringy "social engineering" thing turned media persona and consulting business is to engineering what chiropractics is to medicine. He leaned pretty heavily into monetizing his own image and for a lot of people what he did became synonymous with the word 'hacking' in a not particularly positive way and critising that isn't hate.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- olalonde 4mo agoI did not realize Mitnick had passed away, very sad. I first learned about him as a kid through the book Takedown, and his exploits definitely fueled my early fascination with computers and hacking. It's heartwarming to see how he later befriended Shawn Nunley, though it's unfortunate that he and Shimomura apparently never buried the hatchet. He undoubtedly influenced an entire generation of hackers, RIP.
- boombapoom 4mo agogood god how did he get a car into prison?
- appden 4mo agoGhost in the Wires is one of all time favorite reads, and I still hope to see it as a dramatized film. It would be a fun “period piece” taking the audience through the 80’s and early 90’s, with some hilarious social engineering scenes (kinda like Catch Me If You Can) and tense moments where the audience roots for Kevin. I really think a film adaptation would help introduce his story to a new generation and be a nice tribute to his legacy.
- foobarbecue 4mo agoExcept actually real whereas Frank Abagnale fabricated all of his supposed cons (read The Greatest Hoax).
- alex1138 4mo agoKevin Mitnick, substitute teacher Kevin Mitnick, airline pilot. What's a deadhead?
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- e12e 4mo agoHaving read and enjoyed ghost in the wires (and at some point all of mitnicks books) - I still enjoy the infamous takedown movie. I think it still shows a lot of mindset around social engineering - and realistic holes in security measures. I do understand why a lot of people were pissed off, though. Ed: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159784/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159784/ Ed2: can't recall if I ever got around to reading takedown - I think I did. Much prefer ghost in the wires.
- georgehotz 4mo agoFor what it's worth, I'm George Hotz, and Kevin Mitnick's books were a big influence on me. I ran into him at a party at DEFCON one year and we talked for 20 minutes before I found out who he was. Gave me a lock pick business card. Cool guy.
- RyJones 4mo agoI enjoyed supporting you in the AllJoyn/AllSeen Alliance era. Sadly, those lessons were never learned.
- aculver 4mo agoSince we're talking about Kevin Mitnick on Hacker News, I have to mention: I recently re-read "Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier". It was published in 1991 and the first third of the book provides an early contemporary account of Kevin Mitnick. It's a great book that I first read in my high school library in the 90s and it completely captured my imagination. However, I had never connected the dots that the subject of the last third of the book was Robert Tappan Morris, creator of the Morris worm, who went on to cofound Y Combinator! Paul Graham is also quoted in the book. The book has aged pretty great. They added an updated epilogue in 1995 in the early part of the Free Kevin era, but honestly re-listening to the book in 2025, I was wondering where the updated Y Combinator epilogue was!
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- mesrik 4mo agoAgreed what you wrote. It's great and well written book. I did read the book again last fall after couple decades. Then few weeks after finishing book I ran into his LinkedIn post (bit OT sure) if what book told was his recollection still accurate in part where book refers his work at DEC Systems Research Center (SRC) at the time. Following is what he replied to me: " markoff and hafner did extensive research and the book is accurate in all ways i could know. note that while mitnick has paid his debt to society (jail time), i've never received from him an apologia. my only other written mention of those breakins was here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/burdens-blame-paul-vixie/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/burdens-blame-paul-vixie/ "
- e12e 4mo agoIf that tickled you, I also recommend "The New New Thing" by Michael M. Lewis.
- aculver 4mo agoSay less! Appreciate the recommendation and it's on its way!
- Simulacra 4mo agoI also have Kevin Mitnick's business card and it is one of my most prized possessions. A great inspiration and influence on my life.
- billehunt 4mo agoHis famous metal lock-pick business card - https://imgur.com/a/caareoI https://imgur.com/a/caareoI
- nunley 4mo agoA rather terrible video I made many years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzQY3KgOT8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzQY3KgOT8E
- kmoser 4mo ago> He put himself on the proverbial map in 1979 by dialing into a software company’s server and copying its forthcoming operating system release in its entirety. Imagine convincing a Microsoft server to cough over an early copy of Windows 12 using little more than a phone number. Windows 12 was in development back in 1979? I think that timeline is a bit off.
- NitpickLawyer 4mo agoThe first phrase is what he did. The second phrase asks you to imagine how silly that sounds in today's world. (i.e. imagine that all it took back then was a phone number) Kevin was from a different time. Back then security wasn't even an afterthought. He was exploring the shiny new thing of digital worlds, with an attacker mindset, and that was new at the time (and quite unique to a small set of humans back then).
- sborra 4mo ago*whom
- Tade0 4mo agoAs kids in the 90s in eastern Europe hardly anyone of us knew the name Kevin Mitnick, but if you were interested in computers at all, you'd certainly recall Condor. I think this was the first time I heard someone being forbidden by court from accessing the internet. At the time we had like two, maybe three kids in class who even used dial up regularly.
- RetroTechie 4mo agoWhat I don't see mentioned here: It's entirely possible to be on opposite sides of the fence, hate the other party's actions, but still respect (or even like) them on a personal level. Imagine yourself in their shoes & dial it up to 11. [insert favorite movie scene here]
- hoherd 4mo agoThere is a part of Ghost in The Wires that is pretty close to that: Ring me up, Mate. Neill. That made me smile. But what the hell? I figured: he already knew he had been hustled, so I had nothing to lose. I called. “Hey, Neill, what’s up?” “Hey, mate.” No anger, no threats, no hostility. We were like two old friends. We spent hours talking, and I shared all the intricate details of how I’d hacked him over the years. I decided I might as well tell him, since it wasn’t likely to work on him again. We became telephone buddies, sometimes spending hours on the phone together over several days.
- e12e 4mo agoLooks like op mostly a rehash of the linked Wired story? https://www.wired.com/2002/02/mitnick-meets-his-pigeon/ https://www.wired.com/2002/02/mitnick-meets-his-pigeon/ https://archive.is/oMcKd https://archive.is/oMcKd
- wyclif 4mo agoThat 2002 Wired article is still behind a paywall. Shameful.
- silexia 4mo agoThe glorification of scammers needs to stop and we need to return to harsh Hammurabi law style punishment.
- metalman 4mo agoshould say "grifted his dream car"