Mitnick was a hacker hero of mine in my youth. I think I’ve understood his role as jester prior to conviction less as I’ve grown older, but there’s something about the boyhood charm of being so divorced from the potential consequences of one’s actions that is almost unique.
Mitnick had so many stories that entranced the people around him. I heard one second hand of Mitnick dealing with a bank who had early voice verification software. Upon meeting the CEO he gave the executive his card and departed for the evening. Arriving back at his hotel, he called the CEO and asked him to read his phone number to him. The phone number contained all ten digits which Mitnick had neatly tape recorded so as to make the CEO’s voice reproducible. He then proceeded to use the bank’s vocal banking system to transfer $1 from the CEO’s account to his as the authentication mechanism was reading out your own account number in your voice.
When Mitnick arrived back in the board room the architect of the voice verification system was crestfallen and the bank CEO delivered a check on a silver platter.
Now how much of that tale is embellished I will never know as it was second hand, but that was the kind of whimsy Mitnick brought to our world.
How would he have known the CEO's bank account number? Did the CEO write him a check at some point? Or maybe a bank's CEO traditionally gets account number 1…
Bank account numbers aren't secret, they're written on the bottom of every check you write. The story lacks the details of how he got his hands on it but its not unreasonable to assume he was able to access such unprotected information.
int(phone number) "contained all ten digits" is the main embellishment. KM used different acct#. check delivery was weeks later, after negotiations. either way kevin was OG AF ..|..
I was not aware he was ill. Always sad to hear people that are taken by cancer.
I didn't know Kevin, but am friends with Tsutomu Shimomura who worked with authorities to get him arrested. Tsutomu worked with me a bit when I was at Sun trying to get a cryptographically secure subsystem into the base system specification. It was fun to listen to his side of this story.
The 80's was a really weird time for computer enthusiasts, and it was the period of time when what was then considered the "hacker" community schismed into what today we might call "white hat" vs "black hat" hackers.
As a person who considered themselves to be part of that community I was personally offended by how the story of Kevin painted everyone who thought of themselves as a "hacker" as a criminal. It made for good story telling to make these folks "pirate" or perhaps more accurately "privateer" types in their swashbuckling ways of sticking it to the man. People would say, "Exposing security holes is like solving puzzles (which is fun) and important because if I don't do it, well somebody 'bad' will." And while I'm here, why not make it hurt for them a little bit to incentivize them to fix this problem quickly!"
I didn't disagree with the importance of pointing out security problems, but the flamboyant way it was done scared the crap out of people who were both clueless and in a position to do stupid things. As a result we got the CFAA and the DMCA which are both some of the most ridiculous pieces of legislation after the so called "patriot" act.
The damage that did to curious people growing up lost the US a significant fraction of their upcoming "innovation" talent. While not diminishing the folks who leaned in to the illegality of it.
Markoff and Shimomura received $750,000 for their book rights and $650,000 for the film rights. The most sensational parts in the book or the movie had absolutely nothing to do with the truth.
Sharknado is closer to reality than Track Down. The cringest part is Tsutomu's fictional gf.
I really enjoyed the book Takedown, about Shimomura's pursuit of Mitnick - I must have read it three or four times. I always wondered what happened to Shimomura, since he just seemed to drop out of sight after that book came out.
Shimomura was an egotistical asshole at the time. However, he was younger then and can hopefully acknowledge he was still learning about himself and wasn’t all-wise yet.
I hope Shimomura can realize that Mitnick made him a better version of himself, both personally and professionally.
His ego came through a bit in the book, but honestly that's a fairly common trait for young guys. I am also quite aware that the book only presents one side of the story and that Mitnick had quite a different perspective. I'm sure the truth lies somewhere in the middle. My enjoyment of the book was much more about the process they used to track him down, and the detailed description of them building tools to aid in the process, rather than the people involved.
Meh. It 'ain't braggin' if it's true. Worked with Tsutomo on some projects. Dude has an extremely keen analytical mind. Mitnick on the other hand had an excellent grasp of human intellectual frailty. I was always surprised people expected Tsutomo to be some amazingly empathetic mensch and Mitnick to be some uber mentat wizzard.
Each was quite good within their speciality, and kinda crappy in the other's. And that's totally okay.
Storytime:
He randomly came over for dinner while cruising around LA with a friend of a friend, aaages ago... asked if I had a disposable tablecloth, luckily yes. Orders like 10 entrees/appetizers/desserts for delivery for just the 3 of us.
Over a few hours picking at food, drinking case of beer etc., the entire table was covered in tech gibberish, diagrams, code etc. Really wish I saved that, but at the time I was like "who IS this guy?" and it was a disgusting mess. I do recall appreciating that level of openness and bonding, and have never had such an experience with anyone else like that in the industry since then.
RIP
Oh man, oh man. This is heart-breaking. Even though I never met Kevin IRL, he was always something of a.. well, maybe not a "role model" exactly, but certainly an inspiring character in many regards. Some of my earliest forays into the world of phone phreaking and related activities were inspired by the stories I read about Mitnick and his crew out in LA, in Markoff and Haffner's book Cyberpunk. For a while me and some of the guys I ran with would use the word "Kevin" as a sort of code-word for this stuff to avoid telling our parents any more than necessary about what we were doing
"Where are you going to night boys?"
"Oh, we're going to hang out with Kevin."
(this meant a night of trashing telco dumpsters, fucking around with payphones, and various other dubious activities)
"Oh, OK. Well, be careful."
That sort of thing.
Wow. Never saw this coming. I didn't even know he'd been ill.
Anyway... RIP, Mr. Mitnick. May there be clueless operators to social engineer, on "the other side".
Yep. I'm familiar with the issues around the veracity of that book. That isn't really the point. Back in 1995 that was pretty much all we had to go on, and Mitnick still became a hero to a bunch of us.
In the subsequent years I've read all of Kevin's books, as well as pretty much all the other books written about his life, and watched the various movies and documentaries that dealt with his story. It seems like Markoff was kind of a dick and frankly contributed to some of Kevin's problems. Sad. :-(
Wow. My first encounter with Kevin Mitnick was a random one.. joining one of my school's IRC channels one day there was there guy on it who was bragging about how he had broken into our central AIX server, would read the admins' e-mail all the time and for every hole they plugged he would just find another one.
I was just a university Freshman just starting my CS classes, and seeing this discussion, it was like I had entered some underground revolutionary meeting. It opened my eyes to mischief and testing the boundaries of systems and order where this guy who was on IRC as root@system was just calmly saying how the technical universe I was just learning about was controllable in ways I had no clue about.
I never followed the case after he was prosecuted, and I didn't go down the hacker route in my career, but it was a life-changing moment for me to see this outsider live out "War Games" in real life.
RIP, root. Your crimes and mischief certainly didn't define you, especially as you went down the ethical hacker path (the first?). Pancreatic cancer is a horrible way to go, I am sorry to see this story today and condolences to his family and friends.
When Kevin first found out he had Cancer, the doctors gave him "weeks". But you know Kevin -- he refused to accept his fate and found the top doctors in the world, tried experimental procedures and was able to get himself all the way into remission just 11 months later. It was incredibly inspiring, we all thought he had yet again beaten the system. It's tragic how the last 10 weeks played out, he fought all the way until the end. He's was a legend who paved the way for millions in the cybersecurity space. We will miss him.
To be candid; fuck this narrative. Nobody "Beats" cancer based on sheer will. Same scenario as those that did not "Fight hard enough". It's a disease. It does not care about your wants, and needs.
I agree, this is a common narrative, that does a disservice for people that actually are consumed by the disease in the expected timeframe as if they weren't willing to fight it with sheer will.
I knew a guy who was diagnosed with stomach cancer at 27 years old. Never had a health problem in his life, he didn't even know how insurance worked yet. It was late stage and he was given 6 months to live. He was recently engaged before that and they moved their wedding up to 3 months away in order to have it before he passed. But he was gone from us just 6 weeks after the original diagnosis. He fought like hell to survive. He had every reason to. He was diligent with everything the doctors told him and he was gone within weeks despite being given months.
Cancer is horrible and it is unpredictable by its very nature. Cancer is literally at its definition a collection of unpredictable mutated cells. Thats why it is so hard for doctors to estimate or predict. It is unpredictable. Sometimes the unpredictability works in your favor and sometimes it works against you. But cancer cells do not listen to willpower, despite the common narrative. The reality is it is good and bad luck that often determines your fate.
As a secondary anecdote. I have a friend who's mom had skin cancer, a small patch the size of a dime on her hip. Skin cancer is generally incredibly survivable and low risk (in the world of cancers). She had it removed as a simple procedure and thought she was fine. 3 months later she started having periods of confusion or getting lost doing simple things like going to the store for milk, she would end up gone for the hours and hours forgetting why she even left the house and ending up on the other side of town. It turns out it spread to her brain and she died just 10 days after that first episode. Cancer is brutal.
Every type of cancer is different. I think that if you're young enough and lucky enough to have avoided close dealings with terminal cancer, you might be fooled into thinking that the are all kinds of new treatments that can cure you if you get diagnosed. But what you eventually realise is that every cancer is different. Some are treatable, and others are an extremely aggressive and don't respond to anything. My sister's ovarian cancer made itself known in March, was officially diagnosed in early April and she was gone by September. It did not slow down for anything. On the other hand an old boss of mine was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer and lived 4 years, eventually choosing to end his treatment because he'd just be dragging out a final two painful weeks into 6 painful months. And then there are the lucky ones that get a lump removed and never hear from it again.
Parent was not saying that Kevin Mitnick made himself better with sheer will, rather that he was enabled by his personality and wealth to obtain experimental and/or risky treatments that turned out to improve his condition.
Any doctor will tell you that mentality is incredibly important in fighting (yes, fighting) diseases.
It is well known that your psychological state influences the immune system a lot, and even from anecdata, you can see that people rapidly deteriorate when they give up. It is not a coincidence all these terms are used.
Can all cancers be beaten by sheer will? Of course not.
Let's put it that way, the will is never sheer. Looks like the will pushed Kevin to deal with it and relentlessly look for solutions (and put his money to use) instead of succumbing to it. If so, then in the end obviously it's his will that helped him score a win against cancer.
Looks like he died from pancreatic cancer. This cancers always reminds me of the Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. He was a CMU professor who also died from pancreatic cancer 15 years ago.
It's funny, though I didn't really know him I did have two chance interactions 15 or so years back that are in a way core lessons for me about business.
Back when he started doing consulting I ended up spending some hours on the phone with him over a week or so as an evenings/weekends side project (I had a more than full time job too). He seemed like a nice enough dude, basically a middle aged guy trying to put his life back together, and he was understandably not up to speed on web app security due to his recent stint in prison. I don't think that business ever panned out but he eventually pivoted and built a multi-billion dollar company around the concept he was known for (social engineering).
The second is embedded in his somewhat famous lock pick business card. It turns out those cards are a direct copy of a friend's card, conceived by me, designed by a second friend, and inspired by a third friend who'd discovered the shop that did etched steel cards. Kevin's card traded in usability by shortening the tools to make more space for contact information. Regardless, his ability to capture the spotlight helped ensure his version is by far the best known.
Mitnick did remind myself as a preteen, even if it never seems he quite outgrew his own preteen antics. He was a gutsy guy who made life more rich and interesting in his own way. He never seemed to bend to the system’s will long after many of us so called anti-authoritarians would have thrown in the towel.
When I read his books I alternated between fascination, revulsion, admiration, and shock. Mitnick above all wasn’t boring and I think “not boring” doesn’t get enough credit in the measure of a man.
My ex certainly wasn't boring. But they certainly were physically abusive. I don't believe that automatically qualifies someone as deserving of credit.
I don't think anyone would claim that not being boring is the only worthwhile measure of a person. But assuming nobody wants to be around a person who is causing harm purposefully, I'll take interesting over boring.
I'm sorry about your ex, and I hope you have the support you need.
that's incredibly simplistic and lacking in empathy.
there are people with serious psychological disorders such that they can't control negative impulses and behaviors. Some people are born or develop an empathy void, but they are still human beings. Yes, we need to make sure they don't harm others, but pissing on them doesn't help you or anyone else, so why do it? All men are created equal, judge not lest ye be judged, ChristianGeek.
> These are two causes of great importance to Kimberley and Kevin; both organizations put the majority of donated funds to work in the communities they serve.
If Kevin inspired you, perhaps a donation in his name would be a nice gesture.
While I assume this is real, part of me does feel like a combination of how young he is and who is is leads me to be slightly skeptical. Assuming it's real, hopefully he would have appreciated the skepticism.
Wired story about the origin of the cards: https://www.wired.com/2007/06/lock-pick-busin/ (I looked it up because I thought they looked like some cards someone I knew designed, and sure enough…)
I had a similar thought, his social engineering abilities were very strong. If there was one person in the world willing to fake their own death to engineer access to something, it would have been him. A sad day.
“Lamo was best known for reporting U.S. soldier Chelsea Manning to Army criminal investigators in 2010[7] for leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks.[8][9] Lamo died on March 14, 2018, at the age of 37.[10]”
Kind of the wrong side in history there. But RIP, regardless.
Manning’s leaks included vast numbers of documents related in no way to a legitimate whistleblowing issues, some of which helped spark the Arab Spring which precipitated in an ongoing civil war in Syria, slave markets and the beheading of religious minorities in Libya, and on and on all over the region affecting 100s of millions of people. I don’t know about Lamo, but Manning certainly isn’t on the right side of history and deserves to be still in jail.
RIP. I still have my FREE KEVIN sticker on an old freezer.
One of my fond memories with my now-dead mother was going to see him during a prison transfer in Los Angeles and yelling outside the place until he waved to us and the rest of the crowd through a window.
My parents vaguely remembered who Kevin Mitnick was when I gave my father my copy of 'Ghost in the Wires' to read.
I told him, this was the 'hacker' of the 80s, read how he managed to 'hack' all these places. My father replied, "I'm pretty sure I won't understand anything he would do". Me, "Just give it a chance, you'll be surprised"
When he gave the book back, I asked my father if anything Kevin did my father wouldn't have understood. My father said, "I understood everything he did". I asked, "Now, when you get a call from someone you don't know claiming to be an authority figure, what do you do?". Father: "Hang up"
Would there be a modern version of this? I haven't read it and I'm interested, but mostly my parents are getting old, and with AI on the corner, I fear a bit the next level scams.
I don't think it's ever gone away, and stands to get even worse now. Good to have a safe word with your family in-case they ever get an important call from you or the reverse
The modern version should be 'put down' (does anyone still hang their phone on a wall nowadays?), and an even more modern one would be 'push red button' :)
Oh my god. I was on the phone with him not that long ago discussing a red team project. I had no idea what was going on.
He was always generous and kind yet professional, despite us kind of fanning out. He had the ease of someone who knew what they were doing and didn’t feel they had anything to prove, which of course he didn’t.
I was looking forward to working with him more. I hate how you never know how a thing’s going to go.
Here’s to the innumerable things about modern connected society that are the way they are, whether indirectly or directly, because of Kevin Mitnick.
The post mentions Dutchman Stu Sjouwerman as a close friend. Kevin was partnered with Stu in the security company KnowBe4.
Stu is a dedicated Scientologist, and has donated millions and millions of dollars to that corrupt organization. I know because I served in the Scientology Sea Org and knew Stu when he was on “OTVII”. This was before KnowBe4, but he was still something of a big donator. He really hit it big with KnowBe4 and became one of the few whales still funneling massive amounts to the church.
I found out about the connection between Stu and Kevin while I was working as a developer for a tech company. One day we started getting those security tips and tricks emails, white labeled so they looked like they came from our own AppSec team. At the end of the emails it ended with the line “the price of freedom is constant alertness, constant willingness to fight back”. A direct quote from L Ron Hubbard and one Scientologists (and former Scientologists like me) know well. After digging deeper I found out they were coming from KnowBe4 and saw Kevin listed on the site as being a partner.
Business relationship aside, after reading Ghost, you get the sense that Kevin would not and could not stop hacking. Maybe he matured and that urge dulled but I always wondered if he ever did some covert snooping into what Stu was up to with Scientology. The Sea Org computer and communication systems are ancient (they still use pagers for some things!). It would have been a blast for someone like him to compromise their systems. And they are right there in Clearwater down the road from KnowBe4 headquarters…
Posting with throwaway because I ain’t tryna win a covert Scientology harassment and stalking op and have my family disown me which happens to virtually every former member who speaks out publicly.
They seem to hook a lot of clever people. I always assumed it was some kind of weird tax dodge, but maybe Scientology doesn't get enough credit for their social engineering skills
He certainly was an interesting person. It was always amazing the degree to which law enforcement prosecuted his hacking and cracking, when it seems like much more impactful crimes involving computers go uninvestigated. Plenty of people are hounded by threats of violence into leaving their jobs and homes, that seems far more impactful than Mitnick's crimes.
And FYI, while he died unexpectedly young, a 57-year-old man in the US has only a 50% chance of living to see their child reach 23 years of age. I, personally, wouldn't feel comfortable risking leaving a child with a likelihood of dealing with my death at that relatively young age.
None of the commenters expressing this bullshit sentiment will provide their children with 1% of the education, health, freedom, security, etc that Mitnick will have left for his child. We struggle our whole lives to provide, it looks like he already assured that for his family, even into perpetuity if managed well.
It's not like he gave himself cancer on purpose and chose to leave a child with nothing out of spite. He played the hand he was dealt, it seems.
"Mitnick has filed a 13G form with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing ownership of 9,379,829 shares of KnowBe4, Inc. Class A (KNBE). This represents 6.9 percent ownership of the company. "
" companies announced on Wednesday that they have entered into a definitive agreement, with KnowBe4 stockholders set to receive $24.90 per share in cash, "
"Vista Equity Partners to Acquire Security Awareness Training Firm KnowBe4 for $4.6B"
Everything is high school. A rebel thumbing their nose at the system must be punished, while the conventionally corrupt deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Wow, this comment is the most profound thing I've read in a while on HN. I find myself a) intuitively agreeing and b) trying to pick it apart. Society as a whole seems to have a very complicated love/hate relationship with rebellion and rebels. But with Mitnick it's like he personified Chaos vs law enforcement's Order in an almost mythological, Jungian sense that goes beyond any utilitarian justification.
> crimes involving computers go uninvestigated. Plenty of people are hounded by threats of violence into leaving
This is an issue of social status. There is a computer mafia in America, and it is interwoven into the IC, SV and infrastructure providers. It exists to the benefit of the privileged.
Having been threatened with murder and then blackmailed, with zero consequence to the perpetrators, I have first hand experience dealing with such corruption.
Post Snowden, these abuses have become more entrenched, locked down, and a bit less cowboy/wild west
> Having been threatened with murder and then blackmailed, with zero consequence to the perpetrators, I have first hand experience dealing with such corruption.
Care to elaborate? This sounds like something too heavy to leave behind as a remark on a comment
Got myself on a permanent fbi watchlist simply for associating with a known felon when i became an adult. this was back in the 1990's. that list was passed off after 9/11 to state/county authorities.
Panopticon put in place thereafter
Big tech abuse has been going on since well before snowden
Directly experienced this secret police gestapo crap, incl'g a series of incidents whereby connected folks abused their privilege; my investigation escalating to a serious murder threat, driving me away from their corrupt community, blackmail, and other related misconduct
Choose your battles. A wise person will slowly back away when encountering a dangerous animal. I dont suggest standing up to corruption by powerful people. they have ways of making more trouble for the defiant
Theorizing that sensitivity to EM in urban environments explains someone's experience isn't controversial/deluded. An ex-CIA guy, Andrew Busamante, said this on a podcast. It was an episode about DEW's, IIRC.
You're free to take his assertion as credible or not, but that is my source.
Your assertion about delusions is funny. Likely you are also an arrogant bully IRL as well.
I live in a transitional shelter in Indiana. Fakeconcern not welcomed.
Well just doing the math, they must have conceived after his diagnosis, so presumably that was baked in sadly just knowing the actuarials on pancreatic cancer.
I think it's pretty amazing to be 57 and expecting a child. I'd be thrilled. I'm 54 no kids and I wish I could have great relationship with a woman that is so good we had a child. Seeing how sick he was and sterility is a possibility from cancer drugs I think Kevin would be thrilled about the child as anyone would be.
>And FYI, while he died unexpectedly young, a 57-year-old man in the US has only a 50% chance of living to see their child reach 23 years of age. I, personally, wouldn't feel comfortable risking leaving a child with a likelihood of dealing with my death at that relatively young age.
To me it seems more like he wanted to have a child with his wife before he passed so they planned it out so it would happen.
It's in my Amazon list and now I know why. I'm 34 and learned about phreaking well after it was a thing but it inspired me.
Now I'm a cybersecurity consultant (glorified sysadmin) making a nice salary but without any of the joy that was present in my 20s rebelling against my F100 company's IT policy. Installing Dokuwiki on a shadow server just to get shit done. Helping write a custom request system to get shit done. Consequences came after.
I'm not comparing myself to Mitnick, rest in peace, only reflecting on the passing of a titan before my prime that represents a moment in communication hacking that may never exist again.
> making a nice salary but without any of the joy that was present in my 20s rebelling against my F100 company's IT policy
You just hit it. That feeling. Me too, nowadays I mostly go through the motions. No enthusiasm, no joy, no interest, no energy... no "spark". Mitnick lived and shined at a time when showing off didn't just land you in jail. Until it did.
I wish I remember which book I read about Mitnick (and others).
I developed a strong dislike for Mitnick, however. As others have said, he came across as an adolescent with an over-sized ego. More "Jackass" than "Silicon Valley". Although I'm sure he's not the only "hacker" for whom illegal entry into computer systems gave him a sense of self-importance.
No thanks.
Edit: yeah, probably was "Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier". I still don't think "bullshit artist" is something to aspire to.
I think it's more that he was one of the first/earliest to use technology to amplify his skills on a scale previously out of reach of most people. Coupled with the fact that he was way ahead of his opponents and a young man, it is quite understandable the path he took.no one is perfect, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Manipulating people is more interesting in some ways than exploiting a bit of badly written software because while I write terrible code all the time, I could fix it too but there's no patching our stupid stupid brains. We can try to be more careful, and avoid falling for things others have already, but the flaws are still there just waiting for the moment our guard is down.
Some human exploits can be patched, at least partially. 2FA with hardware authentication helps prevent people from leaking their own passwords and such. Phishing detectors help. Etc. I'm sad to admit my wife is better at this than me. Any time anyone she doesn't know tries to talk to her, she's quick to escape. I tend to try to politely decline, she just books it
Wow didn’t see that coming. I met him at a HOPE conference with Steve Wozniak. Followed him for years from hacker zine texts distributed on CDs back in the day. Wow that’s really sad what a fun guy he was. His social engineering book was pretty interesting. That OKI phone story was so fascinating I bought a couple to see if I could do it too, although by then 900MHz was phased out. This guy made a difference in my life how very strange
Just woke up my wife with a loud sigh.
I remember all my childhood friends pretending to be Zidane or Figo or Rivaldo. I always wanted to be Mitnick. Sucked at soccer but never stopped hacking. Holy f, he was so young. Out of all people I really hoped to meet him one day. The rockstar of my childhood. What a shitty day.
This is really sad. I can't overstate the impact Kevin had on my life. The world is suddenly less interesting and less secure and my heart goes out to family and friends. Rest in peace, Kevin.
I will always remember when the "Takedown" movie came out. I loved the original "Hackers" and couldn't wait for "Hackers 2" which was Takedown.
I had learned about Mitnick few years prior to the movie and was fascinated by his life story and what he had done up to that point (including his "takedown" by the FBI). It's an understatement to say that his work, character and some sort of positive social manipulation put a great influence on my upbringing and later my professional career. Back then I enjoyed playing pranks with my friends and "hacking" them with all sorts of trojans and ejecting their CD roms :)
Kevin is partially the reason I decided to work in information security. I remember reading his book, art of deception, and it gave a name to the skill I had practiced most of the childhood, social engineering. Later on in life I got to meet him and spent the first at least 2 hours of time in shock n awe. Afterwards, he was great to talk with and offered me his number if I ever needed another set of ears. Sadly I haven't talked with him since the pandemic, but he will forever be remembered.
So many memories from way back, reading up on his story (and stories), reading his books, watching "Takedown" over and over again ...
No matter how polarising he was, his influence in the field and in leading many young people to get into computers and turn that into a career is unquestionable, imho.
I talked to Mitnick once on the phone. I was on a partyline back in the AIM days and a hacker friend of mine called him up. Kevin seemed very frustrated that he kept calling him. I was just dumbfounded I was actually on the phone with Kevin Mitnick so I didn't say anything. Was shocked and saddened to see this. Sorry about that night, Kevin. Rest in peace.
When I was 16 years old, I started a 2600 meeting at a local mall food court. We joined in the 'Free Mitnick' movement, and would go around handing out flyers, explaining the implications of his case, peppering the place with stickers, putting them in copies of 2600 in Barnes & Noble and Borders. His case was an inspiration to a budding little hacker and taught me to become more idealistic and push for legal reforms and the rights of people who were punished far more than they deserved. Later in life I got to meet him at hacker conventions, and he was a super nice guy. I even got one of his lock-pick-set business cards! I know he's somewhat of a controversial figure, but he was also inspirational.
The authorities obsession with Mitnick was because John Markoff and the New York Times made the public believe that hackers were effectively in control of everything and could go as far as starting WW3 by hacking into NORAD and other similar caliber BS that never happened.
Sad to see. Pancreatic cancer is one of the scary ones, since there are so few symptoms before you hit stage 4.
For those who haven't seen it, Freedom Downtime is a movie by the 2600 gang which is mostly about Mitnick's imprisonment, and the whole Free Kevin movement.
(I wonder who wrote the obituary, it's especially wide-ranging, and poetic in parts.)
Having read and loved Ghost in the Wires, I felt a special bond with Kevin. I loved his antics combined with his fearless exploration of how everything around him works. I'm really sad reading of his death today. He was far too young.
My favorite story from the book is how he set up a computer to tail the logs of cell towers in his area for phone numbers matching the FBI agents assigned to his case so he would be alerted when they were on to him. Wow, that's bold! But also, reading that I realized how our society had allowed ourselves to be surrounded by tracking machines that the government could use to find us at any time, and man it was beautiful to see it turned back on them.
It doesn’t matter who the Gerber Baby really is. Society has chosen to associate the Gerber Baby with certain attributes regardless of who the person behind the photo really is, and so it is with Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick, the real person, excelled at social engineering more than any other trait and was arguably subjected to malicious prosecution. But in his later years, there’s a lot of documentation online indicating that he didn’t live up to the myth that grew around him and he was not a pleasant person [1].
People here are mostly reminiscing about Mitnick--the myth, not the man.
I think we'd all be surprised to find out how many "legendary", "amazing", "revolutionary" famous people are not particularly pleasant. You don't achieve greatness by being a sweetheart.
[ftr, I have no idea what his demeanor was; like many, it's quite likely he softened over time.]
Regarding your source: People don't behave consistently all the time. There are probably people who have briefly met you when you were not in a good mood who would say that you are a jerk.
Sad news. His biography/story "Ghost in the Wires" is one of the most amazing books I've ever read. I highly recommend it. The audiobook is read by Ray Porter and is gold. I'll be giving it a re-listen.
His books "The Art of {Deception,Invisibility,Intrusion}" are absolute bangers for most of the people here. Can't recommend enough
I first learned about Mitnick on a network security course where we had to recreate the now iconic TCP spoofing attack he employed against Shimomura's X-Terminal [0].
I can't say enough about how influential Kevin has been in every decade, continually staying at the head of the snake of hacking. I am so lucky not just for how he inspired me in my youth, but how he relit the fire of security paranoia in the last decade when I was fortunate to work for an organization he hacked (by contract).
All software engineers are now more vulnerable with Kevin gone. Stay paranoid friends, now more than ever.
Kevin came to speak at CMU in the University Center. Maybe around 2003/2004. I recall it was standing room only. For me, it was like seeing your favorite action hero in real life. Yes he was convicted of some crimes, but he showed you could be redeemed and continue to live a good, fulfilling life educating others what not to do. RIP
I remember reading Kevin Mitnick books in the early 2000s and it really open my eyes about social engineering and how hacking is more than just cracking a code. Help me become a better DevOps and Software Engineer.
RIP. Same here, I read the whole book on a Sony Ericsson W810i Walkman cell phone in high school. The phone I read it on had a 176x220 pixels tiny little screen. Book was captivating.
OMG! This is so sad. I read about Kevin a lot and read the book, "The Art of Deception" during my teen years and was fascinated by how interesting social engineering was. Once I got into college, I got busy and never followed him anymore. I recently read about him in some random article and then I read about him now. I opened HN to see the black band on top and was worried to know who it could be and turns out, it was Kevin.
Wow, this is seriously upsetting. The fact that so many people are dying of pancreatic cancer is very, very scary to me, and it's so many young people at this point.
Many many years ago, during undergraduate days, I used to study "Art of Deception", wanted to became a security hacker one day.
Now my topic of interest has shifted. Nevertheless, that book still reminds me that human is still the weakest link in security chain. You don't have to be super smart in exploiting code.
I also can't find mention of him having pancreatic cancer, but that's not necessarily a confirmation of anything. He certainly could have kept it private.
His recent enterprise, KnowBe4, was doing security training for companies, trying to make the internet safer! So you could say we're less safe with him gone :(
Rip. I've read Art of Deception in high school and I think it had a lasting influence on me. It reads like a collection of interesting stories. I recomend that book to everyone, especially to people outside of tech.
Taking a detour from the current thread, this sad news about Kevin Mitnick serves as a poignant reminder of the impermanence of life, but also of the value of vigilance. It's a note to all of us about the importance of our health. Remember, routine health checkups, especially as we age, can have a significant impact on our wellbeing.
Cancer, if detected early, does not have to be a death sentence. In fact, many forms of cancer are treatable and even curable if caught in their initial stages. Our advancements in medical science and technology have indeed made it possible. Yet, they can only do so much if we, as individuals, do not take the responsibility of regularly visiting our doctors.
Takedown was my favorite movie as a kid. It influenced me a lot. In Brazil is not common to have a bathtub in your bathroom, we used suicide showers (term that I recently learned on YouTube); anyway, the image of Mitnick hacking in the tube on his laptop resonated with me, I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
What a legend. I remember reading text files about his lore in my early days of exploring the web and being absolutely captivated by it all. Rest easy, Kevin
I missed meeting Kevin Mitnick at the infamous HOPE 2006 conference where he was set to speak, but he was waylaid by something or other and he landed in the hospital. His reputation was still a presence through those few days though, just a few short years after his release from prison.
Rest in peace. Like many others here, Mitnick was an inspiration to me when I was younger, believe he truly embodied the hacker ethos. “Ghost in the wires” is a fantastic and fun read.
I met Kevin in Chicago when he was hired to speak at a bank event that a friend got me into. His presentation was world class. He was quite a guy. Rest in peace.
and to book: Contemporary art - an introduction, page 129 (google books/search);
"Artists have inhabited online space alongside corporations that made concerted efforts to force the change from forum to mall. That commercial colonisation has been a rich subject for net artists who have produced many sharp and sophisticated pieces designed to draw the shopper up short. One of the most notorious was etoy’s Digital Hijack which diverted surfers who had typed in keywords such as ‘Madonna’, ‘Porsche’ and ‘Penthouse’ into a search engine, and clicked on etoys’ top-rated site, being greeted by the response: ‘Don’t fucking move. This is a digital hijack’, followed by the loading of an audio file about the plight of imprisoned hacker Kevin Mitnick, and the hijacking of the Internet by Netscape (Stallabrass, 2002: 226). Mitnick became a cause celebre for the hacking community, and for those wishing to ensure freedom of expression on the net generally. "
this part is interesting: "followed by the loading of an audio file about the plight of imprisoned hacker Kevin Mitnick" hot!
after quick exploring hijack.org it seams that sold very cheap flexi record with song titled "the digitalhijack-song" but website doesn't have any audio files to check.
He was the person I associated the word hacker with, when I came across his name back in 2003 as a kid when I was searching for 'top hackers in the world'. (Google was functional back then...).
He left us too soon. Does anyone else see a correlation of pancreatic cancer and our industry? It feels as if there's something about our profession. Steve Jobs, Randy Pausch, Now Mitnick? I've also had two coworkers who died of kidney/pancreatic cancer.
Beyond that I remember reading about him in 2600 and my mind being blown. He definitely helped leave the world we live in better than when he found it.
This is triggering real crying and emotional breakdown. Mitnick was a friend I never had. An older brother or cool guy that sparked inspiration. Such a strange feeling to be so sad about a person I never met. Like losing a friend. He had such an influence on my life. Hits close to home.
Fuck man, this hit me hard and unexpected. Ghost in the Wires was one of my favorite books. Was fun to read about a true hacker, definitely inspired me. He was too young.
Can’t believe there is no black banner. This is hackernews.
Well I’m crying. Kevin was my hero for so many years growing up and inspired me to do nearly everything I’ve done. I met him at The Last HOPE so many years ago and I feel so privileged for that opportunity.
Mitnick had so many stories that entranced the people around him. I heard one second hand of Mitnick dealing with a bank who had early voice verification software. Upon meeting the CEO he gave the executive his card and departed for the evening. Arriving back at his hotel, he called the CEO and asked him to read his phone number to him. The phone number contained all ten digits which Mitnick had neatly tape recorded so as to make the CEO’s voice reproducible. He then proceeded to use the bank’s vocal banking system to transfer $1 from the CEO’s account to his as the authentication mechanism was reading out your own account number in your voice.
When Mitnick arrived back in the board room the architect of the voice verification system was crestfallen and the bank CEO delivered a check on a silver platter.
Now how much of that tale is embellished I will never know as it was second hand, but that was the kind of whimsy Mitnick brought to our world.
Rest in Power.
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