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.
The phone number contains all the digits needed to recreate the bank account number?
He somehow has the bank account number?
He meets the CEO (despite just being a security consultant) and gives his report to the board of directors?! That is not how companies usually work, especially the board part.
Check on a silver platter? architect of the voice system is brought into the room with the board to be humiliated? This reads like something a 13 year old would dream up (nothing against OP maybe someone even Mitnik really did claim this happened).
The tale is absolutely embellished if it has any truth at all.
The IT person easily figured out it was me and then tricked me into thinking I would be expelled within days. She pulled me out of class, told me such in the hallway, let me return to class where I held in tears until the end of the day.
Nothing happened and the school year ended a few weeks later. Towards the end of the summer I realized it had been a bluff and I wouldn’t be punished. Took me a few years later to realize how much of a favor that all was! The county school of conduct clearly said cybercrime was punishable by expulsion so she could have absolutely put me in some kind of hell. The fear set me straight hah.
Yeah, I remember watching "Freedom Downtime" as a teenager and thinking how ludicrous it was that he was sentenced to prison for computer hacking, but now that I think about it as an adult of course he should have been. Sure solitary confinment, the specifics of his sentence, etc. may have been extreme and I'd like to think that the court system has progressed in their knowledge of computer security since then, but what he did was still a breach of corporate security. He knew at the time it was illegal, and he just thought he was too smart to get caught.
That idea that we had at the time that it was a "victimless crime" or something was very immature.
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.
It was pancreatic cancer, which is the deadliest cancer. It kills very quickly and as far as I know, it's impossible to cure.
It killed my mom: 3 months between diagnosis and death. She didn't want treatment because it couldn't save her; it would only postpone the inevitable and she didn't want to spend the rest of her days in hospitals.
Sharknado is closer to reality than Track Down. The cringest part is Tsutomu's fictional gf.
Source: experience.
> The damage that did to curious people growing up lost the US a significant fraction of their upcoming "innovation" talent.
The causal leap from flamboyant hackers to the DMCA/CFAA, and then to damaging the US's innovation talent feels... speculative.
I completely agree. There was a time when hacker did not mean criminal. That was the time during which Kevin was active. It was also the time during which I was active, not that that matters right now. But there was a rapid shift from computers being something you could explore to if you're exploring that then you are a bad person. And I also agree that trying to scare policy makers isn't necessarily going to work because they don't understand what they're scared of. Curiosity is no longer rewarded in general in our society.
Those of you who don't think what Kevin did was important, there seem to be a lot of people discussing him, aren't there?
It is very difficult to see how that is the case when pretty much every functioning nation has substantially similar laws.
I was escorted out of my job as a shipping clerk in 1999 for creating an entry in an NT 4.0 group with my name in it to impress the IT Admin so I could get a job in the computer department.
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.
"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".
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.
What vile and quite obviously delusional people!
I seriously doubt he ever tried to hack SCN.
https://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/
Here’s an HN discussion from a few years ago.
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"
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.
RIP.
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 wife might agree or disagree with you, depending on the day.
I've always loved his lockpicking business card: https://www.mitnicksecurity.com/kevin-mitnicks-famous-lockpi...
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
I wrote "Free Kevin Mitnick!" with a black marker on my tshirt and was walking around my town proudly wearing it. Nobody understood anything about it but it made me feel like involved into some secret society.
Next year I convinced parents to pay for me learning QBasic (the only computer course in my town back then), and 3 years later I got into university on an Information Security specialization. Some of my friends say that I was the reason why they got into IT. Well, I guess we all owe that to Kevin.
I talked to him in person once at a conference and was happy like a little puppy, but being socially awkward as I am I didn't tell him that he is my childhood hero. I hope now when he has trandcended to the cloud, he has a bird's eye view on our realm and can see all the positive impact that he had had on my life and lives of people I've influenced...
The very brightest memories
I wrote more about it here:
https://henrikwarne.com/2015/12/27/social-engineering-from-k...
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.
Thanks for all you taught us Kevin, and thanks for being a beacon of curiosity and exploration.
Although I haven't seen an "official" statement, I believe that this news is legitimate.
RIP Kevin.
To this day I know the difference between a cracker and a hacker :)
RIP.
Sad to see, he was way too young to go. RIP
He was so meticulous is setting up new identities and moving to random places around the country to avoid the authorities. But would then log back into his previously compromised systems in a way that would expose his current geographic location. It always seemed like such a glaring hole in his otherwise well thought out personal opsec. I'm sure the story was more complicated than what appeared in the press at the time, or in the 2600 knock-off zines that were going around at the time, or in his books. It always confused me. I could never figure out if that was an oversight, or he just wasn't aware he was being watched.
I think I share a similar pendulum swinging feelings about km as other folks here, especially as his story unfolded across many different phases of my life: from adulation as a teen, to realizing that he was just another a*hole who would lie to your face to get what they want. Recently it has swung waaay back the other way -- especially as more of our access to customer service for critical aspects of our lives get buried behind obstructionist systems -- to understanding that we always need people who can tear any system apart.
As an addendum...I think the term hacker should be handed to the sys admin that started was instrumental in getting km located by (If my foggy mind remembers correcly) by emailing logs or log stats to himself and noticing that size was shrinking so someone was deleting them -- that blew my mind at the time.
He will be missed.
He was not prepared for four years of solitary and unconstitutional delaying of his trial. He did not ultimately have a game plan for what to do if his opponent cheated.
If the government had acted justly (that is, according to their own laws) he would have been found innocent and walked at his trial. However, the prosecutors lied, they cheated, corrupted the system they claimed to protect, and that was it. Game over, no redos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&act...
Hope he is alive and well. May he rest in peace if not
RIP
Hopefully our paths will cross again.
He was definitely a legend.
[0] http://wiki.cas.mcmaster.ca/index.php/The_Mitnick_attack#The...
Remember when Yahoo! was defaced with a "FREE KEVIN" message? Good times.
RIP Kevin.
He said "that's really cool" and signed a copy of Ghost in the Wires for me.
Really incredible guy. Rest in peace my friend.
I had a printout of the MIT guide to lock picking and used to try out stuff with some hand crafted "tools". I'd forgotten about Mitnick and later (probably via. Slashdot) came across his site again and saw this https://www.mitnicksecurity.com/kevin-mitnicks-famous-lockpi... which suddenly brought back the same image I had formed about him. Playful to the extent of not caring, irreverent, and curious.
Rest in Peace.
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.)
Just out of curiosity, does anyone have anything else corroborating this? Everywhere seems to be sharing the same dignitymemorial.com link.
All software engineers are now more vulnerable with Kevin gone. Stay paranoid friends, now more than ever.
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 :)
I am very sad to hear that he's gone. RIP Legend.
I never did get to meet Kevin, but it's clear that I missed out on an amazing person. RIP Mr Mitnick.
RIP dude.
There they make it clear that the New York Times columnist and book author John Markoff made up absolutely everything.
The movie "Track Down" (US) / "Takedown" is also full of BS.
https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wires-Adventures-Worlds-Wanted-...
An icon for many of us here. I feel worse for his mate and unborn child. Losing a mate is very, very, hard. Going through that myself...
Sorry to hear that
Never met the guy but you’re damn right I know who he is. And I come from the middle of nowhere.
His books "The Art of {Deception,Invisibility,Intrusion}" are absolute bangers for most of the people here. Can't recommend enough
Thanks Kevin. RIP.
The man who could whistle the nuclear codes has passed away. And now maybe I can strike the social engineering village before the sun comes up.
I hope his family is doing well.
I first heard of Kevin Mitnick in the early 2000's when I was watching "The Broken" with Kevin Rose and he interviewed Mitnick in one of the episodes.
I was 14-15 years old at the time! Wow!
A link to his famous business card which doubled as a lock pick kit. Rip Kevin.
https://boingboing.net/2023/07/19/kevin-mitnick-1963-2023.ht...
Can’t believe there is no black banner. This is hackernews.
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.
Does anyone know where this samples comes from?
I do like some of his approaches to life. There are some similarities between him and Richard Feynman.
Who comes to mind if I would like to follow some still living people that has this rebellious, "joire de vivre" way of life?
May he rest in peace.
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.
Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book and Kevin Mittnick taught me the noun form meaning of exploit. RIP
I was tempted to send a box of donuts as a gift... but instead I think I'll send the two dozen as a donation to the EJI instead.
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.
RIP
Read Ghost in the Wire as a young man and it inspired me to get into computers
Rest in Peace, brother
He was kind of role model for me, i was inspired by the way he saw the world, in everything he was able to see hole and flaw and how to exploit them. Where "normal" people just don't think about it.
His stories and mischiefs will be missed for me.
he gave us permission to explore the darker underbelly of technology and was emblematic of a freer (free as in freedom) time on the internet. yes, he was a convicted criminal, but he was also a complex character who loved to solve puzzles and his competitive nature ultimately drove his work.
the famous story of the fbi showing up at his house and kevin saying, "no problem, I'll report to the fbi office tomorrow"... yeah, that didn't work, but he was the type to try and that was beautiful.
RIP Kevin, we’ll miss you so much.
Hope he can hack his way into heaven.
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.
RIP
What a strange way to phrase it. Why don't they mention his sister first? Is it plain sexism or were they in bad terms?
I have a brother-in-law; my wife's brother.
Raising a child is more than genetics.
RIP
"FREE KEVIN" :'(
Too young
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.
A name of inspiration, igniting curiosity across ages. And of course, the only crime was curiosity.
RIP
RIP Kevin
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.
A hacker far before it was cool.
A pioneer in so many ways.
A hero as I was growing up.
o7
Pancreatic cancer is terrible. Hacking the disease with RNA would be the better homage possible to Mitnick. Lets pray for the vaccine coming soon.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/mrna-va...
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.
"Sorry, you have been blocked"
"You are unable to access dignitymemorial.com"
;)
No disrespect to the dead, but I always thought he kind of lived in a lame timeframe. It used to be a lot easier to do what he did. If you check the terminal logs, he was a script kiddie at best (I know he's more famous for the social engineering). How many CVEs did Mitnick have to his name..? (AFAIK, zero)
Anyway, I'm prepared to get some downvotes but do check out the logs. It's pretty entertaining regardless.
