Kevin Mitnick

Founder of Mitnick Security

• Born: August 6, 1963
• Place of Birth: Van Nuys, California
• Died: July 16, 2023
• Place of Death: Las Vegas, Nevada

Primary Company/Organization: Mitnick Security

Introduction

Kevin Mitnick was one of the most famous computer hackers in history. He became fascinated with breaking into mechanical and computer systems at an early age and progressed into hacking the computer networks of large companies, copying their software and reading their records, e-mails, and other private information. Like many other hackers, he was allegedly motivated by intellectual curiosity and the desire to demonstrate to corporate interests that their property was not as safe as they believed and did not wish to benefit materially from his crimes. After having been a convicted criminal and a fugitive, Mitnick reinvented himself as a computer security specialist and advised companies on how to repel hackers like him. He died of cancer in 2023.

Early Life

Kevin David Mitnick was born on August 6, 1963, in Van Nuys, California, and grew up in Los Angeles. He attended Monroe High School and then enrolled at the University of Southern California (USC). He has been described as a disempowered youngster from a lower middle-class background who viewed social engineering as a means of making friends and gaining acceptance and access to data and resources more exciting than his normal life.

The first indication of Mitnick's future career was his collusion with a bus driver to obtain a punch card machine that enabled him to use the bus system without paying. Over the next few years, he became associated with a series of so-called phone phreakers, who used interpersonal skills to telephone networks with a view to carrying out a series of stunts and practical jokes on individuals and organizations. When he was sixteen, Mitnick was given a telephone number that enabled him to access, through phreaking techniques, the RSTE/S network of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and copy the proprietary software found there. This was an act of theft. As is common with young hackers, Mitnick's subsequent career was marked by a combination of pranks and criminality, aligned with the risk-taking behavior often associated with young men. By the time he was nineteen, Mitnick had graduated to physical entry of the premises whose systems he and his colleagues had compromised, and such a venture in the Los Angeles COSMOS phone center of Pacific Bell resulted in extraction of passwords and meddling with records to permit subsequent future access. The social engineering aspect of this crime was more professionally managed than the physical infiltration, and the police were able to follow up several leads.

By that time, Mitnick seemed to have begun to confuse his virtual world exploits with genuine achievement and began using the handle Condor and to take ever greater risks. At USC, where he had already been in trouble for attempting to hack the university's part of the ARPANET system, he was caught trying to hack into the Pentagon from university premises and was sentenced to six months' imprisonment at a juvenile facility.

Life's Work

Mitnick's criminal career was comparatively short, and for most of that time he was under suspicion by various representatives of the authorities as a result of having been caught for previous crimes. The DEC escapade resulted in a twelve-month prison sentence for Mitnick, followed by three years of supervision; this latter measure is taken to try to prevent people with suspected addiction to computers and their illegal use from being able to commit further crimes. The measure has become more complex with the profusion of devices such as cellular telephones (which have more computing power than supposedly high-capacity research computers of a couple of decades ago); their ubiquitous use has made it increasingly difficult for people to lead fully functional lives without them. In Mitnick's case, the supervision was also shown to be ineffective.

Mitnick hacked the Pacific Bell database toward the end of his period of supervision, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Emboldened by his ability to confuse people regarding his location and who he really was, Mitnick embarked on a two-and-a-half-year period as a fugitive. Cloned cellular phones and surreptitiously arranged free telephone calls enabled him to maintain a low profile while on the run and, at the same time, continue his various activities. His desire to obtain access to proprietary software and copy it for no particular material benefit at the risk of a lengthy period of imprisonment appeared irrational and lended weight to the plea of computer addiction.

Eventually, in 1995, Mitnick was arrested as a part of a well-publicized police operation: The police were part of an attempt to convince the public that Mitnick and people like him were willing and able to undertake actions causing major damage to the country and its people. He served more than four years in detention before admitting to a small number of sentences and then being transferred to solitary confinement, apparently for symbolic purposes. He also received a three-year supervisory period after his release in 2000. His activities undoubtedly caused considerable expense and inconvenience to the organizations he targeted, leading to additional transaction costs for them and, hence, higher costs for everyone. Furthermore, in a world in which intellectual property rights have become resources to be fiercely defended in the United States, Mitnick's reading of personal e-mails and copying of software were considered serious offenses against not just individuals but corporations as well. All computer users have faced threats and additional costs and inconvenience as a result.

In addition to the technical damage from Mitnick's exploits, it is probable that the most important result of his activity was to make clear the importance of social engineering techniques to obtain access to sensitive or expensive proprietary data. Mitnick began his career as a phone phreaker: a person capable of calling people by telephone and using social skills to persuade the person called to yield access to a network. This may be accomplished, quite legally in fact, by persuading people to direct their web browsers to specific sites that then capture data from the user, which can subsequently be used to penetrate the system. The human element has always represented the potentially weakest spot in any security system, and many hackers find it convenient to exploit this fact, relying on the minor laziness and venality of individuals who will (for example) chase down apparent bargains using systems whose default settings they have not changed, thereby making their systems vulnerable. With the spread of Internet technology and the great expansion of social networking, many millions of people have been introduced to computer networks with little experience of the threats that might be involved. Mitnick has often appeared on media shows to talk about the issues involved and, whether intentionally or not, increase the overall awareness of the use of companies such as his.

After being released, Mitnick sought to support himself by making appearances in the media as owner of a computer security firm that aims to advise companies on how to resist the ill-intentioned efforts of people like him. He became the CEO of Mitnick Security Consulting, which advises Fortune 500 companies, as well as the "chief hacking officer" of KnowBe4, a security awareness training company. He is also a public speaker on cyber security issues. Mitnick died of pancreatic cancer on July 16, 2023, at the age of 59.

Personal Life

Mitnick was married to Bonnie Vitello from 1987 to 1990. He was the coauthor of three books, The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security (2003), The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers (2005), and The Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data (2017), as well as his autobiography, Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker (2011).

Bibliography

Gold, Steve. “Social Engineering Today: Psychology, Strategies and Tricks.” Network Security 11 (2010): 11–14. Print.

Greenberg, Andy. "Kevin Mitnick, Once the World's Most Wanted Hacker, Is Now Selling Zero-Day Exploits." Wired. Condé Nast, 24 Sept. 2014. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.

Mitnick, Kevin. "An Interview on Trump, Russians, and Blockchain with the World’s Most Famous Hacker." By Dean Takahashi. VentureBeat, 28 July 2018, venturebeat.com/2018/07/28/kevin-mitnick-an-interview-on-trump-russians-and-blockchain-with-the-worlds-most-famous-hacker/. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.

Mitnick, Kevin, and William L. Simon. The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers. Indianapolis: Wiley, 2005. Print.

Mitnick, Kevin, and William L. Simon. Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker. New York: Back Bay, 2012. Print.

“Prominent Hacker Mitnick Hacked.” BBC News. BBC, 11 Feb. 2003. Web. 20 July 2012.

Shimomura, Tsutomu, and John Markoff. Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw, by the Man Who Did It. New York: Hyperion, 1996. Print.

Traub, Alex. “Kevin Mitnick, Once the ‘Most Wanted Computer Outlaw,’ Dies at 59.” The New York Times, 20 July 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/technology/kevin-mitnick-dead-hacker.html. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.