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Kevin Mitnick has died

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Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#471

Post by jjkaczor »

mcv wrote: post #415
ChuckMcM wrote: post #193

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 enth…

> I was not aware he was ill. Always sad to hear people that are taken by cancer. 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…

It took my dad last year, diagnosis in April, gone by mid-June. It was so aggressive he chose "medical assistance in death" (MAID), because he didn't want to be in hospitals all-the-time. He had half-completed the process, then had a stroke on June 4th, where he was then admitted to hospital. The stroke cause aphasia, so he couldn't communicate very well (speech was very disjointed, but he could understand everyone) - they brough in a speech pathologist, after a couple weeks they we able to confirm that he still wanted 'MAID', so - I had to make the decision as to when. (And - I agreed, spending time in hospitals, fighting the inevitable was antithetic to his whole personality)

Cleared by 2nd round of medical professionals to make the MAID decision on a Wednesday, so - we scheduled for Friday - he passed away naturally Thursday morning.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#472

Post by madacol »

madacol wrote: post #459
jfk13 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking-health/m...

My takeaway from that article are these important criticisms: - Correlation is not causation: A medical error, followed by a death does not implies medical error caused death - The study that claim is based (BMJ analysis), suggest that 62% of US hospital deaths are caused by medical errors. Which seems hard to believe, especially having similar studies instead suggesting a 3.6% in UK, 4.6% in Norway, and 5% in a meta…

TL;DR in UK medical errors seem to be the 7th Cause leading factor

I did some maths (Or Code interpreter did? but I did verified unsourced numbers are in the ball park, at least for UK)

So for UK the estimate of deaths by medical errors is ~11k deaths, which puts it at the 7th cause factor according to this chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-number-of-deaths-b... just below dementia and above liver desease

---

Keep in mind that I am not sure if the 3.6% figure really means causation, I am tired!

GPT4 chat link:https://chat.openai.com/share/7d235295-c149-45f0-ac3d-2a0cfd...

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#473

Post by eduction »

josh2600 wrote: post #48

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 veri…

He has the CEO’s number and successfully calls him, and through some miracle gets through directly to ask this trivial question — as opposed to getting the number from the assistant who answers his phone - sure ok but then under what pretense does he then ask him to repeat his phone number? “Please repeat the phone number I just dialed.”

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.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#475

Post by birdyrooster »

Aerbil313 wrote: post #457
fsckboy wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 judg…

The comment you’re replying to was not serious. It’s irony highlighting the nonsensicality of the replied sentiment.

I think their statement stands pretty well as a serious one because credit is social, and paid to those who play by a set of rules. If you are a physically abusive person, society will discredit you. Case in point Will Smith.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#477

Post by marcus0x62 »

withinboredom wrote: post #424
ChuckMcM wrote: post #193

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 enth…

Pro-tip: CFAA only applies if you cross state lines between you and the server. Otherwise, state laws applies and there are/were some states that never passed any 'anti-hacking' laws. Source: experience.

Pro-er tip: if you are in the US and access a computer over any kind of service provider network (Internet, leased line, etc.) you should operate on the assumption your traffic is crossing state lines and the CFAA applies to your activities.

Tools like traceroute cannot show you where your traffic is physically being sent because: there may be no geographic information in the router reverse DNS records, that information might not be accurate if it is present, and layer 3 tools cannot show you the underlying layer 1/2 path (which might be wildly different than the layer 3 hops would suggest.)

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#478

Post by larntz »

noSyncCloud wrote: post #447
detourdog wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Schwab my voice is my password. Is how Schwab authenticates me by voice. That demonstrates to me schwab knows they need a voice passphrase that wouldn't be used in passing or without raising suspicion.

This comment is very hard to parse, but after reading it, I feel a general sense of relief that I'll never use Schwab.

At first I thought this was a reference to the movie Sneakers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zVgWpVXb64), but after searching it seems Wells Fargo also does this, https://www.wellsfargo.com/privacy-security/voice-verificati....

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#479

Post by moritonal »

eduction wrote: post #473
josh2600 wrote: post #48

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 veri…

He has the CEO’s number and successfully calls him, and through some miracle gets through directly to ask this trivial question — as opposed to getting the number from the assistant who answers his phone - sure ok but then under what pretense does he then ask him to repeat his phone number? “Please repeat the phone number I just dialed.” The phone number contains all the digits needed to recreate the bank account num…

Mitnick could have been hired as a advisor for their system, personally by the CEO.

He calls the CEO to ask a "personal question" so to skip the assistant, asks something innocent, then let's the CEO he has a new number and provides a fake number. He asks the CEO to confirm he heard the number correctly, but it's a bad line, so speak clearly please.

The "new phone number" has all the digits of the bank account he's trying to hack. The account is likely the account number that he's being paid for the consultancy work with. He could have got this simply by asking to confirm from which account he'd be paid from to confirm the transaction.

He is asked to report his review of the new security system to the board (given it was a large investment by the Bank, or just the wrong word used) and the architect would of course be invited to his own project's review?

The board then asked Mitnick to design a new system and said that cost wouldn't be an issue.

That all seems pretty easy to put together?

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#480

Post by TheBigSalad »

dryrun wrote: post #256
jboy55 wrote: post #210

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…

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.

Any time a big hack makes the news it turns out that either some system had no security, they used social engineering, or a disgruntled former employee. Hackers aren't sitting there with a super computer in a Guy Fawkes mask trying to decrypt data. The scams are the same now as back then.
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