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A man was gifted his dream car by Kevin Mitnick, who he helped put in prison

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Re: A man was gifted his dream car by Kevin Mitnick, who he helped put in prison

#11

Post by topham »

mcfunley wrote: post #6

I 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. Cou…

The hero worship of him makes me physically ill, always has.

He did cost people their jobs though, so I guess he's a good person.

Re: A man was gifted his dream car by Kevin Mitnick, who he helped put in prison

#12

Post by kingforaday »

mcfunley wrote: post #6

I 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. Cou…

> "He was a hacker-turned-security consultant who, later in life, helped shape the modern white-hat."

They left out convicted criminal.

Re: A man was gifted his dream car by Kevin Mitnick, who he helped put in prison

#13

Post by firefax »

kingforaday wrote: post #12
mcfunley wrote: post #6

I 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. Cou…

> "He was a hacker-turned-security consultant who, later in life, helped shape the modern white-hat." They left out convicted criminal.

I have so many stories about his absolutely terrible behavior at conferences. He once refused to pay the entry fee to a charity event and had to be physically ejectedy.

Absolutely better at PR than any actual work, pay careful attention and none of his early stuff was particularly novel, from a technical perspective.

But for whatever reason, we venerate him just because he was victimized by the state. The world is not a dichotomy -- sometimes bad things happen to bad people.

Re: A man was gifted his dream car by Kevin Mitnick, who he helped put in prison

#14

Post by firefax »

kkaske wrote: post #2

I'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.

>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.

Re: A man was gifted his dream car by Kevin Mitnick, who he helped put in prison

#15

Post by the_af »

mcfunley wrote: post #6

I 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. Cou…

Kevin's security company is also a mess, and the training videos they produce are embarrassing at best.

I understand he probably just lent his name to the company (though he did show up in some of the videos), but still...

Re: A man was gifted his dream car by Kevin Mitnick, who he helped put in prison

#16

Post by ww520 »

I 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.

Re: A man was gifted his dream car by Kevin Mitnick, who he helped put in prison

#18

Post by [deleted] »

mcfunley wrote: post #6

I 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. Cou…

[deleted]

Re: A man was gifted his dream car by Kevin Mitnick, who he helped put in prison

#19

Post by anthk »

the_af wrote: post #15
mcfunley wrote: post #6

I 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. Cou…

Kevin's security company is also a mess, and the training videos they produce are embarrassing at best. I understand he probably just lent his name to the company (though he did show up in some of the videos), but still...

This is what happens when the 90's PC community renamed crackers as hackers. Proper hackers would have been the ITS/WAIS ones doing crazy things with computers for its era.
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