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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

#51

Post by bawolff »

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…

Isn't he famous for social engineering/physical security type things? If you hire an expert in X, you are probably going to get X.

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

#52

Post by mcfunley »

bawolff wrote: post #51
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…

Isn't he famous for social engineering/physical security type things? If you hire an expert in X, you are probably going to get X.

Yeah I agree, caveat emptor and all that. The blameful framing is bad work product though.

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

#55

Post by nunley »

Barrin92 wrote: post #39
nunley wrote: post #32

I'm going to defend Kevin here because I see a lot of comments from people I am sure have no valid reason to be hating on him. Kevin was particularly annoying because he never failed to penetrate a target. The reason that's annoying is it just takes one slip, one weak point, one inattentive admin and it's over. People will stay mad about that. I get it. But those who say he had no talent are just ignorant. His goal w…

>But those who say he had no talent are just ignorant. I don't think anyone says he had no talent, what rubs people the wrong way is that the thing he had talent for is the same thing that the people have who try to scam call your grandmother out of her pension money. You can be the world's greatest burglar, you're still a burglar. The whole cringy "social engineering" thing turned media persona and consulting busine…

That's just nonsense. First of all, social engineering was a small part of his work, and it's OK that you don't know that. But your totally blatant ignorance of what his career covered is exactly what I'm talking about.

Look, I know that people form their opinions in a bubble. All I am saying here is you should expand your bubble. You know nothing about Kev. Again, that's OK, but it also means you should try to understand what you're hating.

You'd try to make money on your image if you could, I'm betting. Especially if you had been put in prison and left there with no bail hearing, and put in solitary confinement for 'hoarding tuna' in your cell. For 9 months. While your father died. This was not a normal treatment of any person in custody.

Kev was a good person. Full stop. Just as curious as all of us in that era.

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

#56

Post by appden »

Ghost in the Wires is one of all time favorite reads, and I still hope to see it as a dramatized film. It would be a fun “period piece” taking the audience through the 80’s and early 90’s, with some hilarious social engineering scenes (kinda like Catch Me If You Can) and tense moments where the audience roots for Kevin. I really think a film adaptation would help introduce his story to a new generation and be a nice tribute to his legacy.

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

#57

Post by foobarbecue »

appden wrote: post #56

Ghost in the Wires is one of all time favorite reads, and I still hope to see it as a dramatized film. It would be a fun “period piece” taking the audience through the 80’s and early 90’s, with some hilarious social engineering scenes (kinda like Catch Me If You Can) and tense moments where the audience roots for Kevin. I really think a film adaptation would help introduce his story to a new generation and be a nice…

Except actually real whereas Frank Abagnale fabricated all of his supposed cons (read The Greatest Hoax).

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

#58

Post by billehunt »

nunley wrote: post #32

I'm going to defend Kevin here because I see a lot of comments from people I am sure have no valid reason to be hating on him. Kevin was particularly annoying because he never failed to penetrate a target. The reason that's annoying is it just takes one slip, one weak point, one inattentive admin and it's over. People will stay mad about that. I get it. But those who say he had no talent are just ignorant. His goal w…

Shawn and I worked together at Novell back when this was going down. It was fascinating at the time and more so in hindsight. FWIW, Shawn's a really good guy.

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

#59

Post by georgehotz »

For what it's worth, I'm George Hotz, and Kevin Mitnick's books were a big influence on me. I ran into him at a party at DEFCON one year and we talked for 20 minutes before I found out who he was. Gave me a lock pick business card. Cool guy.

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

#60

Post by aculver »

Since we're talking about Kevin Mitnick on Hacker News, I have to mention:

I recently re-read "Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier". It was published in 1991 and the first third of the book provides an early contemporary account of Kevin Mitnick. It's a great book that I first read in my high school library in the 90s and it completely captured my imagination.

However, I had never connected the dots that the subject of the last third of the book was Robert Tappan Morris, creator of the Morris worm, who went on to cofound Y Combinator! Paul Graham is also quoted in the book.

The book has aged pretty great. They added an updated epilogue in 1995 in the early part of the Free Kevin era, but honestly re-listening to the book in 2025, I was wondering where the updated Y Combinator epilogue was!

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