Very sad that he did not see his first child.
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Kevin Mitnick has died
111–120 of 666 posts
Re: Kevin Mitnick has died
#112dang / mods: if anyone passing deserves the HN black banner, I think Mitnick deserves the banner.
As one of the people whose credit card number was stolen from Netcom, I would strongly object to this. I'm not here to speak poorly of the dead, but I'm definitely here to judge those who think too highly of him.
As someone too young to have a credit card in 1995, I’m curious: was its theft more of a “big deal” back then?
My Amex account number was stolen a month ago. It took me three minutes on the call with a rep to get it locked + a new card issued. I think I spent more time and effort on the phone with my dentist later that week.
Re: Kevin Mitnick has died
#113[deleted]
Re: Kevin Mitnick has died
#114dang / mods: if anyone passing deserves the HN black banner, I think Mitnick deserves the banner.
As one of the people whose credit card number was stolen from Netcom, I would strongly object to this. I'm not here to speak poorly of the dead, but I'm definitely here to judge those who think too highly of him.
I'm sorry to hear that you suffered from the event, and although I'm sure you're not the only one with a negative experience, I do think the positive experiences people had from interacting/watching/hearing/meeting/reading Mitnick outweigh the negative ones.
Re: Kevin Mitnick has died
#115Serious question: why revere Mitnick, but not someone like SBF? Mitnick is admired for his technical skill and social engineering prowess, but the same argument could be made that SBF is also exceptional in this regard on an even larger scale. Both are (alleged) criminals. Genuinely curious what makes Mitnick morally good in the eyes of HN. Was it his redemption arc as a “white hat”?
The term "hacker" describes someone skilled at tricking systems into doing what they can't. Mitnick was not only one of the first popular hackers he also had many famous exploits. His arrest was a major rallying cry for the hacker community at large (now known as the overly corporate "infosec community"). There's no redemption arc. You do not need to do what society considers "good" to be considered righteous. There'…
> There's no such thing as objective moral and ethical good.
I'm curious how your framework handles some particularly unpleasant examples.
E.g., is there nothing universally wrong with what Hitler / Mengele did to Jews? Or how about raping, torturing, and then killing toddlers?
I have trouble accepting an ethics in which there's no real basis for telling such people that what they're doing is genuinely wrong.
(I apologize if these examples seem like straw-men. It's possible I don't understand your original point.)
Re: Kevin Mitnick has died
#116Wow. My first encounter with Kevin Mitnick was a random one.. joining one of my school's IRC channels one day there was there guy on it who was bragging about how he had broken into our central AIX server, would read the admins' e-mail all the time and for every hole they plugged he would just find another one.
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.
Re: Kevin Mitnick has died
#117Watch "Freedom downtime". 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.
And read "Ghost in the Wires":
https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wires-Adventures-Worlds-Wanted-...
Re: Kevin Mitnick has died
#118May his memory be a blessing.
Re: Kevin Mitnick has died
#119Serious question: why revere Mitnick, but not someone like SBF? Mitnick is admired for his technical skill and social engineering prowess, but the same argument could be made that SBF is also exceptional in this regard on an even larger scale. Both are (alleged) criminals. Genuinely curious what makes Mitnick morally good in the eyes of HN. Was it his redemption arc as a “white hat”?
Real people lost significant amounts of money thanks to SBF. I know of no comparable case involving Mitnick.
Re: Kevin Mitnick has died
#120[flagged]
If you and your wife really love each other and your wife really want to have a piece of the love you had in form of another family member, why not?
Is the submission for someone who just died the right place to write something you already know is harsh? Considering the kind of person Kevin was, I'm sure a bunch of his friends are on here, reading these very comments so maybe just a tiny bit of respect would be suitable.