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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

#111

Post by walrus01 »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #99
firebot wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He mostly used social engineering. Not technical exploits. So that's how he succeeded. Call it crazy, but it worked.

And now all that shitty KnowBe4 nonsense we have to sit through every couple of months is all "What do you do if your manager phones you up and says they're on a business trip and need you to use the company credit card to buy Amazon gift cards", over and over and over. Bold of them to assume I'll answer the phone if I see my manager's number come up.

> What do you do if your manager phones you up and says they're on a business trip and need you to use the company credit card to buy Amazon gift cards"

If I've learned anything from the scambait people such as kitboga on youtube, if you're bored you play along with it, pretend to have acquired the gift cards, and then tell the "boss" you've scratched off and emailed their company address the codes, as the scammer on the phone wails "do not redeem! SIR DO NOT REDEEM!"

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

#112

Post by Tade0 »

As kids in the 90s in eastern Europe hardly anyone of us knew the name Kevin Mitnick, but if you were interested in computers at all, you'd certainly recall Condor.

I think this was the first time I heard someone being forbidden by court from accessing the internet. At the time we had like two, maybe three kids in class who even used dial up regularly.

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

#114

Post by lukan »

stavros wrote: post #109
lukan wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it a good place to meet future spouses? Because missing that that seems to be the main problem of the poster above.

Anywhere where you meet people is a good place to meet future spouses.

Maybe, but if I am looking for a female spouse, a mens conclave is probably not the best place to find one. (I would assume the audience there is largely male?)

But well, he also is looking for respect and regocnition among his peers and vienna is a nice city.

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

#115

Post by dmos62 »

dmos62 wrote: post #87
wjnc wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is a part about itsec I don’t understand in my firm. They run social engineering tests, but never notify management when individuals fail, only in general terms. While being psyopped needs to be activelly discussed among coworkers imho.

That's because susceptibility to attacks is a question of training. What would the goal of placing individual blame be? Shame? Drive them to seek training outside work? Further, if you periodically single out people, the organization will hate you.

I am surprised how controversial this is. I feel like I'm in that episode of Always Sunny in Philadeplhia where they decide to do an intervention by cornering and berating, while a mental health professional looks on terrified.

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

#116

Post by wjnc »

dmos62 wrote: post #87
wjnc wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is a part about itsec I don’t understand in my firm. They run social engineering tests, but never notify management when individuals fail, only in general terms. While being psyopped needs to be activelly discussed among coworkers imho.

That's because susceptibility to attacks is a question of training. What would the goal of placing individual blame be? Shame? Drive them to seek training outside work? Further, if you periodically single out people, the organization will hate you.

“Shame” is a big word. I wouldn’t shame a member of my team. Why would I!? They are great people. Same with “blame”. Everyone faults, everyone can be blamed something. That doesn’t change the basics of a person.

Giving people a chance to discuss, as adults and professionals, how they got sniped beats any second hand training and experience by miles.

Now we get to hear that x% of a sample failed including #y elevated privileges people. How will somewhat naive management handle that?

Sometimes I get a feeling many HN-ers work in ultra toxic environments. HR is not your friend, your manager is there to screw you over and the firm will fire you for pennies. That’s just not my experience in working.

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

#117

Post by vasco »

NonHyloMorph wrote: post #94
vasco wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame works for me. If I was ever the one that got sniped and my colleagues saw it I'd forever be paranoid about it. Like when my dad sat me down and told me that I couldn't keep losing hats all the time when I was a kid and that I wasn't a baby anymore and it was expensive, and that shame made me look behind me when I leave somewhere until today and stop losing stuff. Specially for security, yes, shame the personal…

"shame them in a positive way" Oh my. That's some HR type viciousness right here. (⌒▽⌒)

Maybe you just were never carefully told about something you did wrong in a way that everyone feels like they learned from it. The top reply to my comment put it better than I could, I think there was an overcorrection. I believe in fixing the process first, but there are situations where shame is the right solution. The current en-vogue thing of pretending all is good but penciling in that person for the next layoffs is I think worse than a bit of shame if that fixes the problem and avoids more drastic actions later on. Silicon Valley is very PC but then lays off without remorse so its funny to see this combo of "we care about never hurting your feelings all the way to the point where we fire you without a care in the world".

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

#118

Post by [deleted] »

ww520 wrote: post #16

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.

[deleted]

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

#119

Post by [deleted] »

aculver wrote: post #60

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 do…

[deleted]

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

#120

Post by [deleted] »

foobarbecue wrote: post #57
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).

[deleted]
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