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Kevin Mitnick Hacked California Law in 1983

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Re: Kevin Mitnick Hacked California Law in 1983

#31

Post by fallowkevin »

jack_pp wrote: post #20
fallowkevin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is IRC still a thing and if so what's a good one to join? (I always avoided it for... uh... "opsec" but realizing I might be missing out on some things...)

idk about black hat stuff but I owe a huge amount of gratitude to the freenode (now irc.libera.chat) community that helped me learn C++ 12 years ago and to the #linux / #debian / #arch-linux channels to which I go for help even to this day.

I feel like people dichotomize too much... I would never don a black hat, but the world is much grayer than some make it out to be.

I simply wish to explore friend :-)

Re: Kevin Mitnick Hacked California Law in 1983

#33

Post by nbk_2000 »

mindcrime wrote: post #9
notadev wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FREE KEVIN

Funny you would mention that. To this very day I'm rocking one of those stickers on my laptop. It's an interesting conversation starters at times... https://fogbeam.com/phil_laptop.jpg

I regret losing my "Phreak Heaven" variant of that sticker

Re: Kevin Mitnick Hacked California Law in 1983

#34

Post by [deleted] »

nibbleshifter wrote: post #27
fallowkevin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>FREE KEVIN > PUT KEVIN BACK Registered a throwaway over Tor just for this thread. Kevin shouldn't be in prison, because prisons should be abolished, but be careful where you put... that . There's a notorious story about him being physically ejected from a fundraiser for refusing to pay the entry. (Redacting some details to stick to the fun parts) On my end, I was working my way up to maybe flirting with someone I'd…

> I was in the corner being aggressively hit on by John "Cap N Crunch" Draper I recall being specifically warned about him early in my conference attending. Dudes creepy as all fuck. At later events he was eventually banned.

[deleted]

Re: Kevin Mitnick Hacked California Law in 1983

#35

Post by fallowkevin »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #29
cryptoz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have that business card and also it is a prized possession haha. I met him at The Last HOPE in nyc about 10 years ago ( it wasn’t the last hope in the end) and got one there. Almost lost it at airport security once so I keep it at home now.

I met him briefly years ago at CES, it was like meeting a childhood hero. I confess I was really excited..

The one time I met him he told me to go fuck myself.

(I was taping his talk, pro bono for the con, and asked him to speak into the mic for a sound check since we'd had issues with the previous speaker.)

Re: Kevin Mitnick Hacked California Law in 1983

#36

Post by blep_ »

noman-land wrote: post #23
hrunt wrote: post #19

As someone with a software development background, I always found legal language very interesting. It is like a very verbose, programming language. All sorts of words and phrases have very specific meanings that, when arranged in a certain order, produce specific, reproducible outcomes. Sections of contracts and laws reference other sections by name and reference, and the whole document (or set of documents) gets int…

I have felt this way as well and wonder why we can't encode laws into some sort of machine code and study it, test it, iterate it, debug it, and optimize it like we do with computer programs.

People tried that. Unfortunately, it was immediately doomed because it was a blockchain thing.

More seriously, this means you also have to accurately encode all the things the laws refer to, even when those things are vague judgement calls. It's easy to say "you can only have a noncompete agreement if it doesn't make it unreasonably difficult to find another job in the same industry", but hard to express "unreasonably difficult" or "same industry" with the kind of precision we expect from code. A sufficiently evil company would just pay a lawyer for a few days to find a loophole in whatever definitions you can think of.

There's a reason the primary use of this is cryptocurrency conversion - it's a lot easier to enumerate all the failure modes in "give me n of A and I will give you m of B".

Re: Kevin Mitnick Hacked California Law in 1983

#37

Post by mftb »

thelittleone wrote: post #8
tiffanyh wrote: post #3

He was an idol within the 2600 community, for those who remind that. 2600 was the original “hacker news”.

2600 was amazing along with early phrack. @Efnet around that time was a lot of fun and learning.

2600 is still around, I believe[0]. The PO Box Address at the bottom of that page matches a paper copy of the summer 93 issue I have around here somewhere.

[0]https://2600.com

Re: Kevin Mitnick Hacked California Law in 1983

#38

Post by WalterBright »

hrunt wrote: post #19

As someone with a software development background, I always found legal language very interesting. It is like a very verbose, programming language. All sorts of words and phrases have very specific meanings that, when arranged in a certain order, produce specific, reproducible outcomes. Sections of contracts and laws reference other sections by name and reference, and the whole document (or set of documents) gets int…

I attended a computing conference in LA a few years ago where someone presented a paper that turned legal phrases into code, and was able prove theorems from it. She suggested it was a way to mathematically look for "bugs" in the legal documents.

I thought it was the most fascinating talk in the conference.

Re: Kevin Mitnick Hacked California Law in 1983

#39

Post by fallowkevin »

nibbleshifter wrote: post #27
fallowkevin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>FREE KEVIN > PUT KEVIN BACK Registered a throwaway over Tor just for this thread. Kevin shouldn't be in prison, because prisons should be abolished, but be careful where you put... that . There's a notorious story about him being physically ejected from a fundraiser for refusing to pay the entry. (Redacting some details to stick to the fun parts) On my end, I was working my way up to maybe flirting with someone I'd…

> I was in the corner being aggressively hit on by John "Cap N Crunch" Draper I recall being specifically warned about him early in my conference attending. Dudes creepy as all fuck. At later events he was eventually banned.

He was banned ten years after I interacted with him. I actually was asked to leave a vendor party I was trying to network at for "starting drama" when I told others not to be alone with him. (Fuck you, Duo.)

Re: Kevin Mitnick Hacked California Law in 1983

#40

Post by ricktdotorg »

anonymousiam wrote: post #6

Ghost in the Wires is a great book. It's full of fabulous stories like this, all true. Upon reading it years ago, I finally learned the explanation for why Netcom never billed me for years of continuous dial-up CSLIP service. Kevin had hacked Netcom and deleted their accounting records.

wow, would that have been 90/91? while at UK uni a few of us had a shell account at Netcom. we'd X25 from our uni to a telnet relay in london and used netcom for unix/shell access. we did not get reliably billed for a long time! thought at the time it was just UK/US banking issues. i wonder if Mitnick was why! will have to re-read the book. thanks for the memory!
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