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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

#31

Post by coryrc »

firefax wrote: post #26
colechristensen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He got all of the "Free Kevin" attention because of how long he was left in jail before trial and then being stuck in solitary confinement after sentencing for months. If he had been treated fairly by the justice system he wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention. He was also autistic, a lot of the behavior can be explained through that lens.

>He got all of the "Free Kevin" attention because of how long he was left in jail before trial and then being stuck in solitary confinement after sentencing for months. That was uncalled for on the part of DOJ. >He was also autistic, a lot of the behavior can be explained through that lens. I'm autistic. Maybe I should go commit a bunch of felonies to increase my chances of a good job and stature in the hacker commun…

> I have friends who did things like take a gap year to travel the world or met their spouses on nights I stayed in to study, and some evenings when browsing HN I feel very sad that I wasted my 20s on a society that does not care about me.

I'm glad you have finally recognized the problem.

Stop living for your idea of others and start living for yourself.

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

#32

Post by nunley »

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 was to make the world safer, and making people pay attention to risk didn't make him a lot of friends. All the hate I am reading here is just sad.

If you hate Kevin and did not know Kevin, I feel bad for you. Hate is an expensive emotion, even when you're just being a keyboard warrior. It should be reserved for people who have really wronged you. Kevin is not with us anymore. The hate is hurting you, not him. And he has a son who will read this someday. Have a heart.

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

#33

Post by colechristensen »

firefax wrote: post #26
colechristensen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He got all of the "Free Kevin" attention because of how long he was left in jail before trial and then being stuck in solitary confinement after sentencing for months. If he had been treated fairly by the justice system he wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention. He was also autistic, a lot of the behavior can be explained through that lens.

>He got all of the "Free Kevin" attention because of how long he was left in jail before trial and then being stuck in solitary confinement after sentencing for months. That was uncalled for on the part of DOJ. >He was also autistic, a lot of the behavior can be explained through that lens. I'm autistic. Maybe I should go commit a bunch of felonies to increase my chances of a good job and stature in the hacker commun…

Kevin was famous for being mistreated by the DoJ and writing some books which were perhaps not particularly true in hindsight. After he got out of jail and rejoined the community he lost a lot of respect for being himself, though it's not impossible that years of imprisonment and a long time in solitary had some permanent negative effects. In other words... you shouldn't envy Kevin's life.

For the rest: nothing's stopping you from having fun, regardless of age.

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

#34

Post by reinitctxoffset »

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…

I would petition all other community members to appreciate the gravity of the parent's comment.

Speaking for myself as someone very early in my journey during the time when Mitnick was still active as a grey hat: he advanced our thinking about security and the nature of trust itself in ways that have never been more timely.

Paradoxically he profited personally far more as a white hat than he ever did in the grey area, his motivations were clearly not extractive. The authorities compelled him to go do lucrative things! (after persecuting him mercilessly).

RIP Kevin. We are ill equipped for the vulns of the AI, but without you we'd be helpless.

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

#35

Post by jjulius »

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…

In case folk don't connect the dots, this appears to be Shawn Nunley from the article.

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

#36

Post by firebot »

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

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

#37

Post by esikich »

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 didn't breach us the way we wanted him to do it so it was dumb." Idk man, sounds like you locked your doors but left the windows open. That's the point of these things.

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

#38

Post by ww520 »

alex1138 wrote: post #28
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.

Yes but AFAIUI Mitnick was upset Shimomura had the full weight of the police on his side, right? He used techniques that shouldn't have been available to him Interesting fact about Shimomura, he was a student of Feynman's

I think he didn't know cellular well enough and thought a wireless phone was unlocatable because it was mobile and not tied down to a landline. As a physicist, Shimomura would have known all about radio and signal. He just used old WW2 tech of radio triangulation to find the location of the cell phone radio transmitter. It didn't help that cell phones were rare back then and the signal of his cell transmitter frequency was standing out like a sore thumb.

Regarding the full weight of the police, Shimomura did have an easier time to convince the ISP and phone companies to give him access to the logs. He was able to ask the cellular company to locate the cell tower where Mitnick's cell phone connected and traced him to the general area. If Mitnick had been careful, he could have hacked into the ISP/phone companies and erased all his access logs.

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

#39

Post by Barrin92 »

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 business is to engineering what chiropractics is to medicine.

He leaned pretty heavily into monetizing his own image and for a lot of people what he did became synonymous with the word 'hacking' in a not particularly positive way and critising that isn't hate.

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

#40

Post by 1970-01-01 »

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…

This story is itself evidence that Kevin had good parts to him. This 911 GTS is not some shit joke prize.
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