> a 57-year-old man in the US has only a 50% chance of living to see their child reach 23 years of age Perhaps a clearer way to put it: a 57-year-old man in the US has a 50% chance of living to 80, which doesn't seem quite as shocking of a statement.
How many men are having their first child at 57? I’ll be well under 57 when my oldest child is 23.
I guess it is more of a millionaire thing.
The poster above mentioned that Mitnick had more than 9 million shares of some company sold for ~25 dollars each. That would be ~225 million.
Some human exploits can be patched, at least partially. 2FA with hardware authentication helps prevent people from leaking their own passwords and such. Phishing detectors help. Etc. I'm sad to admit my wife is better at this than me. Any time anyone she doesn't know tries to talk to her, she's quick to escape. I tend to try to politely decline, she just books it
There is no patch for human stupidity.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend vain.
Mitnick was a hacker hero of mine in my youth. I think I’ve understood his role as jester prior to conviction less as I’ve grown older, but there’s something about the boyhood charm of being so divorced from the potential consequences of one’s actions that is almost unique. Mitnick had so many stories that entranced the people around him. I heard one second hand of Mitnick dealing with a bank who had early voice veri…
How would he have known the CEO's bank account number? Did the CEO write him a check at some point? Or maybe a bank's CEO traditionally gets account number 1…
> How would he have known the CEO's bank account number?
How would he have known the CEO's bank account number? Did the CEO write him a check at some point? Or maybe a bank's CEO traditionally gets account number 1…
> How would he have known the CEO's bank account number? Welcome to the american banking system.
The european bank account numbers are often posted publicly. If you are a VAT payer, you're supposed to check that the account you send money to is registered with the business in the public registry. Otherwise you may be held liable for the receiver's tax fraud. Many companies also show them at their webpage to make it easier to get paid. See e.g. https://www.pre.cz/en/contacts/bank-details/
The account number should be just an ID, not authentication mechanism.
The Cyberthief and the Samurai (along with a few other books like Snow Crash, Hackers, the Cuckoos egg etc.) were books that made a big impact on me earlier in my life. It wasn't as much about facts as much as about building a virtual map of the digital world in my head. This was before I had actual access to a fast internet connection.
I had a printout of the MIT guide to lock picking and used to try out stuff with some hand crafted "tools". I'd forgotten about Mitnick and later (probably via. Slashdot) came across his site again and saw this https://www.mitnicksecurity.com/kevin-mitnicks-famous-lockpi... which suddenly brought back the same image I had formed about him. Playful to the extent of not caring, irreverent, and curious.
I was not aware he was ill. Always sad to hear people that are taken by cancer. I didn't know Kevin, but am friends with Tsutomu Shimomura who worked with authorities to get him arrested. Tsutomu worked with me a bit when I was at Sun trying to get a cryptographically secure subsystem into the base system specification. It was fun to listen to his side of this story. The 80's was a really weird time for computer enth…
I really enjoyed the book Takedown, about Shimomura's pursuit of Mitnick - I must have read it three or four times. I always wondered what happened to Shimomura, since he just seemed to drop out of sight after that book came out.
He started at company called Neofocal which had some really cool LED products. He also has had some health issues of his own to deal with. I last talked with him about 5 years ago in 2018.
I really enjoyed the book Takedown, about Shimomura's pursuit of Mitnick - I must have read it three or four times. I always wondered what happened to Shimomura, since he just seemed to drop out of sight after that book came out.
Shimomura was an egotistical asshole at the time. However, he was younger then and can hopefully acknowledge he was still learning about himself and wasn’t all-wise yet. I hope Shimomura can realize that Mitnick made him a better version of himself, both personally and professionally.
I've known him since the time of the events in his book, and can confirm. He was (and still is) an insufferable jerk. Not only does he self aggrandize himself in his book and web site, he pointlessly denigrates and takes down and insults the intelligence of his own colleagues in order to make himself look better (but the net effect was the opposite that he intended). And his book was a work of fiction. Nobody in their right mind would still want to work with him, especially after what happened with his LED company. I know somebody who made the mistake of working with him, and the costly lawsuits and recriminations between them have been dragging on for years, but Tsutomu's clearly the one who was at fault.