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Kevin Mitnick has died

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Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#361

Post by oli-g »

krab wrote: post #355
77pt77 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 shoul…

> The account number should be just an ID, not authentication mechanism.

Right? One of the many things (and I mean this without any hate whatsoever) I simply can't and will never understand about the US. A bank account number is your mailbox for receiving money. How does that country even operate when they build those mailboxes underground?

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#363

Post by jonahx »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #193

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…

> but the flamboyant way it was done scared the crap out of people who were both clueless and in a position to do stupid things. As a result we got the CFAA and the DMCA which are both some of the most ridiculous pieces of legislation after the so called "patriot" act.

> The damage that did to curious people growing up lost the US a significant fraction of their upcoming "innovation" talent.

The causal leap from flamboyant hackers to the DMCA/CFAA, and then to damaging the US's innovation talent feels... speculative.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#364

Post by DonHopkins »

larrywright wrote: post #276
iJohnDoe wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

His ego came through a bit in the book, but honestly that's a fairly common trait for young guys. I am also quite aware that the book only presents one side of the story and that Mitnick had quite a different perspective. I'm sure the truth lies somewhere in the middle. My enjoyment of the book was much more about the process they used to track him down, and the detailed description of them building tools to aid in t…

"A bit"? You think so? At the time, Tsutomu was enough of an adult to know not to be such an asshole, but that didn't stop him one bit.

Fuck the "boys will be boys" defense, and the people who still try to defend reprehensible behavior (and ultimately their own) by trotting out that old sexist canard.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#365

Post by ralgozino »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #322
chris_wot wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern version is "hang up".

The modern version should be 'put down' (does anyone still hang their phone on a wall nowadays?), and an even more modern one would be 'push red button' :)

don't push, tap :-D

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#366

Post by DonHopkins »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #359
larrywright wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's mired in lawsuits due to him being a jerk, so nobody's ever using any of those really cool LED products.

It's not that he dropped out of sight, it's that nobody wanted to work with him after reading his book.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#368

Post by alex-moon »

josh2600 wrote: post #48

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…

All of the stories in his books are like this. An existing seemingly sensible system is used in a creative way to get access. Every time you read one the creative solution is so elegant you just go "Ah, can't believe I didn't think of that" (and then go try it yourself obviously - had lots of fun as a teenager taking down websites/stealing ppl's passwords/etc as a party trick for my friends).

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#369

Post by pjmq »

Recently re-discovered him due to a Business Wars podcast episode on him. The dude deserves his own movie. Not a nice way to go but he'll surely be remembered.
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