Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kevin Mitnick has died

dignitymemorial.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 666 posts

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#461

Post by nekoashide »

Mindwipe wrote: post #448
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…

> The damage that did to curious people growing up lost the US a significant fraction of their upcoming "innovation" talent. While not diminishing the folks who leaned in to the illegality of it. It is very difficult to see how that is the case when pretty much every functioning nation has substantially similar laws.

Nobody really cared in the scene about the DMCA until the FBI started taking people offline. Even then? It stopped nobody, people just got more security aware.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#462

Post by esprehn »

wittenbunk wrote: post #405
oefnak wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I on the other hand, don't understand why that first comment brought up children at all. Did Kevin have his first kid at 57?

Reading between the lines of the article he battled cancer for 14 months, but his wife is currently pregnant with their first kid. So they chose to have a kid knowing he was a 57 year old with an aggressive form of cancer.

Per other comments his cancer was in remission for a portion of that 14 months as well.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#463

Post by abledon »

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…

I wonder if the same scenario happened today, where a Kid has an interaction like that with a bank CEO, showing an insane vulnerability... The kid would just be sentenced to jail time and charged as an adult.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#464

Post by ChoHag »

lynx23 wrote: post #413
vintagedave wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have been downvoted, but I'm not sure that's reasonable. While doctors do generally do their best, sometimes medical care is not ideal. Your point though seems to be rooted in what happened to you as a child. I'm sorry to hear it. Could you share something about what happened please?

I expected nothing else but downvotes. It is pretty representative for the times that peopel can not stand viewpoints which do not align with their own. And no, I am not going to post my personal medical history on HN in detail. My short description of the incident is already personal enough. Besides, what would that help? Everyone picks their own convenient opinion these days, all that can come out of this is that p…

[dead]

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#465

Post by kevmo »

wittenbunk wrote: post #405
oefnak wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I on the other hand, don't understand why that first comment brought up children at all. Did Kevin have his first kid at 57?

Reading between the lines of the article he battled cancer for 14 months, but his wife is currently pregnant with their first kid. So they chose to have a kid knowing he was a 57 year old with an aggressive form of cancer.

Yikes.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#466

Post by master-lincoln »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #438
master-lincoln wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is well known that your psychological state influences the immune system a lot, and even from anecdata, you can see that people rapidly deteriorate when they give up. It is not a coincidence all these terms are used. citation needed. This meta study seems to not have found many biological links: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361287/

https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.cobeha.2019.01.009 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejon.2003.09.003 https://doi.org/10.1080/16506078809455814 https://doi.org/10.1037%2F0033-2909.130.4.601

the last link is the same study I linked to come to the opposite result of you :D

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#467

Post by seanhandley »

I met Kevin at a conference in Manchester where he cloned my HID access card and made an amazing demo of how easily this can get a company's workstations compromised with keyloggers. It was like watching a magician - he was a very skilled, funny, intelligent man with a wealth of knowledge. He gave me his business card (which is also a lock-picking kit) and I will treasure it.

Thanks for all you taught us Kevin, and thanks for being a beacon of curiosity and exploration.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#469

Post by dirtybirdnj »

abledon wrote: post #463
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…

I wonder if the same scenario happened today, where a Kid has an interaction like that with a bank CEO, showing an insane vulnerability... The kid would just be sentenced to jail time and charged as an adult.

Or have the Pinkertons sic'd on his home and family. Sup friendlyjordies?

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#470

Post by jdthedisciple »

ineedasername wrote: post #198
gkoberger wrote: post #6

Wow. He was only 59. I've always loved his lockpicking business card: https://www.mitnicksecurity.com/kevin-mitnicks-famous-lockpi... While I assume this is real, part of me does feel like a combination of how young he is and who is is leads me to be slightly skeptical. Assuming it's real, hopefully he would have appreciated the skepticism.

I had a similar thought, his social engineering abilities were very strong. If there was one person in the world willing to fake their own death to engineer access to something, it would have been him. A sad day.

> fake their own death to engineer access to something

Care to elaborate?

Post reply on HN