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Kevin Mitnick has died

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Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#501

Post by samstave »

eduction wrote: post #473
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…

He has the CEO’s number and successfully calls him, and through some miracle gets through directly to ask this trivial question — as opposed to getting the number from the assistant who answers his phone - sure ok but then under what pretense does he then ask him to repeat his phone number? “Please repeat the phone number I just dialed.” The phone number contains all the digits needed to recreate the bank account num…

The 80s was a helluva drug.

Mitniks social engineering really formed me. And I did all sorts of nefarious stuff in the 80s, from mapping the 411 call centers, to the tape vending machine hack and other phreaking as I had an original captain crunch whistle to (not a hack) but there was a bunch of easy fraud to be had with “calling cards” back in the day

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#502

Post by stuff4ben »

eduction wrote: post #473
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…

He has the CEO’s number and successfully calls him, and through some miracle gets through directly to ask this trivial question — as opposed to getting the number from the assistant who answers his phone - sure ok but then under what pretense does he then ask him to repeat his phone number? “Please repeat the phone number I just dialed.” The phone number contains all the digits needed to recreate the bank account num…

This is the 90's and early 2000's. We didn't have the security processes and checks like we do nowadays. I worked for a bank right after the dot-com crash and was in charge of their internet banking web presence. I was witness to other employees passing around CDs and printouts containing the private information of hundreds, maybe thousands of customers. This was the era when your SSN was your userid. So these CDs contained SSNs, names, addresses, bank account numbers, passwords (not even encrypted, much less salted), etc. I moved into a new cubicle one time and saw these CDs just left over. It was a free-for-all for people like Kevin Mitnick.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#504

Post by thesuitonym »

booi wrote: post #56
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.

Can you still get one of these? It says send cash in the mail so… I’m skeptical

As of a few years ago, KnowBe4 was sending them out (well, a KnowBe4 branded version) to companies that partnered with them.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#505

Post by 4gotunameagain »

master-lincoln wrote: post #466
4gotunameagain wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why do I read the opposite?

  Brief naturalistic stressors (such as exams) tended to suppress cellular immunity while preserving humoral immunity. Chronic stressors were associated with suppression of both cellular and humoral measures  

  The more a stressor deviated from those parameters by becoming more chronic, however, the more components of the immune system were affected in a potentially detrimental way.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#506

Post by dools »

jeremy_carroll wrote: post #318

To be candid; fuck this narrative. Nobody "Beats" cancer based on sheer will. Same scenario as those that did not "Fight hard enough". It's a disease. It does not care about your wants, and needs.

It can make a pretty big difference if you have lots of money though.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#507

Post by saary »

jjkaczor wrote: post #471
mcv wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was not aware he was ill. Always sad to hear people that are taken by cancer. It was pancreatic cancer, which is the deadliest cancer. It kills very quickly and as far as I know, it's impossible to cure. It killed my mom: 3 months between diagnosis and death. She didn't want treatment because it couldn't save her; it would only postpone the inevitable and she didn't want to spend the rest of her days in hospitals…

It took my dad last year, diagnosis in April, gone by mid-June. It was so aggressive he chose "medical assistance in death" (MAID), because he didn't want to be in hospitals all-the-time. He had half-completed the process, then had a stroke on June 4th, where he was then admitted to hospital. The stroke cause aphasia, so he couldn't communicate very well (speech was very disjointed, but he could understand everyone)…

Thank you for sharing, sorry for your loss.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#508

Post by j0hnyl »

puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #486
mcv wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was not aware he was ill. Always sad to hear people that are taken by cancer. It was pancreatic cancer, which is the deadliest cancer. It kills very quickly and as far as I know, it's impossible to cure. It killed my mom: 3 months between diagnosis and death. She didn't want treatment because it couldn't save her; it would only postpone the inevitable and she didn't want to spend the rest of her days in hospitals…

Note that it really depends on the type of the pancreatic cancer. While pancreatic adenocarcinomas are some of the worst cancers out there (overall 5y survival of 8%), others like pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours have a fairly good prognosis. Famously, Steve Jobs sought alternative medicine solutions to the latter, which was probably misguided.

I'm not sure it's the alternative treatments that did him in... it was the AIDS that he kept a secret and was subsequently revealed by wikileaks.
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