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Kevin Mitnick has died

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Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#591

Post by wnissen »

PostOnce wrote: post #265
wnissen wrote: post #31

He certainly was an interesting person. It was always amazing the degree to which law enforcement prosecuted his hacking and cracking, when it seems like much more impactful crimes involving computers go uninvestigated. Plenty of people are hounded by threats of violence into leaving their jobs and homes, that seems far more impactful than Mitnick's crimes. And FYI, while he died unexpectedly young, a 57-year-old man…

None of the commenters expressing this bullshit sentiment will provide their children with 1% of the education, health, freedom, security, etc that Mitnick will have left for his child. We struggle our whole lives to provide, it looks like he already assured that for his family, even into perpetuity if managed well. It's not like he gave himself cancer on purpose and chose to leave a child with nothing out of spite.…

He decided to have a child knowing that an average man had decent chance he would be dead before they entered college. Being in remission from one of the more deadly and rapid forms of cancer meant he knew or should have known that the child would likely grow up without a father. That does not seem like support to me.

And Warren Buffet will tell you that you want to give your kids enough money so that they can do anything, not so much that they can do nothing. Have you spent time around kids who know they will be millionaires when they grow up? Really messes with your head. A buddy of mine was supported by his parents as an expat in a resort city and ended up brutally murdering his dad after they clashed about money.

And FWIW, I will be able to give my kid enough money to do anything, have been carefully developing his mental and physical aspects, travel abroad, language immersion, etc. So your attack is inaccurate in my case.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#593

Post by quartz »

stuff4ben wrote: post #502
eduction wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

The 90s were wild. We used to just print entire credit card numbers on the receipt!

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#594

Post by not_real_acct »

TheBigSalad wrote: post #480
dryrun wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would there be a modern version of this? I haven't read it and I'm interested, but mostly my parents are getting old, and with AI on the corner, I fear a bit the next level scams.

Any time a big hack makes the news it turns out that either some system had no security, they used social engineering, or a disgruntled former employee. Hackers aren't sitting there with a super computer in a Guy Fawkes mask trying to decrypt data. The scams are the same now as back then.

> Any time a big hack makes the news it turns out that either some system had no security, they used social engineering, or a disgruntled former employee.

Back in 2003 or so, my boss showed up at my desk at work, and looked like he was about to blow a gasket. There was a hack that was on the news, and it was getting featured in news stories all over the world.

He basically said he was going to fire me if it turned out it was my fault. (I built the servers that held the data that was compromised.)

Within a day, it turned out that it wasn't all the data, it was just one person, who had a lot of famous friends.

What had happened was that someone had accessed her account. The way that they did it was by guessing her password. Her password was the same as her dog's name, and she was a celebrity known to be seen at events with her dog.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#595

Post by asveikau »

j0hnyl wrote: post #557
loup-vaillant wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a credible link? The quick search I did suggests the evidence was unreliable and likely forged.

I'm only aware that documents were circulating saying that, but now that I'm searching around, I think the best details are here: https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs_purported_HIV_medical_... Conclusion is that the documents shouldn't be taken at face value... so maybe not? However, if he was HIV+ I can totally see why it would be covered up. I guess it's a big question mark, but it's not unbelievable.

There are a lot of conspiracy theories about AIDS, and in the case like the death of Steve Jobs I guess this sort of rumor is bolstered by the fact that a lot of people hid their diagnosis due to stigma. Jobs was famously very focused on image. But I think most of that stigma was gone by 2010.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#599

Post by stuff4ben »

butterfi wrote: post #588
stuff4ben wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

I was once asked by Target for my SSN because I was returning a product. That was in the early 2000s

LOL, I was asked by a pet shelter for my SSN in order to adopt a cat. I stupidly put it down on the paper form and then asked why they needed it. She didn't have an answer and rejected my application to adopt. But she kept the paper form in case I tried to reapply in the future. I ripped it out of her hands and left. I should have just put a phony one in there...

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#600

Post by ja27 »

withinboredom wrote: post #424
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…

Pro-tip: CFAA only applies if you cross state lines between you and the server. Otherwise, state laws applies and there are/were some states that never passed any 'anti-hacking' laws. Source: experience.

Absolutely not. Any computer connected to the internet, even behind a firewall / NAT / etc. is considered to be involved in interstate or foreign commerce and thus a "protected computer" subject to 18 USC 1030. It's not your actions that make it a protected computer. 1030(e)(2)
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