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Kevin Mitnick has died

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Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#641

Post by muzani »

emodendroket wrote: post #563
muzani wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think something was lost in the retelling. It could just be an era when people didn't figure out biometrics yet. It makes sense today, but caught up in new hype, people often implement cutting edge technology where it doesn't belong.

“Your voice is your password” kind of systems are still around.

Sure, but usually we have 2FA now. It tends to be what you have (token/documentation), what you know (password), and what you are (voice auth).

Often you need one type for basic access (see balance), two for an actual transfer, three for say, transferring a million dollars. This may be something that people like Mitnick proved were necessary.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#642

Post by wyclif »

VectorLock wrote: post #305
Apocryphon wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adrian Lamo also passed away at an early age (37), coincidentally enough.

I miss Adrian, looking at this picture now gives me a wistful feeling https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lamo-Mitnick-Poulsen... Hope Kevin Poulsen is doing okay tonight.

Since he's now a journalist, I hope Poulsen writes an obit for Mitnick. That would be somehow fitting and something I'd definitely want to read.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#643

Post by wyclif »

Kina wrote: post #79
bshipp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The....Gerber Baby? Is there a story there? She seems pretty normal and pleasant from her Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Turner_Cook

It doesn’t matter who the Gerber Baby really is. Society has chosen to associate the Gerber Baby with certain attributes regardless of who the person behind the photo really is, and so it is with Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick, the real person, excelled at social engineering more than any other trait and was arguably subjected to malicious prosecution. But in his later years, there’s a lot of documentation online indicating…

I don't really want to say bad things about someone I respect who just died, but the fact of the matter is that Kevin (especially when he was younger—he mellowed out later) really could be menacing. Combined with the compulsiveness of his nature, that could be unpleasant. It was as if he could not stop hacking and messing with people.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#644

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

I take it you haven’t been exposed to Important People(TM).

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#645

Post by hellyer »

dang wrote: post #614
callalex wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an extremely insensitive time and place to troll. Shame on you.

Just FYI, I don't think the other user was trolling. HN has a certain number of commenters coming from (let's say) distressed points of view. One can sometimes guess at this from the comment history. I don't mean to single anyone out, just to say that it's a regular if not a common pattern. It's not always easy to find a compassionate way to handle it but I think it's important to try.

[dead]

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#646

Post by kuhewa »

stuff4ben wrote: post #599
butterfi wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Why did you get rejected

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#647

Post by realaether »

kuhewa wrote: post #646
stuff4ben wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Why did you get rejected

Perhaps they thought such a clever person wouldn't be suitable for a cat, since cats like to have "owners" they can actually train.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#648

Post by kjs3 »

mcv wrote: post #628
samstave wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His Sommelier. I cant go into it. (and still this is not first hand from me - just what I heard... so I accept being completely wrong) And I didnt meant to narrow - it was the more famous of what you states, and thank you. My money is on tannins, but that is just me...

Tannins? Aren't those also in tea? Could you please stop saying such scary things?

Tannins (and sulfates) are found in all sorts of food. But it's way easier to take the intellectual shortcut and say "it's probably X", instead of "it's probably really complicated and there are a number of factors involved". Some people want simple answers, no matter how complicated the problem is, or how wrong the answer is.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#649

Post by neotek »

busyant wrote: post #606
sbilstein wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kid I ate this stuff up. In the eighth grade, I defaced my middle school website. The IT person easily figured out it was me and then tricked me into thinking I would be expelled within days. She pulled me out of class, told me such in the hallway, let me return to class where I held in tears until the end of the day. Nothing happened and the school year ended a few weeks later. Towards the end of the summer I r…

> The IT person easily figured out it was me and then tricked me into thinking I would be expelled within days. Similar. I wrote a program to emulate a the logon text on a PDP-11 terminal in high-school in the mid-80s and steal a bunch of student passwords. Didn't do anything with them. They were like "trophies." Nevertheless, the computer teacher found out and had mercy on me. He gave me a project to work on to help…

I did the same thing, only my program pretended to be a DOS-based Novell Netware login screen.

It was just a simple QBASIC program (that's all that was available on the Computer Room machines) running under my own login, which would write usernames and passwords to a text file in my user directory. I figured that I'd harvest a few passwords until someone got frustrated enough to call for the IT admin, at which point he would try to log in and reboot the PC when it failed, apparently "fixing" the problem and erasing any evidence of my dastardly crime.

I was right, and for a few glorious days I got away with it... until one particular arsehole picked on my best friend during recess, and I used his stolen credentials to log into his account and trash his files.

Long story short, I ended up getting expelled, which by a curious confluence of events put me on an unorthodox path that completely changed my life. Funny how things turn out.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#650

Post by stuff4ben »

kuhewa wrote: post #646
stuff4ben wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Why did you get rejected

They asked if I was going to let the cat outside. At the time we had another cat we adopted from a vet and we let it outside so it made sense that we'd let this one out too. That was a hard no (although they didn't tell you that). It was basically a trick question and if you didn't answer to their liking, they rejected you. That was 20 years ago. Nowadays the cat I do have is kept indoors at all times.
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