- I worked at a company that had hired Mitnick as a security consultant.
His report for a client that turned out to have been rife with SQL injection at the time was largely movie plot physical security stuff. Not wrong exactly, but not the center mass of the threat model they needed either.
He seemed to lack systems thinking, producing a report that focused on calling out specific employees as dumb or incompetent. Counterproductive at best. It seemed like his PR exceeded his utility by a great deal.
That trend continues beyond the grave, maybe.
- In all fairness, a genuine attacker WILL be abrasive and abusive. They WILL single out employees that are gullible and exploit them. It's not pretty because a genuine attack is not pretty. Of course a simulated attack will be indecent and discourteous in nature, that is how attacks are.
- Yeah, this is a part about itsec I don’t understand in my firm. They run social engineering tests, but never notify management when individuals fail, only in general terms. While being psyopped needs to be activelly discussed among coworkers imho.
- That's because susceptibility to attacks is a question of training. What would the goal of placing individual blame be? Shame? Drive them to seek training outside work? Further, if you periodically single out people, the organization will hate you.
- “Shame” is a big word. I wouldn’t shame a member of my team. Why would I!? They are great people. Same with “blame”. Everyone faults, everyone can be blamed something. That doesn’t change the basics of a person.
Giving people a chance to discuss, as adults and professionals, how they got sniped beats any second hand training and experience by miles.
Now we get to hear that x% of a sample failed including #y elevated privileges people. How will somewhat naive management handle that?
Sometimes I get a feeling many HN-ers work in ultra toxic environments. HR is not your friend, your manager is there to screw you over and the firm will fire you for pennies. That’s just not my experience in working.
- Selective training makes sense. But, I heard a pentest professional provide this counter-argument: if you tell management which individuals failed the test, even if your intention is to provide those people with the training they lack, the management might, due to ignorance, shift blame for suboptimal security on those people, label them as lazy/incompetent/etc, and ultimately not put the necessary processes (testing, training) in place which are the true determinants of penetration rates. The idea is that you get inefficiency by selecting for training broadly, but you prevent extreme sabotage by ignorant management.
- >Sometimes I get a feeling many HN-ers work in ultra toxic environments.
Many people in the world work in toxic environments, not just HNers. Especially when the jobs market is shit, people turn on each other like animals.
>HR is not your friend
Where did you work at that HR was your friends? Did they invite you for beers or visit you in hospital when you were sick?
HR everywhere protect the company from liability, that's it. They're your "friends" as long as you don't risk becoming a liability.
>your manager is there to screw you over and the firm will fire you for pennies.
Your manager maybe not, if you're lucky and cares about those below him more than his own corporate ascension, but managers levels above sure screw over the ones in the trenches when shit hits the fan, that's how they got to the top in the first place. The more unscrupulous one is the more likely they are to climb up.
> That’s just not my experience in working.
Good for you.
- You are right. Toxic workplaces are abundant. But non toxic I hope as well. I am always interested in how we can or cannot transfer local cultural differences and things we hold as basic truths via a forum.
The second question: yes, in a time of need my manager and HR-consultant did indeed help me find appropriate psychological care. (And we also visit coworkers in the hospital.) This was part humanity, but also part of what ‘we’ (a firm is a collection of people) constitute as being part of what it entails to be an employer. It feels like a reductio ad absurdum to think that this was purely transactional on their part. It was deeply human, or at least I choose to see it as such.
- >The second question: yes, in a time of need my manager and HR-consultant did indeed help me find appropriate psychological care. (And we also visit coworkers in the hospital.)
This is unfathomably rare. I hope you realize this just how lucky you are.
> But non toxic I hope as well.
This never happen to me and I live, on paper, in the most livable country in the world. All bosses only care about my performance, not my healthcare. The moment I got too many sick days, I got dismissed and sent off on welfare.
>This was part humanity,
But most employment relationships are exclusively transnational. You're only virtue is usefulness to the boss's bottom line, not your "humanity", as that can't be monetized, unless maybe you work in government, healthcare or NGOs.
- I am surprised how controversial this is. I feel like I'm in that episode of Always Sunny in Philadeplhia where they decide to do an intervention by cornering and berating, while a mental health professional looks on terrified.
- Yeah, it's some bullshit 90s-era basement-dwelling "techie" attitude that even Linus Torvalds said he doesn't want to do anymore almost 10 years ago by now.
As someone who has been training and mentoring and managing people for over 25 years: shame is useless as a tool. There's no "you gotta have thick skin" in people management. That attitude is just covering for the deficiencies of the manager. Most people's natural reaction to shame is to shut down and either slink away or become vindictive. You don't get the right corrective behavior out of using shame.
One's employment of shame as a corrective technique also has a wide blast area. When one singles out and criticizes people in public, the people who aren't being criticized still see it and form new, negative opinions of the criticizer. You undermine your own authority as The Boss when you do that.
Truly being "results focused" means studying actual management theory, negotiation techniques, coaching techniques, and conflict management. Praise in public, criticize in private. Always. And when you do have to criticize, keep the emotion out of it and stick to just the facts.
I have two employees I've had to put on PIPs right now. One of them is actually improving. The other one is a habitual liar, for whatever reason HR won't let me fire him outright, but even him I won't break my rules for, regardless of how angry he has made me, because the rest of my team will see it. During the meeting where I informed them I would be formalizing the process, they were not surprised and agreed that it made sense, because I had done the work before then to establish expectations and work with them to try to improve. There's are also people in the past whom I have fired who have messaged me on LinkedIn, thanking me for being kind to them during the process, because it was what they needed to turn their lives around.
You can tell people they aren't meeting expectations. You can put people on official notice. You can fire people. And you can do all of those things in ways that preserve their dignity. And in that mode, you can get mediocre employees to be good, good employees to be great, and great employees to stay. Or you can treat people like shit and constantly have to go back to the recruiting well. I'm sorry, but I'm far too busy to be constantly interviewing and onboarding new people.
- Shame works for me. If I was ever the one that got sniped and my colleagues saw it I'd forever be paranoid about it. Like when my dad sat me down and told me that I couldn't keep losing hats all the time when I was a kid and that I wasn't a baby anymore and it was expensive, and that shame made me look behind me when I leave somewhere until today and stop losing stuff.
Specially for security, yes, shame the personal in a small setting, shame them in a positive way, as in lets all learn from this, but shame is very powerful. Much more powerful than saying "someone in this team failed this" and everyone thinks it was the other guy.
- I think people saw that old culture and thought "man, that's horrible. We must never do that". And the assessment was right, but also wrong.
Previously, shame (and other pressure) was just applied without first empathically inspecting why the node was acting in the way it did, thinking that just enough force will surely solve the problem. It kinda did, but with lots of collateral.
Essentially, the security consultants (and everyone else involved) were just being lazy and not doing their job correctly.
But now we have this overcorrection, because people are still lazy and do not want to do their job correctly, which leads to the systems failing in a different way.
___
The solution would be to understand the individual node and apply the correct corrective measure. This can be shame, but it might also not be. And the level of it is also highly dependent on the situation.
This is a hard problem to solve, but it needs to be solved for good results.
The problem here being that scaling that up is hard, but everything needed to hyperscale. With either the individual nodes or the system integrity picking up the slack.
- > I think people saw that old culture and thought "man, that's horrible. We must never do that". And the assessment was right, but also wrong. Previously, shame (and other pressure) was just applied without first empathically inspecting why the node was acting in the way it did, thinking that just enough force will surely solve the problem. It kinda did, but with lots of collateral. […] But now we have this overcorrection, because people are still lazy and do not want to do their job correctly, which leads to the systems failing in a different way.
Very well said, and I think your exact description applies to management in general: management is hard, and require hard work to be done correctly, tailoring you response to every person, because two people being bad are their job aren't always bad for the same reason.
But most managers are not suited to the job, because it's mostly a status symbol and not something you give to the most qualified person, and most are too lazy to even try learning about it, so they don't make the effort of adapting to every individual, and in the end they end up either tyrannical or complacent.
- I mean to be fair, with the business models, incentives, compensation, etc. being how they have been, why would you care?
Why would you do the hard work when you can also just not do that?
I mean I agree with "people are not suited for the job", however, I also feel like often, "the job is not suited for people".
It's rot all the way down, essentially.
- "shame them in a positive way" Oh my. That's some HR type viciousness right here. (⌒▽⌒)
- (Won’t fully repeat my other post.) Shame is such a big word. ‘Give people the chance to _teach_’ would be my reply. Which you probably would see as even more vicious, but it’s 100% sincere.
As a junior I made the front page of national news. I answered a question with a very big number on a Friday afternoon. Hit headlines on Saturday. Our prime minister had to defend my mistake in public. (He never admitted any mistake. With just enough spin nothing sticks.)
The head of the organization literally cursed and spat at me. In that same meeting from the no. 2 down they stood up for me. It’s still a great story about how to treat mistakes 20+ yrs on. Admit mistakes. What did __we__ (not: he) do wrong? (Hint: from medior to board everyone had an afternoon off and we had never discussed stakeholder management. I was in no position to say no to a ministerial request.)
- Maybe you just were never carefully told about something you did wrong in a way that everyone feels like they learned from it. The top reply to my comment put it better than I could, I think there was an overcorrection. I believe in fixing the process first, but there are situations where shame is the right solution. The current en-vogue thing of pretending all is good but penciling in that person for the next layoffs is I think worse than a bit of shame if that fixes the problem and avoids more drastic actions later on. Silicon Valley is very PC but then lays off without remorse so its funny to see this combo of "we care about never hurting your feelings all the way to the point where we fire you without a care in the world".
- Shame is a subjective feeling. There's no "right" and "wrong". Shaming is the action being criticized. No one is arguing everyone should just shut up when a big mistake is made.
- Does for me, too. But not for 30 people around me. They just shut down and isolate. It’s a matter of how self-reflective one is. And who knows who’s going to exploit this to get their way.
- Shame isn't wrong, shaming is. Your dad telling the truth isn't shaming. You just felt shame because you're a decent person that is embarrassed you were causing problems for other people.
- > Shame works for me
> I'd forever be paranoid about it
Some folks like to work that way, but I don't think most do. This obsession for outward correct behavior, even if it works at the end (at least externally), doesn't sound like a recipe for happy inner life but maybe I am reading too much into that.
- Because 99.99% of the industry is not about improving the end state. It's about covering ass. Same as accounting, safety, environmental, and every other compliance industry.
- [dead]
- Assigning individual blame is missing the point of improving the security culture in general
- Do you hold that same opinion for the training and testing of pilots and surgeons? Do you want to step on a plane with a pilot who is only there because we are too nice to assign individual blame for his inability to do the job properly? Do you want to be going into open heart surgery in a system that dismisses the idea of individual blame when analyzing the outcomes associated with each surgeon? Having no idea if the man cutting into you, has previously had great outcomes or poor outcomes?
- You’re both imagining different scenarios.
Scenario 1: 20% of staff tested failed. Individual targeting is pointless because the issue is systemic. This has happened in aviation, it’s common for accident investigators to conclude that the entire company culture (or even the entire industry) has failed to handle a problem. They don’t waste time in cases like this pointing at individuals.
Scenario 2: you test very regularly and nobody fails the tests. Except Bob, he fails the tests. In this scenario, your threat analysis document will recommend retraining, firing, or restricting Bob specifically.
Scenario 2 almost never happens because nobody has data that good. If your sampling frequency or ability to conduct tests are limited, no specific sample is enough to cover the entire problem. If you focus on a punishing (or just re-educating) the 20% who failed then your next test will fail for (potentially) 20% of the 80% who weren’t retrained, and thus didn’t learn anything.
TLDR: you need to choose the approach based on the situation, but we collectively tend to treat security poorly enough that we’re almost never in the fortunate situation where scenario 2 fits.
- Yes and no.
Yes in general, because usually it's culture and not an individual failing. No in specific situations, because it's not just culture but also some people are just the weakest link.
Only focusing on either of these while ignoring the other is going to lead to bad results.
- Not necessarily WILL. I've seen awesome attackers who were mostly checkbox spreadsheet clerks. Friendly, methodical, boring, expert.
- [dead]
- Isn't he famous for social engineering/physical security type things? If you hire an expert in X, you are probably going to get X.
- Yeah I agree, caveat emptor and all that. The blameful framing is bad work product though.
- How did he go about it? Giving a manager a report saying Foo and Bar are suck at security gives the manager good information on who needs training.
If he walked into a conference room and called them out by name, that would be a touch abrasive.
- Dude I was called out by name in the report either right before you got there or the first one you were there. I was called out in the one where they got B's Audi keys in his office.
Whole thing was so dumb. A floor full of smart monitors that they could have put a keylogger on. A plethora of physical network access and I get called out for leaving my laptop on the lock screen and going downstairs for food.
And they got found out because I ran little snitch I paid for myself and it caught their hijacked chrome making all sorts of weird network calls. But I don't remember being given credit for that.
(Sips mojito)
- How would they have been able to install a hijacked Chrome if your computer was on the lock screen?
- perhaps, back in the day, when windows machines would automatically run autorun.inf if present on a cd or usb drive regardless of whether the machine was locked or not.
- Little Snitch is Mac software though.
- There's often ways around things. Back in the day I worked in a callcenter. You'd screen-lock & take a short break.
Screen-lock itself required a password. But lo & behold, if you'd pick up the headset & hit a button "accept call" (usually meaning you're back in action), screen would be unlocked.
Convenience (read: profit) trumps security every time.
- Mac's had several vulnerabilities during that time including the ability to log in from lock screen with the user "root" with no password. There was also a vulnerability with executing a rubber ducky even with file vault. It was almost 10 years ago so I don't remember the specifics but the point was they had physical access to the building so they could do anything.
People walked to conference rooms and to get food without taking their laptop with them all the time (of course) so it's not like I did something out of the ordinary or against policy. I remember them accusing me of leaving my laptop over night but I was just working late.
And this was in a secure area with cameras within earshot of the over night crew and behind a door in a private shared office (glass door, glass wall so someone could have seen them) so it's not like I was at a common area and just walked out leaving my laptop on a random table).
- He also took MG’s O.MG usb cable and got it manufactured and sold from under him.
All that “Free Mitnick” support from the early 2000s he got must have gone to his head, or he was just a dick all along
- He mostly used social engineering. Not technical exploits. So that's how he succeeded. Call it crazy, but it worked.
- And now all that shitty KnowBe4 nonsense we have to sit through every couple of months is all "What do you do if your manager phones you up and says they're on a business trip and need you to use the company credit card to buy Amazon gift cards", over and over and over.
Bold of them to assume I'll answer the phone if I see my manager's number come up.
- > What do you do if your manager phones you up and says they're on a business trip and need you to use the company credit card to buy Amazon gift cards"
If I've learned anything from the scambait people such as kitboga on youtube, if you're bored you play along with it, pretend to have acquired the gift cards, and then tell the "boss" you've scratched off and emailed their company address the codes, as the scammer on the phone wails "do not redeem! SIR DO NOT REDEEM!"
- “He seemed to lack systems thinking, producing a report that focused on calling out specific employees as dumb or incompetent.”
VS
2002 “Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls, encryption, and secure access devices and it's money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain: the people who use, administer, operate and account for computer systems that contain protected information.” — Kevin Mitnik
“Amateurs hack systems, professionals hack people.” — Bruce Schneier
source < https://archive.md/LiQN4> / (paywall) <https://economist.com/special-report/2002/10/26/the-weakest-...>
- Dumb people are dumb. And will be. Their ability to learn from experience is almost non-existent. They are biggest security threat. Corporate structure didn't identify their mental limits and gave them way more access. So Mitnick, as outsite observer identified them and did good job.
I might say "sorry for your loss of job" .... but seriously not. You shouldn't got that job in first place.
Atleast you can brag about getting unemployed thanx to Mitnick.
- Kevin's security company is also a mess, and the training videos they produce are embarrassing at best.
I understand he probably just lent his name to the company (though he did show up in some of the videos), but still...
- This is what happens when the 90's PC community renamed crackers as hackers. Proper hackers would have been the ITS/WAIS ones doing crazy things with computers for its era.
- He social engineered your company into contracting him, and that adds to the legend, but people don't see how many other companies he failed to social engineer.
- I mean, the landscape changed quite a bit since early days of what Mitnick did as a blackhat. He did his best to adapt and make money, which given his prison term, isn't really that surprising.
- "He didn't breach us the way we wanted him to do it so it was dumb." Idk man, sounds like you locked your doors but left the windows open. That's the point of these things.
- The point is really after working through remediations, there were pretty massive issues remaining that weren’t hard to find and were relatively vastly easier to exploit if the attacker is a Russian teen and not Bruce Lee. And the budget for such things was blown. Priorities, etc
- "a client that turned out to have been rife with SQL injection" sounds more like they left the doors open, but the report focused on the lack of security bars on the windows.
- > "He was a hacker-turned-security consultant who, later in life, helped shape the modern white-hat."
They left out convicted criminal.
- I have so many stories about his absolutely terrible behavior at conferences. He once refused to pay the entry fee to a charity event and had to be physically ejectedy.
Absolutely better at PR than any actual work, pay careful attention and none of his early stuff was particularly novel, from a technical perspective.
But for whatever reason, we venerate him just because he was victimized by the state. The world is not a dichotomy -- sometimes bad things happen to bad people.
- He got all of the "Free Kevin" attention because of how long he was left in jail before trial and then being stuck in solitary confinement after sentencing for months.
If he had been treated fairly by the justice system he wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention.
He was also autistic, a lot of the behavior can be explained through that lens.
- >He got all of the "Free Kevin" attention because of how long he was left in jail before trial and then being stuck in solitary confinement after sentencing for months.
That was uncalled for on the part of DOJ.
>He was also autistic, a lot of the behavior can be explained through that lens.
I'm autistic. Maybe I should go commit a bunch of felonies to increase my chances of a good job and stature in the hacker community, since things like publishing code, publishing peer reviewed papers, and mentoring newbies have not been productive ways of finding gainful employment nor respect of my peers.
I have friends who did things like take a gap year to travel the world or met their spouses on nights I stayed in to study, and some evenings when browsing HN I feel very sad that I wasted my 20s on a society that does not care about me.
Anyways, sorry to wall of text, but what you said really struck a nerve with me -- there are hierarchies in any community, and one thing I've noticed with the hacker scene is one group of people can mess up over and over using the same sets of facts or diagnoses, but others can expect to have worse outcomes with better behavior for reasons that elude me to this day.
- > I have friends who did things like take a gap year to travel the world or met their spouses on nights I stayed in to study, and some evenings when browsing HN I feel very sad that I wasted my 20s on a society that does not care about me.
I'm glad you have finally recognized the problem.
Stop living for your idea of others and start living for yourself.
- Kevin was famous for being mistreated by the DoJ and writing some books which were perhaps not particularly true in hindsight. After he got out of jail and rejoined the community he lost a lot of respect for being himself, though it's not impossible that years of imprisonment and a long time in solitary had some permanent negative effects. In other words... you shouldn't envy Kevin's life.
For the rest: nothing's stopping you from having fun, regardless of age.
- Vienna waits for you
- Is Vienna the place to be for security researchers in their 30s starting to doubt their life choices?
- The OWASP conference is being held there next week, so in a way, yes?
- But is it a good place to meet future spouses?
Because missing that that seems to be the main problem of the poster above.
- Anywhere where you meet people is a good place to meet future spouses.
- Maybe, but if I am looking for a female spouse, a mens conclave is probably not the best place to find one. (I would assume the audience there is largely male?)
But well, he also is looking for respect and regocnition among his peers and vienna is a nice city.
- It's good that somewhere the quality of work is rewarded more than the quantity
- You act like thats a bad thing given the nature of his crimes.
If more people strived to be like Mitnick today, the tech world would have a lot more power.
- For what it's worth, I'm George Hotz, and Kevin Mitnick's books were a big influence on me. I ran into him at a party at DEFCON one year and we talked for 20 minutes before I found out who he was. Gave me a lock pick business card. Cool guy.
- I enjoyed supporting you in the AllJoyn/AllSeen Alliance era. Sadly, those lessons were never learned.
- Since we're talking about Kevin Mitnick on Hacker News, I have to mention:
I recently re-read "Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier". It was published in 1991 and the first third of the book provides an early contemporary account of Kevin Mitnick. It's a great book that I first read in my high school library in the 90s and it completely captured my imagination.
However, I had never connected the dots that the subject of the last third of the book was Robert Tappan Morris, creator of the Morris worm, who went on to cofound Y Combinator! Paul Graham is also quoted in the book.
The book has aged pretty great. They added an updated epilogue in 1995 in the early part of the Free Kevin era, but honestly re-listening to the book in 2025, I was wondering where the updated Y Combinator epilogue was!
- Agreed what you wrote. It's great and well written book. I did read the book again last fall after couple decades.
Then few weeks after finishing book I ran into his LinkedIn post (bit OT sure) if what book told was his recollection still accurate in part where book refers his work at DEC Systems Research Center (SRC) at the time. Following is what he replied to me:
" markoff and hafner did extensive research and the book is accurate in all ways i could know. note that while mitnick has paid his debt to society (jail time), i've never received from him an apologia. my only other written mention of those breakins was here:
- If that tickled you, I also recommend "The New New Thing" by Michael M. Lewis.
- I read the book by Tsutomu Shimomura, who caught Mitnick's hacking and tracked him down. It's a fascinating read. He was able to locate Mitnick in physical world based on his online activities and his cellular phone usage. In those early days, few people understood the cyber landscape and cellular technologies to exploit them.
- to add to this:
I highly recommend this Youtube video....its 4 hours long but it is pretty amazing!
Takedown Evidence: Kevin Mitnick's "sessions" (Complete Transcripts) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5EGMYsr6uY
- I read a mess of books about Mitnick's escapades including Hafer's and Shimomura's, and definitely came away with the impression that while Mitnick was a criminal, Shimomura was a bit of an asshole.
- Yes but AFAIUI Mitnick was upset Shimomura had the full weight of the police on his side, right? He used techniques that shouldn't have been available to him
Interesting fact about Shimomura, he was a student of Feynman's
- I think he didn't know cellular well enough and thought a wireless phone was unlocatable because it was mobile and not tied down to a landline. As a physicist, Shimomura would have known all about radio and signal. He just used old WW2 tech of radio triangulation to find the location of the cell phone radio transmitter. It didn't help that cell phones were rare back then and the signal of his cell transmitter frequency was standing out like a sore thumb.
Regarding the full weight of the police, Shimomura did have an easier time to convince the ISP and phone companies to give him access to the logs. He was able to ask the cellular company to locate the cell tower where Mitnick's cell phone connected and traced him to the general area. If Mitnick had been careful, he could have hacked into the ISP/phone companies and erased all his access logs.
- >used techniques that shouldn't have been available to him
odd for a hacker to take that attitude ...
- > He used techniques that shouldn't have been available to him
Why not? Sometimes it's not what you know, it's who you know.
- ... All's fair in love and war?
- Google says As Far As I Understand It.
Seems a distinction without a difference from the traditional AFAIK As Far As I Know.
- I did not realize Mitnick had passed away, very sad. I first learned about him as a kid through the book Takedown, and his exploits definitely fueled my early fascination with computers and hacking. It's heartwarming to see how he later befriended Shawn Nunley, though it's unfortunate that he and Shimomura apparently never buried the hatchet. He undoubtedly influenced an entire generation of hackers, RIP.
- Ghost in the Wires is one of all time favorite reads, and I still hope to see it as a dramatized film. It would be a fun “period piece” taking the audience through the 80’s and early 90’s, with some hilarious social engineering scenes (kinda like Catch Me If You Can) and tense moments where the audience roots for Kevin. I really think a film adaptation would help introduce his story to a new generation and be a nice tribute to his legacy.
- Having read and enjoyed ghost in the wires (and at some point all of mitnicks books) - I still enjoy the infamous takedown movie. I think it still shows a lot of mindset around social engineering - and realistic holes in security measures. I do understand why a lot of people were pissed off, though.
Ed: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159784/
Ed2: can't recall if I ever got around to reading takedown - I think I did. Much prefer ghost in the wires.
- Except actually real whereas Frank Abagnale fabricated all of his supposed cons (read The Greatest Hoax).
- Kevin Mitnick, substitute teacher
Kevin Mitnick, airline pilot. What's a deadhead?
- What I don't see mentioned here:
It's entirely possible to be on opposite sides of the fence, hate the other party's actions, but still respect (or even like) them on a personal level. Imagine yourself in their shoes & dial it up to 11.
[insert favorite movie scene here]
- I'm old enough to remember all the "Free Kevin" gifs scattered around the internet.
This helps to fill in some of the details. It's a really nice story showing the humanity that can be found in situations when you look close.
- At DEF CON and related events now, you commonly see stickers saying "PUT KEVIN BACK".
- Well, he has passed so I don't know if that sticker is relevant anymore.
- It's probably not, but still usefully signals particular mindsets to others who might share them.
- From what I can tell, defcon is largely law enforcement and companies that sell to them these days, so I'm not surprised at all to hear that.
- I keep hearing that cynical, and wrong, dismissal but have zero idea where it comes from. Yes, there are cops. Some .govs even have booths in the info areas. The stated idea is that it's a good thing when cops and hackers can hang out and discuss ideas and opinions outside of interrogation rooms, and I agree with that.
That's miles away from "largely law enforcement" though. I talked to an FBI agent at PyCon but people aren't claiming it's a LEO convention.
- Call me nostalgic or whatever, but my laptop to this very day...
- >I'm old enough to remember all the "Free Kevin" gifs scattered around the internet.
A generation of hackers (specifically, the vBulletin generation) stayed as far away from the CFAA as possible after that fiasco, which I suspect is exactly the chilling effect that the DOJ intended.
- His famous metal lock-pick business card - https://imgur.com/a/caareoI
- I'm going to defend Kevin here because I see a lot of comments from people I am sure have no valid reason to be hating on him.
Kevin was particularly annoying because he never failed to penetrate a target. The reason that's annoying is it just takes one slip, one weak point, one inattentive admin and it's over. People will stay mad about that. I get it.
But those who say he had no talent are just ignorant.
His goal was to make the world safer, and making people pay attention to risk didn't make him a lot of friends. All the hate I am reading here is just sad.
If you hate Kevin and did not know Kevin, I feel bad for you. Hate is an expensive emotion, even when you're just being a keyboard warrior. It should be reserved for people who have really wronged you. Kevin is not with us anymore. The hate is hurting you, not him. And he has a son who will read this someday. Have a heart.
- In case folk don't connect the dots, this appears to be Shawn Nunley from the article.
- Yeah, I am shocked a little, because he wasn't a monster or something. Critique is valid, but speaking with obvious resentment and disrespect about someone who died is pretty gross. Again, unless they're, like, a _monster_.
- This story is itself evidence that Kevin had good parts to him. This 911 GTS is not some shit joke prize.
- > I am sure have no valid reason to be hating on him.
TBF that's likely a symptom of social media and people commenting on things they don't know about with a bit too much confidence. You can see similar takes on snowden today.
Back in the day (90s, 00s) he was both widely supported and a bit of a myth in the early Internet communities.
- Shawn and I worked together at Novell back when this was going down. It was fascinating at the time and more so in hindsight. FWIW, Shawn's a really good guy.
- I would petition all other community members to appreciate the gravity of the parent's comment.
Speaking for myself as someone very early in my journey during the time when Mitnick was still active as a grey hat: he advanced our thinking about security and the nature of trust itself in ways that have never been more timely.
Paradoxically he profited personally far more as a white hat than he ever did in the grey area, his motivations were clearly not extractive. The authorities compelled him to go do lucrative things! (after persecuting him mercilessly).
RIP Kevin. We are ill equipped for the vulns of the AI, but without you we'd be helpless.
- I'm old enough to remember Kevin as both hero and villain. People are complex, Kevin seemed to be no exception. His exploits - and the ones of those who caught him - were fascinating to follow in realtime.
But be honest...
How sweet is that 911?
- >But those who say he had no talent are just ignorant.
I don't think anyone says he had no talent, what rubs people the wrong way is that the thing he had talent for is the same thing that the people have who try to scam call your grandmother out of her pension money. You can be the world's greatest burglar, you're still a burglar. The whole cringy "social engineering" thing turned media persona and consulting business is to engineering what chiropractics is to medicine.
He leaned pretty heavily into monetizing his own image and for a lot of people what he did became synonymous with the word 'hacking' in a not particularly positive way and critising that isn't hate.
- That's just nonsense. First of all, social engineering was a small part of his work, and it's OK that you don't know that. But your totally blatant ignorance of what his career covered is exactly what I'm talking about.
Look, I know that people form their opinions in a bubble. All I am saying here is you should expand your bubble. You know nothing about Kev. Again, that's OK, but it also means you should try to understand what you're hating.
You'd try to make money on your image if you could, I'm betting. Especially if you had been put in prison and left there with no bail hearing, and put in solitary confinement for 'hoarding tuna' in your cell. For 9 months. While your father died. This was not a normal treatment of any person in custody.
Kev was a good person. Full stop. Just as curious as all of us in that era.
- > social engineering was a small part of his work, and it's OK that you don't know that... totally blatant ignorance... Kev was a good person. Full stop.
I understand you're defending your friend, but that's a little uncalled for. Personally, my first real knowledge of him was from his 2002 book The Art Of Deception, which is specifically a book about social engineering. That is how he himself chose to present himself - as a successful social engineer - so you can't criticise others for that.
There's good and bad in all of us. I don't think the person you responded to said Kevin was all bad, and made it clear it isn't hate.
- His (or other peoples) treatment in the US prison system is another matter and often cruel, but no he didn't conduct himself like a good person in regards to his 'hacking'. He committed wire fraud, he impersonated people, he exfiltrated sensitive credit card information from thousands of people.
That's not just curious, that's not something we all did when we were young, those were legitimate crimes and they still are for good reason. He had a big part in popularizing the image that a hacker, rather than someone who writes software for the public good, is someone who tricks other people and steals personal data.
And no I wouldn't be proud if I ran phishing scams and stole IP from random companies, I wouldn't monetize that, I'd say I'm sorry which from reading his books at least I don't think he ever was.
- Looks like op mostly a rehash of the linked Wired story?
- That 2002 Wired article is still behind a paywall. Shameful.
- I heard he can launch nukes by whistling into a pay phone.
- Impressive.. what pay phones?
- Maybe I'm mistaken, but that sounds more like Chuck Norris.
Wait ... no fists involved. My mistake.
- Nukes launch Chuck Norris at their enemies.
- It's in his (Mitnick's) autobiography Ghost in the Wires. In his telling of the story they put him in a more restrictive environment exactly because of the reason given (launching nukes by whistling into a phone)
- At the time people were using whistles to make free long distance calls, so I can understand where they were coming from.
The part I can't understand is believing that phone-whistles are connected to our nuclear launch system and not simultaneously trying to put nuclear missile operators in jail for incompetence.
"Oh the world might end with some whistling? Definitely punish the whistlers, that's where the problem is..."
- With Chuck Norris, the nukes whistle at him, just to keep on his good side.
- [flagged]
- Wow. Get help.
- [flagged]
- People have different views from yours. Get over it.
We don't need to cancel everyone who who isn't what the current system considers the ideal cog.
- Maybe just don't drag homophobia into unrelated threads?
- When I think back to when I was 10 and every boy I knew idolized Norris and I instinctively hated his guts I feel better about myself.
- As kids in the 90s in eastern Europe hardly anyone of us knew the name Kevin Mitnick, but if you were interested in computers at all, you'd certainly recall Condor.
I think this was the first time I heard someone being forbidden by court from accessing the internet. At the time we had like two, maybe three kids in class who even used dial up regularly.
- Hah, he social engineered the God of social engineering...
- The glorification of scammers needs to stop and we need to return to harsh Hammurabi law style punishment.
- good god how did he get a car into prison?
- I also have Kevin Mitnick's business card and it is one of my most prized possessions. A great inspiration and influence on my life.
- Too bad he wasn't colorblind.
- *whom
- I don’t need to know an iota of his activities as a hacker to hate him. I hate him because of how many times I had to be put through mind numbing security training with his mug as the opener. “I’m Kevin Mitnick” and KnowBe4 are seared into my brain at a ptsd level for terminal boredom.
- > He put himself on the proverbial map in 1979 by dialing into a software company’s server and copying its forthcoming operating system release in its entirety. Imagine convincing a Microsoft server to cough over an early copy of Windows 12 using little more than a phone number.
Windows 12 was in development back in 1979? I think that timeline is a bit off.
- The first phrase is what he did. The second phrase asks you to imagine how silly that sounds in today's world. (i.e. imagine that all it took back then was a phone number)
Kevin was from a different time. Back then security wasn't even an afterthought. He was exploring the shiny new thing of digital worlds, with an attacker mindset, and that was new at the time (and quite unique to a small set of humans back then).
215 points by mauvehaus 2 days ago | 141 comments
