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Kevin Mitnick is the most famous and popular hacker of all time. How did he manage to get any information and how did he manipulate people's feelings? Let's figure it out.
Hello! Today we will talk about, perhaps, the most outstanding hacker. This guy hacked the FBI, the Pentagon and Silicon Valley. Kevin Mitnick. Probably the only hacker known to people far from computers. An elusive computer dark genius, a scourge of computer networks. The newspapers did not spare paints about this man. Most, especially teenagers, admired him.
And the few who got from his ability to penetrate computer systems, naturally, hated him. Throughout the 80s and early 90s, Kevin penetrated the computer systems of almost all large companies. He even managed to eavesdrop on employees of the National Security Agency, and use the Pentagon servers to store his personal archive of files. He knew how to not only hack computers and servers, but also subtly manipulate people to achieve his goals.
Of course, his name is surrounded by many of the most fantastic stories. In this video, I will tell you who this man really was - Kevin Mitnick. Watch this video to the end, it is a very interesting story. Let's go. First, let's look at Los Angeles from the late 60s, early 70s. This is where Kevin spent his childhood.
It could not be called happy. His father left the family early, when the boy was three years old. His mother, half Armenian, worked as a waitress in various eateries, on the other side of the Hollywood hills, where the brilliant life flowed. Kevin, probably due to frequent changes of schools, had difficulties communicating with peers, but he skillfully established contacts with adults, persuading them to fulfill his any requests. He also loved technology, or rather, using technology to hack systems, penetrate where entry was prohibited.
More than 10 years later, at the age of 12, Kevin Mitnick had already become a hacker. He did it fast. I mean, he managed to break the system. He loved riding buses around the vast Los Angeles. Well, who wouldn't love that. But such hobbies were an expensive pleasure for him. A ticket cost 25 cents. Another 10 cents were needed to change buses.
Young Kevin talked to one of the bus drivers. He found out where he could buy a ticket composter. He bought it for $15 with the money he saved on breakfast. Then he simply rummaged through the trash cans around the bus station and found a bunch of unused bus tickets that drivers threw away because they didn't need them. Kevin then rode around Los Angeles completely free of charge. And he spent the pocket money he saved on his favorite dish - burgers.
He spent the money wisely. At school, he began studying computer science, and this abyss instantly swallowed Kevin whole. He quickly realized that telephone networks were a thing of the past, and that computers were the future. True, along the way, he played a dirty trick on several of his school enemies. He made it so that every time they called from their home phone, 10 cents were debited from their account.
The system thought that the call was coming from a pay phone. What a prankster. And then the hacking genius began to make great strides in hacking. His first victim was the school computer science teacher. Poor teacher Crisp even tried to replace the usual password with a punch card reader. But this fortress quickly fell. For convenience, the computer science teacher carried a punch card in his breast pocket-shirt, so the hole sequence was easy for the sharp-eyed student to read.
Next, Kevin Mitnick was able to penetrate the network that connected the school computers to the systems of the University of Southern California. Then he upped the ante and directly approached the dean of the computer science department at Caltech, Wes Hampton, convincing him to give him access to the more advanced university computers, as a talented young specialist.
Well, he, of course, allowed it. Let me remind you again that Kevin could find a common language with adults, persuading them to fulfill his requests. What a smart guy he was. But it didn’t take long for him to be figured out that he was a master at hacking passwords to other people’s accounts. And one day, three police officers burst into the classroom where Kevin was hacking, grabbed him, put him in handcuffs and wouldn’t let him leave the station until his mother picked him up. Well, it turns out that he wasn’t that smart.
There were no consequences other than being banned from the university computers. The US didn’t yet have laws punishing such activity. Then came admission to Pierce College in Los Angeles. And almost immediate expulsion for hacking a local network with the wording "we have nothing to teach him, he already knows everything." In the late 70s, Condor - this was the pseudonym Mitnick took for himself - was already widely known in hacker circles.
In 1979, a group of hackers approached him and ... simply dared him. Like, we want to test your professionalism, and do you dare hack Digital Equipment Corporation. In fact, they wanted to get the code of one of the newest programs of Digital Equipment Corporation, it was a large American company in the computer industry from the 60s to the 90s. Kevin again did it in a proven way.
He hacked not the computer network of Digital Equipment Corporation, but its internal telephone network, which was much easier. He used it to call the main system administrator and convinced him that he was a developer and had forgotten his password. The administrator granted him full access and user privileges. After the hackers got what they wanted, they disappeared, and Mitnick was handed over to Digital Equipment Corporation.
And again, the guy was saved by the fact that there were no laws yet under which he could be tried. He again got away with a slight fright. It was very convenient to hack in those days, wasn't it? And then came the hack that made Condor truly famous in hacker circles. He managed to hack the system of one of the largest telephone companies in the USA, Pacific Telephone. Condor habitually hacked the internal telephone network of Pacific Telephone employees and called tech support.
Hello, this is Chernov, I can't log in using the code 119, did you delete my account? Chernov really existed and was one of the company's developers. The operator checked and saw that there really was no account 119 in the system, created it and gave Condor the necessary data. Using this account and his knowledge of the weaknesses of the operating system, Mitnick was able to obtain administrative rights and control the telephone company's terminal directly from his apartment.
He could completely control the telephone lines, connect to any calls, simulate calls and control equipment. At one point, he was even able to connect to the National Security Agency network and listen in on conversations while remaining undetected by the government. But it is worth noting that for Mitnick, hacking was not a way to cause damage or steal, but rather an intellectual challenge - a competition between man and technology.
Soon Kevin again got involved with a group of hackers and again got burned because of it. In 1981, his colleague in the hacker group Lewis bragged to his girlfriend Susan that he, together with Mitnick himself, did whatever he wanted at Pacific Telephone, and soon broke up with this girl because of his own betrayal.
And she decided to take revenge on him by hacking into the US Teasing computer system, erasing files and sending the text "there was a mitnik here, damn you" to all printers. Interestingly, the girl took revenge not on her ex-boyfriend, but on his colleague. It's funny. Kevin was arrested again and met his 18th birthday in the city of Norwalk, where juvenile offenders were kept. He was soon released, given probation.
But Condor immediately got back to his old ways. Together with hacker Lenny DiCico, he hacked the long-suffering network of the University of Southern California. And to his misfortune, he managed to get into not only the accounts of university employees, but also into one of the accounts of a high-ranking Pentagon employee. As a result, in December 1982, armed police again burst into the auditorium where Kevin and Lenny were sitting. This time, Kevin Mitnick was sentenced to three years in prison, but was released after six months on parole.
Later, in his book, The Art of Deception, he recalled that he had repeatedly promised himself and his mother to quit this business. But, like an alcoholic who has reached the stage of binge drinking, he was unable to do so. British psychiatrist Roy Escapault, who later observed Kevin Mitnick, officially stated in his conclusion that he really could not help but break the system due to a serious compulsive mental disorder.
But Kevin hacked the international communication system for him, and he called England from the USA for free. A normal deal, right? As soon as he was released, Kevin went into all sorts of trouble again. To divert attention and have something to live on, Mitnick got a job as a computer programmer at a company of one of his mother's friends. But he was already being followed. But Kevin was also on the alert.
Having spotted familiar police faces near the company's office, he managed to slip away from them in order to get to a pay phone and call. Where do you think? To one of the Los Angeles police stations. And then a well-tested trick.
Using this scheme, he received information that he was charged with parole violations and they wanted to put him in jail again. But the guy had already studied the laws well and knew that if he held out for 4 months until February 1985, the warrant for his arrest would expire and he would be able to avoid punishment. So Kevin went into hiding. The bottom turned out to be a Californian town where his grandmother lived. Four months later, our main character, clean before the law, showed up in Los Angeles again to break into the Hughes Airlines office together with his old business partner, Lenny DiCicca.
They hacked into the Dockmaster computer system from the resources of none other than the National Security Center of the NSA. But again, it was a social hack, i.e., thanks to human carelessness. Lena managed to impersonate an employee of the center and get the login data from one of the real employees of the NSA Security Center.
Then Kevin received a federal grant to study at the Computer Training Center in Los Angeles. In parallel with his studies, he continued to hack into the systems of telephone companies, still using social engineering. By the end of 1986, Kevin and Lenny took control of all Pacific Bell switches.
However, this was not enough for them, and they were able to penetrate the Chesapeake & Potomac telephone company, which services the Pentagon and other departments of the US government. This made it possible to gain access to the switchboard of the telephone company in Maryland, which services the NSA. Kevin found out the common prefixes of the phone numbers of this office and was able to listen in on their conversations. And soon Condor fell in love, but this time not with computers, but with a real person.
It turned out to be his classmate, a petite Italian Bonnie Vitello. The girl was dazzlingly beautiful, and Kevin loved fast food and therefore could not boast of an athletic figure. In addition, Bonnie turned out to be engaged. But then it turned out that she doubted the honesty of her chosen one regarding his financial situation. And she asked Kevin to clarify this issue. Kevin quickly penetrated the TRV credit bureau system and received full information about the credit history of Bonnie's fiancé, who turned out to have debts like Bloch's dog.
As a result, the engagement was called off, and Kevin became the girl's boyfriend. Kevin's studies at the computer school also came to an end. Towards the end, the system administrator caught him doing something familiar - hacking the network. But instead of shamefully expelling him, he offered the guy to improve the network security system and even count it as a diploma thesis.
Mitnick happily agreed and received a diploma with honors. Now that's an approach, I understand. After that, Kevin got a job at GTE, in GTA, where he had previously hacked a computer network and where his girlfriend worked. Whatever they say about the small world. Kevin Mitnick worked at GTA for 9 whole days. The company's security service found out that HR had hired a famous hacker and the guy was asked to leave.
Then there was an attempt to become an information security specialist at Security Pacific Bank, but here too, having dug up Kevin's past, he was rejected. And then Mitnick went back to his old ways. Predictably, after some time, the police raided Bonnie's apartment, where Kevin also lived. Moreover, the police raided the girl's work, with the aim of interrogating her about the penetration of the company's database by another victim of her boyfriend.
Despite all this, Bonnie did not leave Kevin and said that they needed to go through all this together. In his book, Mitnick admits that Bonnie loved him, and A he behaved like an asshole. And then the young people decided to get married. But this was not romance, but cold calculation. As a spouse, they received the right to refuse to testify against each other in court.
In addition, Bonnie received the opportunity to visit her husband in prison, where he would most likely end up in the future. It was June 1987. In addition to the criminal charges, the company SCO, Mitnick, who tried to cheat Kevin, filed lawsuits for one and a half million dollars each against Kevin and Bonnie for damages. However, they agreed to drop the lawsuits if Kevin told them how he managed to get into their system.
Mitnick admitted that he had not hacked anything as a hacker, but had used social engineering methods. And a convincing excuse to get the login and password from a Pacific Bell employee. Yes, the standard scheme. It all ended for Kevin with two years of probation and a fine of $216, and the charges against Bonnie were completely withdrawn.
In addition, Mitnick had to give a formal promise to refrain from further violations of the law. After that, Kevin held out for a whole year. He and Bonnie even began to save up for their own house and, in order to save money, moved in with Kevin's mother. But when a daughter-in-law with hot Italian blood and a mother-in-law with equally hot Armenian blood come together under the same roof, scandals are inevitable.
To relieve stress, Kevin took up his old tricks. His old friend Lenny showed up again, and they tried to hack Condor's old friend, the Digital Equipment Corporation. To this end, they enrolled in a computer lab at Pierce College. But the police and the company's security service were already on the alert. The cops literally followed them home in the evenings and even sat on the roofs of the college buildings, spying through binoculars on what the couple of hackers were doing.
As a result, they were obviously kicked out of college. But Kevin and Lenny did not calm down. They contacted German hackers and, with their combined efforts, were able to get the source code of the Navy operating system, which was being developed by Digital Equipment Corporation. But this code had to be stored somewhere. Nowadays, there are compact storage devices with a capacity of terabytes, but in the late 80s, none of this existed, and the friends could not think of anything better than storing megabytes of code on servers at the US Naval Air Station in Maryland.
Soon, the space on their servers was completely filled with Kevin and Lenny's archived data, disguised as digital garbage. Then they got into the servers of the National Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In the evenings, Mitnick and Lenny would bet on penetrating secure networks, with the stake being a dinner for two at a restaurant in Beverly Hills.
Time after time, Lenny would end up on the losing side, which would make him very nervous. After another loss, Lenny lost his temper and, in a fit of rage, turned Mitnick over to the FBI. That's friendship. The damage from the hack was estimated at several million dollars, which threatened significant prison terms. However, Kevin's defense was able to prove to the court that the hacker suffered from computer addiction. And his actions related to hacking and accessing other people's data brought him pleasure comparable to that experienced by people addicted to drugs.
And these actions are not aimed at enrichment. For example, he got hold of a database of credit card numbers of the richest people in Silicon Valley. But there was no evidence that he used them for financial gain. As a result, instead of a long sentence, Mitnick was sentenced to one year in prison and a course of compulsory rehabilitation.
In prison, Condor managed to connect to his wife's answering machine and discovered that his Bonnie had found solace in the arms of his friend and fellow hacker Lewis DePayne. Yes, the same one whose ex-girlfriend turned in Kevin the first time in 1981. What a small world indeed. This discovery was a deep disappointment for him.
After completing the course of rehabilitation, he decided to change his life, paying attention to his physical health and nutrition. Having moved to Las Vegas, Smithnick promised himself to give up hacking and phone cracking. In early 1992, Kevin received word from his father of the tragic death of his half-brother Adam, whose body was found in a car near a drug den.
The circumstances of the death were suspicious, but the police did not investigate, prompting Mitnick to take matters into his own hands. He began his own investigation, tapping phones and reviewing phone records, hoping to find answers about his brother's death. Despite his efforts, the truth did not come out until years later, when his uncle's ex-wife confessed to an accidental murder. The loss of his brother and his wife's betrayal left a void in Mitnick's soul, which he filled by returning to his hacker roots.
He hacked into the Pack Bell system, which attracted the attention of the FBI and forced him into hiding. A reward was offered for his capture, but Mitnick was always one step ahead, using his skills to eavesdrop on those who were trying to eavesdrop on him. By the end of 1994, Kevin Mitnick was recognized as one of the leading experts in the field of information technology, known for his sophisticated and daring hacking methods.
However, he had already surpassed the usual specialists from telephone companies and government agencies. In search of an equal rival, Mitnick turned his attention to Tsitoma Shimamura, an outstanding expert in IT security. And between them the famous confrontation unfolded. Shimamura, who actively worked with the secret services and liked to test his security systems on hackers not so much to catch them, but to test his developments.
When Shimamura went on vacation to Nevada, he left his secure computer in Solana Beach, connected to a network that allegedly stored data on secret military projects. Although in fact, this was bait, since such work at home would be unacceptable. Mitnick was aware of this, but his desire for risk exceeded caution.
Any changes on Shimamura's computer were carefully recorded and monitored by his colleagues in San Diego. And when the trap was sprung, Shimamura immediately returned from vacation to catch the hacker. But he could not figure him out right away. Shimamura could have forgotten about this incident, despite the fact that he left him offensive voice messages. But Condor reminded him of itself again.
On December 27, Shimamura received several messages in which there were threats and boasts about his unrivaled skills. Deeply insulted, Shimamura, following the best traditions of Bushida, decided to take revenge on the hacker. He carefully analyzed the attack and was amazed by the complexity of the methods used. Among the possible suspects, of course, was the name of Kevin Mitnick, and one of the first. Shimamura used cooperation with the secret services to the fullest.
First, he figured out the city from which the hacker operated. It turned out to be Rollie, North Carolina. Shimamura arrived the next day and was soon joined by an FBI agent and a team of technicians. The FBI had a special device that could call Mitnick's phone without activating the beep, turning the phone into a transmitter that could then be used to accurately track his location.
Shimamura, well aware of Mitnick's extensive knowledge, also came up with the idea of hiding the antenna. The FBI wanted to track the hacker's phone from his van. The expert was simply afraid that their target would notice the antenna and realize that they were being targeted. Luckily, the FBI's vehicle had special handles on the roof, so they attached boxes with LED lights to them and hid the antenna inside, making the vehicle inconspicuous.
The ruse ultimately worked, because the next morning, the agents were able to narrow down Condor's location to his apartment. On Valentine's Day 1995, Judge Wallace Dixon gave his consent to search apartment 202 at the Player Club Apartments in the role occupied by one Glen Thomas Case. On February 15, Shimamura gave the go-ahead for the secret services to enter the apartment.
The FBI officers who broke into the apartment arrested Kevin Mitnick. Then there was the trial. He was sentenced to 46 months in prison plus an additional 22 months for violating his parole in 1988. In total, the hacker spent about five years behind bars, including eight months in solitary confinement. He claimed that his time in solitary confinement was due to the fact that the authorities convinced the court that he could start a nuclear war by stealing a telephone receiver.
But it’s best not to joke with this. After his release in 2000, Mitnick was not seen hacking, at least officially. For the first three years after his release, he was prohibited from using either computers or phones. However, he was able to found his own company, promoting principles similar to those supported by Tsutomu Shimamura, with whom Mitnick eventually made peace and recognized his professionalism.
In response, Shimamura expressed regret about the conditions of Mitnick’s imprisonment, which he complained about. Over time, Mitnick gained trust at the highest levels. He even spoke before the US Senate with lectures on the importance of information security. His company became a leader in creating reliable software products for information security.
He wrote a number of articles on the latest developments, lectured to students, and did not hide his past. Over time, Mitnick even stopped denying his status as the most famous cybercriminal, which contributed to the success of his books written in the 21st century. Having gone from an inquisitive teenager and computer enthusiast to a prisoner, and then to a successful businessman and owner of a couple of IT companies and a millionaire.
Condor faced another serious problem in his life, but which he was never able to solve - cancer. Kevin Mitnick died on July 16, 2023 in Pittsburgh, USA from complications associated with pancreatic cancer. And yes, you can talk as much as you like about the fact that a genius hacker is one who was not caught, but what were his tricks? He not only knew how to hack everything technically, but also had the skill of manipulation.
Not everyone is given such a refined ability to manage people. What do you think of Kevin Mitnick? Until next time, bye-bye.
Hello! Today we will talk about, perhaps, the most outstanding hacker. This guy hacked the FBI, the Pentagon and Silicon Valley. Kevin Mitnick. Probably the only hacker known to people far from computers. An elusive computer dark genius, a scourge of computer networks. The newspapers did not spare paints about this man. Most, especially teenagers, admired him.
And the few who got from his ability to penetrate computer systems, naturally, hated him. Throughout the 80s and early 90s, Kevin penetrated the computer systems of almost all large companies. He even managed to eavesdrop on employees of the National Security Agency, and use the Pentagon servers to store his personal archive of files. He knew how to not only hack computers and servers, but also subtly manipulate people to achieve his goals.
Of course, his name is surrounded by many of the most fantastic stories. In this video, I will tell you who this man really was - Kevin Mitnick. Watch this video to the end, it is a very interesting story. Let's go. First, let's look at Los Angeles from the late 60s, early 70s. This is where Kevin spent his childhood.
It could not be called happy. His father left the family early, when the boy was three years old. His mother, half Armenian, worked as a waitress in various eateries, on the other side of the Hollywood hills, where the brilliant life flowed. Kevin, probably due to frequent changes of schools, had difficulties communicating with peers, but he skillfully established contacts with adults, persuading them to fulfill his any requests. He also loved technology, or rather, using technology to hack systems, penetrate where entry was prohibited.
More than 10 years later, at the age of 12, Kevin Mitnick had already become a hacker. He did it fast. I mean, he managed to break the system. He loved riding buses around the vast Los Angeles. Well, who wouldn't love that. But such hobbies were an expensive pleasure for him. A ticket cost 25 cents. Another 10 cents were needed to change buses.
Young Kevin talked to one of the bus drivers. He found out where he could buy a ticket composter. He bought it for $15 with the money he saved on breakfast. Then he simply rummaged through the trash cans around the bus station and found a bunch of unused bus tickets that drivers threw away because they didn't need them. Kevin then rode around Los Angeles completely free of charge. And he spent the pocket money he saved on his favorite dish - burgers.
He spent the money wisely. At school, he began studying computer science, and this abyss instantly swallowed Kevin whole. He quickly realized that telephone networks were a thing of the past, and that computers were the future. True, along the way, he played a dirty trick on several of his school enemies. He made it so that every time they called from their home phone, 10 cents were debited from their account.
The system thought that the call was coming from a pay phone. What a prankster. And then the hacking genius began to make great strides in hacking. His first victim was the school computer science teacher. Poor teacher Crisp even tried to replace the usual password with a punch card reader. But this fortress quickly fell. For convenience, the computer science teacher carried a punch card in his breast pocket-shirt, so the hole sequence was easy for the sharp-eyed student to read.
Next, Kevin Mitnick was able to penetrate the network that connected the school computers to the systems of the University of Southern California. Then he upped the ante and directly approached the dean of the computer science department at Caltech, Wes Hampton, convincing him to give him access to the more advanced university computers, as a talented young specialist.
Well, he, of course, allowed it. Let me remind you again that Kevin could find a common language with adults, persuading them to fulfill his requests. What a smart guy he was. But it didn’t take long for him to be figured out that he was a master at hacking passwords to other people’s accounts. And one day, three police officers burst into the classroom where Kevin was hacking, grabbed him, put him in handcuffs and wouldn’t let him leave the station until his mother picked him up. Well, it turns out that he wasn’t that smart.
There were no consequences other than being banned from the university computers. The US didn’t yet have laws punishing such activity. Then came admission to Pierce College in Los Angeles. And almost immediate expulsion for hacking a local network with the wording "we have nothing to teach him, he already knows everything." In the late 70s, Condor - this was the pseudonym Mitnick took for himself - was already widely known in hacker circles.
In 1979, a group of hackers approached him and ... simply dared him. Like, we want to test your professionalism, and do you dare hack Digital Equipment Corporation. In fact, they wanted to get the code of one of the newest programs of Digital Equipment Corporation, it was a large American company in the computer industry from the 60s to the 90s. Kevin again did it in a proven way.
He hacked not the computer network of Digital Equipment Corporation, but its internal telephone network, which was much easier. He used it to call the main system administrator and convinced him that he was a developer and had forgotten his password. The administrator granted him full access and user privileges. After the hackers got what they wanted, they disappeared, and Mitnick was handed over to Digital Equipment Corporation.
And again, the guy was saved by the fact that there were no laws yet under which he could be tried. He again got away with a slight fright. It was very convenient to hack in those days, wasn't it? And then came the hack that made Condor truly famous in hacker circles. He managed to hack the system of one of the largest telephone companies in the USA, Pacific Telephone. Condor habitually hacked the internal telephone network of Pacific Telephone employees and called tech support.
Hello, this is Chernov, I can't log in using the code 119, did you delete my account? Chernov really existed and was one of the company's developers. The operator checked and saw that there really was no account 119 in the system, created it and gave Condor the necessary data. Using this account and his knowledge of the weaknesses of the operating system, Mitnick was able to obtain administrative rights and control the telephone company's terminal directly from his apartment.
He could completely control the telephone lines, connect to any calls, simulate calls and control equipment. At one point, he was even able to connect to the National Security Agency network and listen in on conversations while remaining undetected by the government. But it is worth noting that for Mitnick, hacking was not a way to cause damage or steal, but rather an intellectual challenge - a competition between man and technology.
Soon Kevin again got involved with a group of hackers and again got burned because of it. In 1981, his colleague in the hacker group Lewis bragged to his girlfriend Susan that he, together with Mitnick himself, did whatever he wanted at Pacific Telephone, and soon broke up with this girl because of his own betrayal.
And she decided to take revenge on him by hacking into the US Teasing computer system, erasing files and sending the text "there was a mitnik here, damn you" to all printers. Interestingly, the girl took revenge not on her ex-boyfriend, but on his colleague. It's funny. Kevin was arrested again and met his 18th birthday in the city of Norwalk, where juvenile offenders were kept. He was soon released, given probation.
But Condor immediately got back to his old ways. Together with hacker Lenny DiCico, he hacked the long-suffering network of the University of Southern California. And to his misfortune, he managed to get into not only the accounts of university employees, but also into one of the accounts of a high-ranking Pentagon employee. As a result, in December 1982, armed police again burst into the auditorium where Kevin and Lenny were sitting. This time, Kevin Mitnick was sentenced to three years in prison, but was released after six months on parole.
Later, in his book, The Art of Deception, he recalled that he had repeatedly promised himself and his mother to quit this business. But, like an alcoholic who has reached the stage of binge drinking, he was unable to do so. British psychiatrist Roy Escapault, who later observed Kevin Mitnick, officially stated in his conclusion that he really could not help but break the system due to a serious compulsive mental disorder.
But Kevin hacked the international communication system for him, and he called England from the USA for free. A normal deal, right? As soon as he was released, Kevin went into all sorts of trouble again. To divert attention and have something to live on, Mitnick got a job as a computer programmer at a company of one of his mother's friends. But he was already being followed. But Kevin was also on the alert.
Having spotted familiar police faces near the company's office, he managed to slip away from them in order to get to a pay phone and call. Where do you think? To one of the Los Angeles police stations. And then a well-tested trick.
Using this scheme, he received information that he was charged with parole violations and they wanted to put him in jail again. But the guy had already studied the laws well and knew that if he held out for 4 months until February 1985, the warrant for his arrest would expire and he would be able to avoid punishment. So Kevin went into hiding. The bottom turned out to be a Californian town where his grandmother lived. Four months later, our main character, clean before the law, showed up in Los Angeles again to break into the Hughes Airlines office together with his old business partner, Lenny DiCicca.
They hacked into the Dockmaster computer system from the resources of none other than the National Security Center of the NSA. But again, it was a social hack, i.e., thanks to human carelessness. Lena managed to impersonate an employee of the center and get the login data from one of the real employees of the NSA Security Center.
Then Kevin received a federal grant to study at the Computer Training Center in Los Angeles. In parallel with his studies, he continued to hack into the systems of telephone companies, still using social engineering. By the end of 1986, Kevin and Lenny took control of all Pacific Bell switches.
However, this was not enough for them, and they were able to penetrate the Chesapeake & Potomac telephone company, which services the Pentagon and other departments of the US government. This made it possible to gain access to the switchboard of the telephone company in Maryland, which services the NSA. Kevin found out the common prefixes of the phone numbers of this office and was able to listen in on their conversations. And soon Condor fell in love, but this time not with computers, but with a real person.
It turned out to be his classmate, a petite Italian Bonnie Vitello. The girl was dazzlingly beautiful, and Kevin loved fast food and therefore could not boast of an athletic figure. In addition, Bonnie turned out to be engaged. But then it turned out that she doubted the honesty of her chosen one regarding his financial situation. And she asked Kevin to clarify this issue. Kevin quickly penetrated the TRV credit bureau system and received full information about the credit history of Bonnie's fiancé, who turned out to have debts like Bloch's dog.
As a result, the engagement was called off, and Kevin became the girl's boyfriend. Kevin's studies at the computer school also came to an end. Towards the end, the system administrator caught him doing something familiar - hacking the network. But instead of shamefully expelling him, he offered the guy to improve the network security system and even count it as a diploma thesis.
Mitnick happily agreed and received a diploma with honors. Now that's an approach, I understand. After that, Kevin got a job at GTE, in GTA, where he had previously hacked a computer network and where his girlfriend worked. Whatever they say about the small world. Kevin Mitnick worked at GTA for 9 whole days. The company's security service found out that HR had hired a famous hacker and the guy was asked to leave.
Then there was an attempt to become an information security specialist at Security Pacific Bank, but here too, having dug up Kevin's past, he was rejected. And then Mitnick went back to his old ways. Predictably, after some time, the police raided Bonnie's apartment, where Kevin also lived. Moreover, the police raided the girl's work, with the aim of interrogating her about the penetration of the company's database by another victim of her boyfriend.
Despite all this, Bonnie did not leave Kevin and said that they needed to go through all this together. In his book, Mitnick admits that Bonnie loved him, and A he behaved like an asshole. And then the young people decided to get married. But this was not romance, but cold calculation. As a spouse, they received the right to refuse to testify against each other in court.
In addition, Bonnie received the opportunity to visit her husband in prison, where he would most likely end up in the future. It was June 1987. In addition to the criminal charges, the company SCO, Mitnick, who tried to cheat Kevin, filed lawsuits for one and a half million dollars each against Kevin and Bonnie for damages. However, they agreed to drop the lawsuits if Kevin told them how he managed to get into their system.
Mitnick admitted that he had not hacked anything as a hacker, but had used social engineering methods. And a convincing excuse to get the login and password from a Pacific Bell employee. Yes, the standard scheme. It all ended for Kevin with two years of probation and a fine of $216, and the charges against Bonnie were completely withdrawn.
In addition, Mitnick had to give a formal promise to refrain from further violations of the law. After that, Kevin held out for a whole year. He and Bonnie even began to save up for their own house and, in order to save money, moved in with Kevin's mother. But when a daughter-in-law with hot Italian blood and a mother-in-law with equally hot Armenian blood come together under the same roof, scandals are inevitable.
To relieve stress, Kevin took up his old tricks. His old friend Lenny showed up again, and they tried to hack Condor's old friend, the Digital Equipment Corporation. To this end, they enrolled in a computer lab at Pierce College. But the police and the company's security service were already on the alert. The cops literally followed them home in the evenings and even sat on the roofs of the college buildings, spying through binoculars on what the couple of hackers were doing.
As a result, they were obviously kicked out of college. But Kevin and Lenny did not calm down. They contacted German hackers and, with their combined efforts, were able to get the source code of the Navy operating system, which was being developed by Digital Equipment Corporation. But this code had to be stored somewhere. Nowadays, there are compact storage devices with a capacity of terabytes, but in the late 80s, none of this existed, and the friends could not think of anything better than storing megabytes of code on servers at the US Naval Air Station in Maryland.
Soon, the space on their servers was completely filled with Kevin and Lenny's archived data, disguised as digital garbage. Then they got into the servers of the National Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In the evenings, Mitnick and Lenny would bet on penetrating secure networks, with the stake being a dinner for two at a restaurant in Beverly Hills.
Time after time, Lenny would end up on the losing side, which would make him very nervous. After another loss, Lenny lost his temper and, in a fit of rage, turned Mitnick over to the FBI. That's friendship. The damage from the hack was estimated at several million dollars, which threatened significant prison terms. However, Kevin's defense was able to prove to the court that the hacker suffered from computer addiction. And his actions related to hacking and accessing other people's data brought him pleasure comparable to that experienced by people addicted to drugs.
And these actions are not aimed at enrichment. For example, he got hold of a database of credit card numbers of the richest people in Silicon Valley. But there was no evidence that he used them for financial gain. As a result, instead of a long sentence, Mitnick was sentenced to one year in prison and a course of compulsory rehabilitation.
In prison, Condor managed to connect to his wife's answering machine and discovered that his Bonnie had found solace in the arms of his friend and fellow hacker Lewis DePayne. Yes, the same one whose ex-girlfriend turned in Kevin the first time in 1981. What a small world indeed. This discovery was a deep disappointment for him.
After completing the course of rehabilitation, he decided to change his life, paying attention to his physical health and nutrition. Having moved to Las Vegas, Smithnick promised himself to give up hacking and phone cracking. In early 1992, Kevin received word from his father of the tragic death of his half-brother Adam, whose body was found in a car near a drug den.
The circumstances of the death were suspicious, but the police did not investigate, prompting Mitnick to take matters into his own hands. He began his own investigation, tapping phones and reviewing phone records, hoping to find answers about his brother's death. Despite his efforts, the truth did not come out until years later, when his uncle's ex-wife confessed to an accidental murder. The loss of his brother and his wife's betrayal left a void in Mitnick's soul, which he filled by returning to his hacker roots.
He hacked into the Pack Bell system, which attracted the attention of the FBI and forced him into hiding. A reward was offered for his capture, but Mitnick was always one step ahead, using his skills to eavesdrop on those who were trying to eavesdrop on him. By the end of 1994, Kevin Mitnick was recognized as one of the leading experts in the field of information technology, known for his sophisticated and daring hacking methods.
However, he had already surpassed the usual specialists from telephone companies and government agencies. In search of an equal rival, Mitnick turned his attention to Tsitoma Shimamura, an outstanding expert in IT security. And between them the famous confrontation unfolded. Shimamura, who actively worked with the secret services and liked to test his security systems on hackers not so much to catch them, but to test his developments.
When Shimamura went on vacation to Nevada, he left his secure computer in Solana Beach, connected to a network that allegedly stored data on secret military projects. Although in fact, this was bait, since such work at home would be unacceptable. Mitnick was aware of this, but his desire for risk exceeded caution.
Any changes on Shimamura's computer were carefully recorded and monitored by his colleagues in San Diego. And when the trap was sprung, Shimamura immediately returned from vacation to catch the hacker. But he could not figure him out right away. Shimamura could have forgotten about this incident, despite the fact that he left him offensive voice messages. But Condor reminded him of itself again.
On December 27, Shimamura received several messages in which there were threats and boasts about his unrivaled skills. Deeply insulted, Shimamura, following the best traditions of Bushida, decided to take revenge on the hacker. He carefully analyzed the attack and was amazed by the complexity of the methods used. Among the possible suspects, of course, was the name of Kevin Mitnick, and one of the first. Shimamura used cooperation with the secret services to the fullest.
First, he figured out the city from which the hacker operated. It turned out to be Rollie, North Carolina. Shimamura arrived the next day and was soon joined by an FBI agent and a team of technicians. The FBI had a special device that could call Mitnick's phone without activating the beep, turning the phone into a transmitter that could then be used to accurately track his location.
Shimamura, well aware of Mitnick's extensive knowledge, also came up with the idea of hiding the antenna. The FBI wanted to track the hacker's phone from his van. The expert was simply afraid that their target would notice the antenna and realize that they were being targeted. Luckily, the FBI's vehicle had special handles on the roof, so they attached boxes with LED lights to them and hid the antenna inside, making the vehicle inconspicuous.
The ruse ultimately worked, because the next morning, the agents were able to narrow down Condor's location to his apartment. On Valentine's Day 1995, Judge Wallace Dixon gave his consent to search apartment 202 at the Player Club Apartments in the role occupied by one Glen Thomas Case. On February 15, Shimamura gave the go-ahead for the secret services to enter the apartment.
The FBI officers who broke into the apartment arrested Kevin Mitnick. Then there was the trial. He was sentenced to 46 months in prison plus an additional 22 months for violating his parole in 1988. In total, the hacker spent about five years behind bars, including eight months in solitary confinement. He claimed that his time in solitary confinement was due to the fact that the authorities convinced the court that he could start a nuclear war by stealing a telephone receiver.
But it’s best not to joke with this. After his release in 2000, Mitnick was not seen hacking, at least officially. For the first three years after his release, he was prohibited from using either computers or phones. However, he was able to found his own company, promoting principles similar to those supported by Tsutomu Shimamura, with whom Mitnick eventually made peace and recognized his professionalism.
In response, Shimamura expressed regret about the conditions of Mitnick’s imprisonment, which he complained about. Over time, Mitnick gained trust at the highest levels. He even spoke before the US Senate with lectures on the importance of information security. His company became a leader in creating reliable software products for information security.
He wrote a number of articles on the latest developments, lectured to students, and did not hide his past. Over time, Mitnick even stopped denying his status as the most famous cybercriminal, which contributed to the success of his books written in the 21st century. Having gone from an inquisitive teenager and computer enthusiast to a prisoner, and then to a successful businessman and owner of a couple of IT companies and a millionaire.
Condor faced another serious problem in his life, but which he was never able to solve - cancer. Kevin Mitnick died on July 16, 2023 in Pittsburgh, USA from complications associated with pancreatic cancer. And yes, you can talk as much as you like about the fact that a genius hacker is one who was not caught, but what were his tricks? He not only knew how to hack everything technically, but also had the skill of manipulation.
Not everyone is given such a refined ability to manage people. What do you think of Kevin Mitnick? Until next time, bye-bye.
