Kevin Mitnick
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Kevin David Mitnick (August 6, 1963) is an American former cracker. Now turned white-hat hacker for good, his legendary anecdotes include eavesdropping on the FBI and slipping a gift with the message "Happy Birthday to your wife" into the desk drawer of the lead agent who was pursuing Mitnick.
Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick 2008.jpeg
Kevin Mitnick (2008)
Birth
Kevin David Mitnick
August 6, 1963 (age 59)
United States Flag Los Angeles, California, USA
Aliases.
The Condor, The Darkside Hacker
Occupation.
Information and communications consultant (formerly a hacker)
Writer
Organization
Mitnick Security Consultants
Crimes
1995: Communications fraud (14 counts), possession of unauthorized access devices (8 counts), interception of communications, unauthorized access to federal computers and damage to computers[1][2]
Penalties
1999: 46 months in prison and 3 years probation[3]; 1988: 1 year in prison[4]
Call sign
N6NHG[5].
Official website
mitnicksecurity.com
Table of Contents
Biography
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Born in Los Angeles, Kevin's parents divorced when he was three and his mother, who worked as a waitress, took him in. Alone with few friends, Kevin eventually gained access to computers at an inner-city high school. He made hacker friends on the network, earning him the nickname "Condor" [6]. He eventually became interested in phreaking (e.g., "freebies" by cracking phone lines), and then computer cracking.
He was imprisoned for stealing data from a computer company, but escaped while on probation. For nearly two years, he evaded searches by authorities in Los Angeles and Seattle [6], and since December 25, 1994, he has been using SYN flood attacks and known vulnerabilities with predictable sequence numbers to break into the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego, using TCP connections and successfully invaded the system. He even managed to tamper with /.rhosts. When investigators began to believe that Kevin could no longer be apprehended, he was arrested on February 15, 1995 by the FBI with the assistance of Tsutomu Shimomura, who worked at the University Center [see Note 1]. He was convicted and imprisoned for five years in prison and four years on probation.
Media coverage at this time revealed that Kevin was unable to stop his hacker (cracker) activities and ended up divorcing his older wife. His mother recalled that as a child he was never considered smart. His grandmother replied that his actions were not for his own benefit. And his therapist described her impression of him as a "sad and lonely boy."[6]
Kevin was released on January 21, 2000. After his release, he cooperated with the FBI and founded a consulting firm that does corporate security. He is currently on the security side of the business; when Zenlok, a company that provides email encryption services, was founded in 2007, the company's president, Amir Ayalon, asked him to become an advisor to advise the company from a hacker's perspective. He visited Japan for the first time on May 15, 2008, just in time for the company to launch its business, and gave a lecture on the dangers of e-mail. He is also the author of a book titled "Deception" (Japanese title).
As far as cracking activities are concerned, he was more of a cracker who used a method called social engineering.