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CNN Interviews Kevin Mitnick 193

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the explorations-of-modesty dept.
phantom writes to tell us that a couple of days ago Kevin Mitnick gave an interview to CNN further deconstructing his past exploits and discussing his current activities.
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CNN Interviews Kevin Mitnick More

CNN Interviews Kevin Mitnick

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  • 404 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @02:01AM (#13762589)
    Nothing to see here, please move along.

    Damn, he's good.

  • May I be the first to say (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mateito ( 746185 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @02:02AM (#13762592) Homepage
    Fr33 K3v1n!!!!

  • "past exploits" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @02:04AM (#13762599)
    hahahahaha oh that's rich.

  • Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by typical ( 886006 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @02:08AM (#13762612) Journal
    Why is it that people get so worked up over Mitnick?

    He was a dick to a bunch of people, he got in trouble, he spent some time in jail. Okay, that sucks for him, but why does everyone drool over him?

    Woz was an electronic prankster, but he wasn't a jerk, and he *created things* instead of just making people unhappy. I could see being a Woz fan, but waving a "Kevin" flag is just weird.

    • Re:Sigh (Score:5, Informative)

      by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @02:55AM (#13762768) Journal
      Why is it that people get so worked up over Mitnick?

      Dude, have you *read* the story of Mitnick? Yeah, he did some things he shouldn'ta. He knew it. He was a dick. He also didn't send out P3N15 spam, nor did he do any particular damage to the systems he infiltrated.

      But where it gets interesting? His prosecution... He was denied more rights than most people know they have, and was even denied right to a phone call because they feared he could launch bombs by squeaking ringtones into the phone!

      Simple absurdity.

      • wrong (Score:2, Insightful)

        by circletimessquare ( 444983 )
        granparent post was right, he's just a dick

        the kind of people who admire criminals do so for one overriding reason: for all of their other failures, criminals do have courage

        so if you admire kevin mitnick, you admire him because he has the balls to do what you do not

        meanwhile if you don't admire kevin mitnick, then good for you: you probably have a modicum of courage about your character, without the failures of character mitnick has/ had

        as for his prosecution, well if that's what gets you fired up, then yo
        • Like taking the initiative to use a shift key, or having the courage to punctuate a sentence with a period and not a newline?

          I keed!

        • Re:wrong (Score:1, Flamebait)

          by timmarhy ( 659436 )
          oh, give yourself a big fucking rap why don't you? i suppose your one of these initiative possesing gods among men, who shuns any and all for you are supieror!

          you obviously do NOT have a clue about the kevin story, and are an egotistical maniac who can't stand anyone being in the spot light as it might detract from you.

          kevin didn't do much of anything wrong, he never harmed a soul, but thanks to a certain IDIOT NY times writer he ended up enduring more deprevation of liberties then most people could eve

        • Admire? Who said anything about admire? Oh I see, you have nothing real to say so you argue against something nobody said. How is that working out for you?

        • Freud (Score:3, Insightful)

          by zpok ( 604055 )
          That's just about the most idiotic generalization I've ever read, bar SCO propaganda. I'm quite confident to hand you this compliment even if I don't really know who this Kevin guy is. Have you any idea how many reasons one can have to admire someone? Being spineless seems like a very very distant reason to me. I don't know what it is that bugs you about this Kevin or his fan club, but just reading the article tells me there could be quite a lot to admire regardless of what people think he stands for.
          Admira

        • Re:wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @05:35AM (#13763243)
          Why would one need to admire him in order to be outraged by the rights he was denied?

          I want certain rights for everyone, including people I hate.

        • Re:wrong (Score:5, Interesting)

          by DavonZ ( 13344 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @05:37AM (#13763252) Homepage
          granparent post was right, he's just a dick

          Actually, I know Kevin and he is anything but a dick. He knows that he did some stupid things when he was younger, but it was ages ago. Talking to Kevin, he rarely brings up "those days". If you ask him about "those days", he simply says that he made mistakes, did his time and is getting on with his life. He owns a security company now, does lectures and is happy with his family (girlfriend/step-kid).

          It is amazing how people who don't know him call him names and mock/criticize those who show interest in his past. If these people really cared as little as they try to portray, they wouldn't bother posting. It is most likely they are trying to hide a feeling of inferiority

          • Re:wrong (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Zog The Undeniable ( 632031 )
            I have no strong opinions on whether Kevin is a martyr or the spawn of Satan, but do you think anyone would turn up to his lectures were it not for his reputation gained in "those days"?
          • It is amazing how people who don't know him call him names and mock/criticize those who show interest in his past.

            Davon,

            You misspelled 'Slashdot.'

            Chuck

        • Re:wrong (Score:2, Informative)

          by stud9920 ( 236753 )
          repeat after me
          could NOT care less

        • Re:wrong (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Dr. Evil ( 3501 )

          Mitnick was arrested at a time when failure to provide due process, innocent before being proven guilty and right to a fair trial were still popular ideals.

          Yes, he was guilty, yes he served his time, yes it was probably an appropriate amount of time... but!

          ... the process he went through to get to that outcome was very unfair and ignored his rights.

          When you get down to it, Mitnick was a screwed up kid who got a power trip out of manipulating people and accessing secret information. He amassed power t

      • deja vu (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by mikek3332002 ( 912228 )
        I'm surprised the US did that to their own citizens in those days. Now they are just incarcinating foreigners as animals in Gutatinmo Bay. Also their trials are designed to bring a guilty veridict. I imagine if the regualar joe kept his dogs in those conditions he would have been sued/fined big by the RSPCA or equivlant in no time.
      • This pro-Kevin rhetoric is so typical of those who never bothered to actual read both sides of the Kevin story... Let's see..

        Never harmed a soul? Read what he did to make his ex-wife's life miserable.

        Kevin disappeared while on probation. He violated the terms of his probation. He committed further crimes of the sort that got him on probation in the first place, and he hid for years. He was only caught because he couldn't STOP doing what got him into trouble in the first place. Two words: FLIGHT RISK.

    • Re:Sigh (Score:3, Interesting)

      by QuantumG ( 50515 )
      Have you ever considered the possibility that Mitnick attacked people who were evil/unethical themselves? For example, if the world had not been informed how trivial it was to clone analog cell phones the technology may never have advanced. The corporations didn't give a shit about how primitive the cell network was and how trivial it was to attack. They were only interested in hunting Mitnick down and getting him arrested for fraud. Call me crazy but I would have prefered it if the police had arrested

    • Re:Sigh (Score:2, Insightful)

      by h0tr0d ( 160151 )
      Because he was the first 'hacker' the public had the chance to put a face to and could truly be afraid of because of all the over-hype by the media. Mitnick's noteriety for his hackery will forever place him in infamy as far as the general public is concerned for the same reason serial killers such as John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, and Charles Manson are.

    • Re:Sigh (Score:2, Insightful)

      by digismack ( 262459 )
      It's quite simple actually. Mitnicks actions captured the attention of people not as technically inclined as himself. He inspired peoples imaginations and before long Kevin was toning with his mouth.. (and causing quadrillions of dollars worth of damage!)
    • I think it has something to do with him being held without trail for like four years or some such. I don't know many specifics but from what I've read it seems he didn't get his "due course" or whatever you yanks call it.

    • Re:Sigh (Score:2, Interesting)

      by burne ( 686114 )
      Created? Created what? As I recall he was mostly convicted for telephone- and creditcard fraude. Which makes him a common thief, not (his words) the 'Osama bin Mitnick' of the hackercommunity. Which in itself is a strange claim to fame. Does this imply 'somebody' will put him out of business using a MOAB while he's hiding in a cave in Montana? That would be cool, actually.
      • As I recall he was mostly convicted for telephone- and creditcard fraude. Which makes him a common thief, not (his words) the 'Osama bin Mitnick' of the hackercommunity.
        And Al Capone was convicted for tax evasion.

    • Re:Sigh (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why is it that people get so worked up over Mitnick?

      Because a) the treatment he got was far worse than the crime he committed, mostly because people fear what they don't understand and the government didn't understand computer crime back then, and b) because he didn't get a trial for a really long time.

    • how many other famous hackers can you name? (i'm talking first and last name, not handle). The guy has got name recognition, if you hear the name kevin mitnick, even if you aren't a geek, you KNOW he was 'that one hacker guy'. You hear about woz and you think 'uhh, that guy that co-founded apple computers?'

    • Re:Sigh (Score:4, Interesting)

      by hughk ( 248126 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @05:33AM (#13763237) Journal
      He cost Digital a bundle, both for RSTS/E (an early 16-bit minicomputer OS) as well as VMS. In the latter case, he triggered a complete code review after gaining access to the main VMS development cluster which ended up costing Digital a fortune.

      The thing that annoyed Digital is that his attacks against the company were mostly around social engineering, not against the OS itself. It didn't quite kill the company but it caused delays to two versions of the operating system and the introduction of Alpha.

      • first mitnick could launch nuclear missiles by whistling into a phone.

        now he single handedly brought down dec's alpha? that's a new one to me. rather good, but a new one.

        maybe people should just wake up and realize the alpha was a crap cpu -- way overpriced for the performance it (didn't) deliver.
        • I happen to know a bit about this.

          Mitnick used his social engineering skills to get into the VMS Source cluster. The risk of his having interfered with the code (unlikely as his skills were elsewhere) lead to a line by line analysis of VMS. This delayed the introduction of newer versions and thus the introduction of Alpha support.

          Apparently he had been involved in an attack on RSTS/E installations which involved the supply of patch tapes including compromised code to target installs so he did have a cer

          • actually what happened was dec got distracted by itanium, dec lost focus, and alpha development largely ground to a halt. a brilliant move by intel to sabotage the competition. the dec/compaq/hp fiascos were the final nails in the coffin of axp. the 21264 was the last real innovation to emerge from dec, it was all downhill from there.

            a friend of mine worked at dec in their unix labs from pre-compaq-merger to the fall of axp and it was interesting to get his insiders view of things.
            • I worked at Digital for a few contracts and was later organising a DECUS security SIG so had access to a lot of the info at the time. Digital's marketing sucked but they were getting better and the Alpha looked good and they were selling well into SUN/HP territory. Mitnick's attacked delayed OpenVMS 5.x and that was bringing the Alpha support.

              The Itanium fiasco happened purely because of HP. Compaq-Digital were firmly in the direction Alpha, but HP was in a partnership with Intel.

    • Re:Sigh (Score:3, Interesting)

      by justins ( 80659 )

      He was a dick to a bunch of people, he got in trouble, he spent some time in jail. Okay, that sucks for him, but why does everyone drool over him?

      There were a couple of things that make the case interesting (not worthy of DROOL, of course). The fact that his crimes amounted to, well, being a dick, but the government and his corporate victims pulled a random number out of their ass as "damages" and it was pretty much accepted without question by the court. That has a certain interest. Much greater damage hap

    • As far as I'm concerned some of what Kevin did he should of and was made to pay for. My problem wasn't that it was how the government handled it, as far as I'm concerned it was unconstitutional holding him in solitary confinement without allowing representation or charges for years.

      You're right, he wasn't anywhere near as likeable or admirable as the Woz. For years I wanted to be like him in creating the Apple. I was in high school when micro/homebrew computers were coming out and I'd go down to Rad Sh

  • Debunks Some Myths (Score:5, Funny)

    by J_Omega ( 709711 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @02:09AM (#13762615)
    but he denies the stories that he hacked into NORAD -- North American Aerospace Defense Command -- or that he wiretapped the FBI.


    He was overheard muttering "I hacked the FBI and wiretapped NORAD."

  • The Broken Interview (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ubrayj02 ( 513476 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @02:11AM (#13762620) Homepage Journal
    There was a good interview of Kevin Mitnick in the third release [thebroken.org] by "The Broken".

    He is a reasonable sounding guy, and I think in the interview with "The Broken" sort of dispells some of the myths that were started about him in the book "Cyberpunk" by Katie Hafner and John Markoff.

    I read that book when I was in 6th grade and I was totally blow away. I got a modem and started war dialing and memorizing "at" commands just so I could try and be a badass like Kevin Mitnick.

    • Re:The Broken Interview (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I read that book when I was in 6th grade and I was totally blow away. I got a modem and started war dialing and memorizing "at" commands just so I could try and be a badass like Kev +++ ATH

      NO CARRIER

    • . I got a modem and started war dialing and memorizing "at" commands just so I could try and be a badass like Kevin Mitnick.

      Yeah. Once upon a time, I knew quite a bit about the Hayes-compatable MODEM command set. It all fell to crap as "compatable" became "hayes-ish". Sad, though, the only ones I actually used over the years:

      ATZ - reset the modem to factory defaults.

      ATI1, ATI2, ATI3, ATI4, etc. - what kind of modem is this, anyway?

      ATDT[phone#] - Dial a phone number.

      ATH0 - self evident.

      How many do you rememb
      • You pretty much named all that I can remember. It has been a while.

        In my freshman year of high school I think that fax machines were getting more and more common - and they had really convoluted AT commands. I think that I was so isolated I just thought the only way to do things was by typing them in manually. I remember trying really hard to memorize all the new commands that came with our brand new 14.4k fax/modem. I even started bringing the manual to school and reading it in class when I had time. Lucki
      • A/ - repeat last command (?)

        ATA - answer

        ATD worked without the "T" for touch-tone. My modem would dial one touch tone digit, wait and see if the phone company recognized it (to see if you had paid the touch-tone fee), and then either continue dialing with tones, or re-dial with pulses.

        There were a bunch of tweaks to timing that was possible (maybe AT@0) . I made the dial speed really short and lowered the "time from off-hook to first digit dialed" to the minimum possible. I wrote a program to auto-dial ever
      • Some of us old-timers remember ATDP or, and how is this for an indignity, having to dial manually with your rotary phone a few hundred times before you got a carrier and popped your handset into your coupler only to have your idiot sister pick up the phone forcing you to later, rinse and repeat.

        Clearly I have some unsettled issues here. I'll be quiet now.

        • I must be an even-older-timer... I remember the days of 'dumb' modems which didn't have any real intelligence, eg didn't do commands at all.

          The Commodore 64 modem was capable of auto dialling by pulsing the DTR line (which in turn took the line on/off hook) at the correct rates. I wrote some code for my modem on the Amiga which did much the same thing on the modem I had for that. I was about 13 at the time though... maybe i'm not such an old timer :)

          For a while I was also able to dial a phone manually too,
      • ATM was to set the built in speaker, and there were alternate INIT commands like ATW and stuff. You could even get most old modems to dial rotary-style.

        Ah I miss the BBS days. Dialing up long distance to download grainy 16 color images of Cindy Crawford and deliver my Qmail packet for the day. Hmm. OK actually no I don't miss it much. But it was fun.
        • If you wanted pulse, I think you could use ATDP####### (AT Dial Pulse instead of Dial Tone). ATM had 2 bits, or 0-3: 0:mute, 1:dial sound only, 2:dial and connection sounds, and 3: all sounds. 3 got annoying very fast. +++ usually hung up, IIRC.
      • Apart from the ones you mention:

        ATE0, ATE1 - echo off/on

        AT.. umm. I used to know a lot of them by heart, but it seems that my wetware is lossy. Wikipedia has an article [wikipedia.org] though, if people feel the need to refresh.
      • ATX3 was about the only hayes command I ever needed to add to default dial strings. Ignore the dialtone and just dial - if I had any messages then my dial tone was changed and confused the modems.
      • My dad had a TI-994A. Here we go!

        ATDP#######
        (LINE IS BUSY)
        +++
        A/
        (LINE IS BUSY)
        +++
        A/
        (LINE IS BUSY)
        +++
        A/
        (LINE IS BUSY)
        +++
        A/
        (LINE IS BUSY) ...

        So many lost hours waiting to connect to the local bbs... I should have learned to play basketball.
    • He is a reasonable sounding guy, and I think in the interview with "The Broken" sort of dispells some of the myths that were started about him in the book "Cyberpunk" by Katie Hafner and John Markoff.

      I read that book when I was in 6th grade and I was totally blow away. I got a modem and started war dialing and memorizing "at" commands just so I could try and be a badass like Kevin Mitnick.

      There's a slashdot interview [slashdot.org] where he talks about that book and his "relationship" to Markoff. Also good reading is the

  • Takedown? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does anyone know exactly how exagerrated or perhaps accurate the movie "Takedown" was?

    • Re:Takedown? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by B11 ( 894359 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @02:37AM (#13762712)
      Actually, it was pretty exagerrated, Kevin explained his side to /.ers here [slashdot.org] a while ago. If you read his books, he also alludes to the fact that some people have really blown-up his capabilities to trump up charges, or insipre FUD in the general, non-technical populous.

      Truth is, Kevin Mitnick has become a poster boy for hackers, but he was by no means the most "dangerous" or the most skilled by any means. Most famous yes, most "powerful," no.

      • I doubt we'll ever know who the most powerful is/was. While the person is still alive, no one will know of their exploits. Once the person retires, the people affected by said hacker will never acknowledge it.

    • Re:Takedown? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ambrosine10 ( 747895 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @02:58AM (#13762783)

      There's a good article on Kevin Mitnick [rotten.com] in the Rotten Library that discusses this.

      • Re:Takedown? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bani ( 467531 )
        it's an excellent article which puts mitnick, markoff and shimomura in their proper light.
        • Yes, it's surprising (and I mean this seriously) how good rotten.com's journalism is. Granted, they have the benefit of hindsight. But reading the rotten library feels like I'm reading a History journal with profanity.

  • Mitnick spoke at The Fifth Hope (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gbnewby ( 74175 ) * on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @02:30AM (#13762689) Homepage
    Here is a link to the speaker page: http://www.the-fifth-hope.org/hoop/5hope_speakers. khtml [the-fifth-hope.org]. Scroll or search to get Kevin's speech (two parts; audio only or audio plus video). I got to speak with him a little at the conference, as well as some family members (including his grandmother, who was featured in Freedom Downtime).

    Kevin was very personable, and has clearly given a lot of thought to his current phase in life as a security expert. As you might expect from his background, Kevin has a keen mind for remembering details, and observing human interaction. That's part of what I like about his books, as well as from his presentation at The Fifth Hope.

  • that's ballsy (Score:5, Funny)

    by xtermz ( 234073 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @02:40AM (#13762719) Homepage Journal
    they did a phone interview with a guy who could whistle tones to blow up the world and make baby orphans die and stuff. they are lucky he didnt explode their brains with his telepathic powers!

  • Uhhh (Score:1)

    by axonal ( 732578 )
    What's with the vacuum?
    • I can only guess it has something to do with "sucking", for which a vacuum cleaner serves as an icon. The ALT for it is "quickies", which reminds me of blow-jobs, which in turn reminds me of idiots using vacuum cleaners to vaguely satisfy their desires (or hurt themselves.) How does this apply to Mitnick? Hmmm. He sucked? He was an idiot? This is all about jerking off to a demi-god of nerddom? The write-up sucks? The linked server's bandwidth is easily sucked? Heck if I know.

      We'll probably start to get a be
      • Ah hell, I even managed to miss the "from the explorations-of-modesty dept." joke. I'm sticking with the sexual inuendo hypothesis for now.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @03:46AM (#13762932)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • the entire site looks to me like someone desperate to sell a book.

      and people say mitnick is full of himself? they've obviously never seen that site -- all the chest-thumping by the website author gets rather tiresome.

      the website is also hideously ugly, almost as if the author doesn't want you to read it.
  • The two terminologies have become obscured through apathy, ignorance and cluelessness, I'm afraid. If mitnick can't make the distinction, there's no way anyone else with lesser technical merit (the press) will.

    "I get hired to hack into computers now and sometimes it's actually easier than it was years ago. "

    "Compared to the time you were an illegal hacker, and the contemporary landscape, how easy is it to hack a computer?"

    "..target to visit a Web site, which exploits a technical flaw and allows the hacker
    • I was also kind of annoyed by that, because I had thought he would jump on that language. I think that he has probably tired of making the distinction for people. And really you can't force a new word onto the populous, because you think it isn't descriptive or correct. Word's evolve through the cultural experience that you just don't have control over, even when they are simply not descriptive. Do you think Hormel Foods is going around giving interview about how they want to change that everyone uses t
    • Maybe there just isn't a distinction.

      If the most famous 'cracker' doesn't even use the term, then it's pretty safe to say the hacker/cracker distinction is only in the minds of an unsuccessful subculture trying to push the terms.

  • Milhouse all grown up (Score:3, Interesting)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @07:51AM (#13763609)
    CNN: Do you miss being on the run? (stupid question CNN!)

    MITNICK: No, no, I don't miss it all. I like my life now. I made some really stupid mistakes in the past as a younger man that I regret. I'm lucky that I've been given a second chance and that I could use these skills to help the community.

    But now that I've turned over a new leaf and people are interested in my skill-set, now the notoriety of my name helps me in my business.

    Make up your mind, are you helping the community or are you helping your own business? :)
  • My favorite part of the interview is the discussion on social engineering. Funny how we invest all of this money into improved security, hardware, etc, etc, etc and then people can make a phone call and get passwords over the net. Years ago when I was in high school, we had a class project to make a little website on our internal server at school. A friend of mine and myself ended up getting two different hosting accounts at different ISP's and moving our little projects online for the rest of the world.
    • I used to work on a helpdesk which handled calls from around 20 or so major international companies and anyone who had the name of someone at one of those companies could pretty much phone up and get a name and password off us. The chances are they could also get us to talk them through dialling into the network as well if they were a little rusty on the technical side of hacking.

      The one time I did refuse to reset someones password ( because he admitted he wasn't the person the account belonged to, not imme

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