Kevin Mitnick has died

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/las-vegas-nv/kevin-mitnick-11371668

by thirtyseven • 3 years ago

3699 594 3 years ago

dignitymemorial.com

h2odragon• 3 years ago

Like the Gerber baby, the symbol people recognized didn't necessarily have that much to do with the actual person.

RIP dude.

bshipp• 3 years ago

The....Gerber Baby? Is there a story there? She seems pretty normal and pleasant from her Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Turner_Cook

Kina• 3 years ago

It doesn’t matter who the Gerber Baby really is. Society has chosen to associate the Gerber Baby with certain attributes regardless of who the person behind the photo really is, and so it is with Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick, the real person, excelled at social engineering more than any other trait and was arguably subjected to malicious prosecution. But in his later years, there’s a lot of documentation online indicating that he didn’t live up to the myth that grew around him and he was not a pleasant person [1].

People here are mostly reminiscing about Mitnick--the myth, not the man.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/uk6wgd/why_d...

CSMastermind• 3 years ago

I didn't know him personally, do you have any stories you can share?

serf• 3 years ago

RIP. I still have my FREE KEVIN sticker on an old freezer.

One of my fond memories with my now-dead mother was going to see him during a prison transfer in Los Angeles and yelling outside the place until he waved to us and the rest of the crowd through a window.

mindcrime4• 3 years ago

I'm still rocking one on my laptop to this very day.

https://fogbeam.com/free-kevin.jpg

rglover• 3 years ago

Aw this is a bummer. RIP. I'll never forget reading The Art of Deception in high school.

codetrotter• 3 years ago

RIP. Same here, I read the whole book on a Sony Ericsson W810i Walkman cell phone in high school. The phone I read it on had a 176x220 pixels tiny little screen. Book was captivating.

m4jor5• 3 years ago

Is this real?

JuanTono• 3 years ago

I'm asking the same, Wikipedia page is not updated and based on the note he died on Sunday...

dredmorbius3• 3 years ago

As I write this, there's a pending edit, accepted for review, of Mitnick's death.

That seems to have been reverted pending a reliable source:

Edit: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&old...>

Revert: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&old...>

Wikipedians typically resolve such issues pretty quickly.

Spliterator• 3 years ago

I'm wondering the same thing. Wikipedia page isn't updated, I don't see any updates on https://www.mitnicksecurity.com/ or https://www.knowbe4.com/, and I can't find any other news mentions about this.

I also can't find mention of him having pancreatic cancer, but that's not necessarily a confirmation of anything. He certainly could have kept it private.

m4jor5• 3 years ago

Yeah seems like it was something he kept hush hush.

Sad to hear the news :\

sp332• 3 years ago

KnowBe4 has confirmed. https://web.archive.org/web/20230720043020/https://www.nytim...

gkoberger• 3 years ago

Wow. He was only 59.

I've always loved his lockpicking business card: https://www.mitnicksecurity.com/kevin-mitnicks-famous-lockpi...

While I assume this is real, part of me does feel like a combination of how young he is and who is is leads me to be slightly skeptical. Assuming it's real, hopefully he would have appreciated the skepticism.

booi• 3 years ago

Can you still get one of these? It says send cash in the mail so… I’m skeptical

sva_• 3 years ago

There are similar ones on AliExpress, if you just look for lockpicks in CC format

jbaber• 3 years ago

I, too, was concerned it was some kind of hacker gotcha trick, but took the leap of faith and mailed the cash.

They did ship the card to me.

ivoc• 3 years ago

Could always ask Woz for a card ?

thesuitonym2• 3 years ago

As of a few years ago, KnowBe4 was sending them out (well, a KnowBe4 branded version) to companies that partnered with them.

Simulacra3• 3 years ago

He gave me his business card at CES and it's one of my most prized possessions. I am heartbroken.

SonicSoul• 3 years ago

damn i missed this! do you know if its possible to still get one of those???

grayhatter2• 3 years ago

toool is an organization worthy of the support, and they sell a version of it.

Apocryphon• 3 years ago

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

VectorLock• 3 years ago

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

WhackyIdeas2• 3 years ago

Wasn’t sure who that was, but wikipidia says:

“Lamo was best known for reporting U.S. soldier Chelsea Manning to Army criminal investigators in 2010[7] for leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks.[8][9] Lamo died on March 14, 2018, at the age of 37.[10]”

Kind of the wrong side in history there. But RIP, regardless.

ineedasername6• 3 years ago

I had a similar thought, his social engineering abilities were very strong. If there was one person in the world willing to fake their own death to engineer access to something, it would have been him. A sad day.

jdthedisciple2• 3 years ago

fake their own death to engineer access to something

Care to elaborate?

yreg3• 3 years ago

For years I planned to get one by sending him the $10, but I never got around to do it…

Wevah• 3 years ago

Wired story about the origin of the cards: https://www.wired.com/2007/06/lock-pick-busin/ (I looked it up because I thought they looked like some cards someone I knew designed, and sure enough…)

heystefan• 3 years ago

RIP to the legend.

Remember when Yahoo! was defaced with a "FREE KEVIN" message? Good times.

29athrowaway6• 3 years ago

I remember when KevinMitnick.com was defaced.

DonHopkins4• 3 years ago

I remember when takedown.com was taken down! ;)

antegamisou• 3 years ago

He was the person I associated the word hacker with, when I came across his name back in 2003 as a kid when I was searching for 'top hackers in the world'. (Google was functional back then...).

RIP

obiefernandez• 3 years ago

Can we get a black bar?

dredmorbius3• 3 years ago

To reach moderators, email hn@ycombinator.com with your request.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>

(I'd just made this suggestion via email on seeing this post.)

gruturo• 3 years ago

Indeed. Given the site's name is Hacker News, it would be so fitting.

bandyaboot• 3 years ago

Dang, that’s a big loss. A pioneer in his own unique way.

pnw• 3 years ago

RIP Kevin. Too young to be gone. I only met him once but he was definitely one of a kind and his story inspired a lot of people.

photoGrant• 3 years ago

Miserable. Godspeed, Kevin.

thebeardisred• 3 years ago

I'n guessing the hug of death will be forthcoming for this site: http://web.archive.org/web/20230719235437/https://www.dignit...

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick

bootcat• 3 years ago

RIP - He was a role model to upcoming social engineering folks,

Minor49er• 3 years ago

He's social engineering his way through the pearly gates now. Rest in peace, Kevin

SV_BubbleTime2• 3 years ago

I'll go in tomorrow and update our August KnowBe4 training deployment for August to be a couple of his modules. Our users won't know, and I guess he won't either, but cancer sucks and it'll make me happy to do it.

leptons• 3 years ago

KnowBe4 is the bane of my work existence. It's honestly the worst thing about my job, having to take their courses. It's too bad Mitnick sold out to Scientologists (KnowBe4), but I guess he had to cash in somehow. It kind of upsets me that I'm forced to watch Mitnick's videos about social engineering, considering his own nefarious use of the tricks he's teaching people to avoid. I mean, I guess learn from an expert? That service just rubs me the wrong way, maybe it's the scientologists that run it.

SV_BubbleTime2• 3 years ago

First I’ve heard they are scientologists. Although I’m not a shoot the messenger type.

phone8675309• 3 years ago

Rest in peace, Kevin. I am so glad that a much younger me got to meet you one day at a conference. Best to your family.

rafale• 3 years ago

A brillant man who, as a kid, inspired and motivate me by his cool exploits (even though I didn't end up pursuing cybersecurity).

hoistbypetard• 3 years ago

RIP. I can't appropriately explain to anyone who wasn't around for it just how much he influenced my thinking from the late 80s to late 90s.

wnissen2• 3 years ago

He certainly was an interesting person. It was always amazing the degree to which law enforcement prosecuted his hacking and cracking, when it seems like much more impactful crimes involving computers go uninvestigated. Plenty of people are hounded by threats of violence into leaving their jobs and homes, that seems far more impactful than Mitnick's crimes.

And FYI, while he died unexpectedly young, a 57-year-old man in the US has only a 50% chance of living to see their child reach 23 years of age. I, personally, wouldn't feel comfortable risking leaving a child with a likelihood of dealing with my death at that relatively young age.

bragr• 3 years ago

Well just doing the math, they must have conceived after his diagnosis, so presumably that was baked in sadly just knowing the actuarials on pancreatic cancer.

woooooo• 3 years ago

Everything is high school. A rebel thumbing their nose at the system must be punished, while the conventionally corrupt deserve the benefit of the doubt.

javajosh• 3 years ago

Wow, this comment is the most profound thing I've read in a while on HN. I find myself a) intuitively agreeing and b) trying to pick it apart. Society as a whole seems to have a very complicated love/hate relationship with rebellion and rebels. But with Mitnick it's like he personified Chaos vs law enforcement's Order in an almost mythological, Jungian sense that goes beyond any utilitarian justification.

goodpoint• 3 years ago

That's very specific to US society. Authorities treat computer intrusion more seriously than many violent crimes because it can affect companies and the government.

Companies and the government can spy on people all they want (see Snowden) but the reverse is punished severely (see Assange)

bagels2• 3 years ago

Doesn't that statistic depend heavily on how old the child is to begin with?

wittenbunk3• 3 years ago

Child are typically born zero years old.

pc862• 3 years ago

a 57-year-old man in the US has only a 50% chance of living to see their child reach 23 years of age

Perhaps a clearer way to put it: a 57-year-old man in the US has a 50% chance of living to 80, which doesn't seem quite as shocking of a statement.

hnick• 3 years ago

It might also be loaded with the assumption the man has a child - I'd assume outcomes are different for those with and without? I wonder by how much.

riffic• 3 years ago

yo if people like looked at an actuarial table they'd have a better idea what that means

jonhohle• 3 years ago

How many men are having their first child at 57? I’ll be well under 57 when my oldest child is 23.

m4jor5• 3 years ago

And FYI, while he died unexpectedly young, a 57-year-old man in the US has only a 50% chance of living to see their child reach 23 years of age. I, personally, wouldn't feel comfortable risking leaving a child with a likelihood of dealing with my death at that relatively young age.

To me it seems more like he wanted to have a child with his wife before he passed so they planned it out so it would happen.

neilv• 3 years ago

I'm sure the child will grow up knowing that they were wanted and loved.

Obituaries mention surviving family members by convention, but otherwise leave very personal matters to the family.

The death of someone can be a reminder of our own mortality. Maybe a later HN post can work through some of those thoughts.

dghughes• 3 years ago

I think it's pretty amazing to be 57 and expecting a child. I'd be thrilled. I'm 54 no kids and I wish I could have great relationship with a woman that is so good we had a child. Seeing how sick he was and sterility is a possibility from cancer drugs I think Kevin would be thrilled about the child as anyone would be.

layer8• 3 years ago

The question is about whether the child will be thrilled to have a father who died before they were born.

PostOnce6• 3 years ago

None of the commenters expressing this bullshit sentiment will provide their children with 1% of the education, health, freedom, security, etc that Mitnick will have left for his child. We struggle our whole lives to provide, it looks like he already assured that for his family, even into perpetuity if managed well.

It's not like he gave himself cancer on purpose and chose to leave a child with nothing out of spite. He played the hand he was dealt, it seems.

"Mitnick has filed a 13G form with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing ownership of 9,379,829 shares of KnowBe4, Inc. Class A (KNBE). This represents 6.9 percent ownership of the company. "

" companies announced on Wednesday that they have entered into a definitive agreement, with KnowBe4 stockholders set to receive $24.90 per share in cash, "

"Vista Equity Partners to Acquire Security Awareness Training Firm KnowBe4 for $4.6B"

https://fintel.io/news/mitnick-kevin-discloses-stake-in-knbe...

https://www.securityweek.com/vista-equity-partners-acquire-s...

wittenbunk3• 3 years ago

Right who needs a father figure when you have cash....

dang4• 3 years ago

Please make your substantive points without calling names. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

unethical_ban3• 3 years ago

What?

wnissen2• 3 years ago

He decided to have a child knowing that an average man had decent chance he would be dead before they entered college. Being in remission from one of the more deadly and rapid forms of cancer meant he knew or should have known that the child would likely grow up without a father. That does not seem like support to me.

And Warren Buffet will tell you that you want to give your kids enough money so that they can do anything, not so much that they can do nothing. Have you spent time around kids who know they will be millionaires when they grow up? Really messes with your head. A buddy of mine was supported by his parents as an expat in a resort city and ended up brutally murdering his dad after they clashed about money.

And FWIW, I will be able to give my kid enough money to do anything, have been carefully developing his mental and physical aspects, travel abroad, language immersion, etc. So your attack is inaccurate in my case.

ldargin2• 3 years ago

On the flip side, his child will grow up knowing he had the coolest dad ever.

__warlord__• 3 years ago

I'm a bit "on the younger generation" but I remember the movie based on his story: "Take Down" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159784/.

To this day I know the difference between a cracker and a hacker :)

RIP.

lyu07282• 3 years ago

Its a pretty cool movie, surprisingly realistic with a focus on social engineering. No idea how accurate it was otherwise, probably not really.

Sad to see, he was way too young to go. RIP

m3kw9• 3 years ago

The real OG of hacking

tmaly• 3 years ago

Very sad that he did not see his first child.

latenightcoding• 3 years ago

A literal hacker news. RIP.

DoesntMatter22• 3 years ago

Wow that's so unexpected. He's been an icon in the computing community for 30 years. He's gone way too soon. I didn't even know he was sick.

zsiddique• 3 years ago

I remember reading Kevin Mitnick books in the early 2000s and it really open my eyes about social engineering and how hacking is more than just cracking a code. Help me become a better DevOps and Software Engineer.

whalesalad• 3 years ago

Same! His book on social engineering was profound to my teenage mind. Rest in peace.

SEJeff2• 3 years ago

dang / mods: if anyone passing deserves the HN black banner, I think Mitnick deserves the banner.

m4jor5• 3 years ago

I second in backing this request. 1+ pls give black banner.

mindcrime4• 3 years ago

100% agreed.

charles_f• 3 years ago

+1, he was a figurehead of computer science and technology, he should get the black banner.

cjensen4• 3 years ago

As one of the people whose credit card number was stolen from Netcom, I would strongly object to this. I'm not here to speak poorly of the dead, but I'm definitely here to judge those who think too highly of him.

SEJeff2• 3 years ago

It isn’t about thinking highly of him. His impact on security is well documented and very extensive. The black banner is used for honoring notable technologists who pass away. Regardless of personal thoughts, he was a very notable technologist and sort of first famous social engineer.

I’m sorry he stole your cc.

ourmandave• 3 years ago

As the black hats at 2600 would say, "It was just for educational purposes." <wink>

owenmarshall• 3 years ago

As someone too young to have a credit card in 1995, I’m curious: was its theft more of a “big deal” back then?

My Amex account number was stolen a month ago. It took me three minutes on the call with a rep to get it locked + a new card issued. I think I spent more time and effort on the phone with my dentist later that week.

capableweb2• 3 years ago

I'm sorry to hear that you suffered from the event, and although I'm sure you're not the only one with a negative experience, I do think the positive experiences people had from interacting/watching/hearing/meeting/reading Mitnick outweigh the negative ones.

mabbo2• 3 years ago

Did this cost you money personally, or just inconvenience you?

TigeriusKirk• 3 years ago

As someone else whose credit card info was stolen from Netcom, I strongly support it.

callalex2• 3 years ago

Is that Mitnic’s fault? Or the incompetent greedy executives of Netcom?

dsies• 3 years ago

What a great idea. He was part of the hacker subculture - regardless of what your opinion of him or his abilities is. This made me think of the takedown.com telnet transcripts - what a blast from the past.

Really sad day, RIP - will definitely have a drink for him tonight.

acjohnson55• 3 years ago

The man who put the term "hacker" on the map, for better or for worse.

throwaway29303• 3 years ago

Hear hear

Simulacra3• 3 years ago

@Dang

ineedasername6• 3 years ago

@dang

:’(

ineedasername6• 3 years ago

I second that request @dang

whyenot• 3 years ago

I am going to swim against the current and ask that you please not do this. His crimes weren't victimless and his actions hurt real people. While I think pancreatic cancer is a terrible thing to die from, and while I feel for his loved ones, HN's black banner is a mark of honor, and that is not something I think he earned.

PostOnce6• 3 years ago

The company running this website was cofounded by the man who wrote the first internet worm, there's a chapter about rtm and pg in some of the same books that talk about Mitnick.

Nobody's perfect.

Keyframe• 3 years ago

Absolutely. This is "hacker" news after all, and if there ever was one it was him. You don't have to think highly of him, but Mitnick was an institution.

ecohen162• 3 years ago

1+ here

627467• 3 years ago

lsllc• 3 years ago

Concur.

john-radio• 3 years ago

I was just thinking, his obituary is both the worst kind of, and the absolute definition of, the term "hacker news."

dredmorbius3• 3 years ago

Comments are a no-op. To reach moderators, email hn@ycombinator.com.

29athrowaway6• 3 years ago

Watch "Freedom downtime".

There they make it clear that the New York Times columnist and book author John Markoff made up absolutely everything.

The movie "Track Down" (US) / "Takedown" is also full of BS.

e12e• 3 years ago

And read "Ghost in the Wires":

https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wires-Adventures-Worlds-Wanted-...

Simulacra3• 3 years ago

Oh My Gosh this is so sad !

josh2600• 3 years ago

Mitnick was a hacker hero of mine in my youth. I think I’ve understood his role as jester prior to conviction less as I’ve grown older, but there’s something about the boyhood charm of being so divorced from the potential consequences of one’s actions that is almost unique.

Mitnick had so many stories that entranced the people around him. I heard one second hand of Mitnick dealing with a bank who had early voice verification software. Upon meeting the CEO he gave the executive his card and departed for the evening. Arriving back at his hotel, he called the CEO and asked him to read his phone number to him. The phone number contained all ten digits which Mitnick had neatly tape recorded so as to make the CEO’s voice reproducible. He then proceeded to use the bank’s vocal banking system to transfer $1 from the CEO’s account to his as the authentication mechanism was reading out your own account number in your voice.

When Mitnick arrived back in the board room the architect of the voice verification system was crestfallen and the bank CEO delivered a check on a silver platter.

Now how much of that tale is embellished I will never know as it was second hand, but that was the kind of whimsy Mitnick brought to our world.

Rest in Power.

tomjakubowski2• 3 years ago

How would he have known the CEO's bank account number? Did the CEO write him a check at some point? Or maybe a bank's CEO traditionally gets account number 1…

gabereiser3• 3 years ago

He used the CEO’s voice to access AN account, I don’t think it was the CEO’s specifically. But just an account, verified by the CEO’s voice, to his.

walrus01• 3 years ago

Mitnick was exceptionally gifted at social engineering information out of various company departments over the phone.

craftkiller• 3 years ago

Bank account numbers aren't secret, they're written on the bottom of every check you write. The story lacks the details of how he got his hands on it but its not unreasonable to assume he was able to access such unprotected information.

77pt772• 3 years ago

How would he have known the CEO's bank account number?

Welcome to the american banking system.

ddkwlfe• 3 years ago

int(phone number) "contained all ten digits" is the main embellishment. KM used different acct#. check delivery was weeks later, after negotiations. either way kevin was OG AF ..|..

alex-moon• 3 years ago

All of the stories in his books are like this. An existing seemingly sensible system is used in a creative way to get access. Every time you read one the creative solution is so elegant you just go "Ah, can't believe I didn't think of that" (and then go try it yourself obviously - had lots of fun as a teenager taking down websites/stealing ppl's passwords/etc as a party trick for my friends).

OJFord• 3 years ago

Seemingly sensible? This one?

the authentication mechanism was reading out your own account number in your voice

That's the most suspect part of it to me - even vulnerability to malicious attack like this aside, who would think that's a good idea or going to work well?

What percentage of people could successfully use a voice assistant to make a note of their bank account number the first time? Nevermind have it determine that it was indeed their voice not someone else's.

anon_tech• 3 years ago

there is a bank in Italy currently that uses this voice recognition mechanism which with current AI tech is fakeable within 20 min. Nothing much changed since back then I guess

giamma• 3 years ago

I know a Bank in Italy that uses voice recognition but you also have to provide 2 digits from a "voice password" in addition to the voice match.

Gordonjcp• 3 years ago

About 15 years ago I was using telephone banking, when you had to put in a 4-digit PIN to access banking. I could still hear background call centre noise so I asked the operator if they were still on the phone when I put the PIN in, and he confirmed he was.

"Okay, so you heard me type in the PIN? So now you can know my PIN?"

"Oh no", he said, "it's just beeps, like this - ", and pressed a few digits.

"Right so you typed 1 6 3 2 4, there."

"..."

"That's what you typed, isn't it?"

"Uhm... yes, how did you guess?"

"I didn't guess, I could hear the beeps. I've got a reasonable ear for pitch, so I can tell what the numbers are from the tones. Any chance you could escalate this to your manager after the call, and tell them to give me a phone if they've any questions?"

They rang me the next day, and I explained the situation to them.

Now, at least in the UK, you get transferred away from the call handler when you put your PIN in.

abledon• 3 years ago

I wonder if the same scenario happened today, where a Kid has an interaction like that with a bank CEO, showing an insane vulnerability... The kid would just be sentenced to jail time and charged as an adult.

dirtybirdnj• 3 years ago

Or have the Pinkertons sic'd on his home and family. Sup friendlyjordies?

singlow• 3 years ago

He did this as an adult while being paid by the bank as security consultant.

eduction• 3 years ago

He has the CEO’s number and successfully calls him, and through some miracle gets through directly to ask this trivial question — as opposed to getting the number from the assistant who answers his phone - sure ok but then under what pretense does he then ask him to repeat his phone number? “Please repeat the phone number I just dialed.”

The phone number contains all the digits needed to recreate the bank account number?

He somehow has the bank account number?

He meets the CEO (despite just being a security consultant) and gives his report to the board of directors?! That is not how companies usually work, especially the board part.

Check on a silver platter? architect of the voice system is brought into the room with the board to be humiliated? This reads like something a 13 year old would dream up (nothing against OP maybe someone even Mitnik really did claim this happened).

The tale is absolutely embellished if it has any truth at all.

moritonal• 3 years ago

Mitnick could have been hired as a advisor for their system, personally by the CEO.

He calls the CEO to ask a "personal question" so to skip the assistant, asks something innocent, then let's the CEO he has a new number and provides a fake number. He asks the CEO to confirm he heard the number correctly, but it's a bad line, so speak clearly please.

The "new phone number" has all the digits of the bank account he's trying to hack. The account is likely the account number that he's being paid for the consultancy work with. He could have got this simply by asking to confirm from which account he'd be paid from to confirm the transaction.

He is asked to report his review of the new security system to the board (given it was a large investment by the Bank, or just the wrong word used) and the architect would of course be invited to his own project's review?

The board then asked Mitnick to design a new system and said that cost wouldn't be an issue.

That all seems pretty easy to put together?

Closi• 3 years ago

He somehow has the bank account number?

Being able to login if you have the bank account number is still a pretty big flaw.

If you are a bank, your security threat model should assume that a hacker has access to somebody's account number and basic personal details.

Particularly for a high profile/value account, you can see how it might be possible to get soundclips of them saying the numbers 1 to 9 (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWcldHxHFpo)

jvanderbot• 3 years ago

If you're dealing with the bank in a security-consultant capacity, then these kinds of requests would be both intriguing and informative.

If he's a customer of the bank, then it had better be a very small bank or I'm also skeptical.

thesuitonym2• 3 years ago

He was already meeting with the CEO in some capacity, so it's very clear he had access to the CEO, maybe as a security consultant. Then getting him to read the number is easy, "Hey, I just got a new cell, but I might have given you my old card, can you read the number back to me?"

Getting a phone number with all the necessary digits is a bit of a stretch, but not impossible. And I would suspect, because this is the way phone systems generally work, that there was no bound on the number of attempts to enter the account number. Account numbers are all the same length, so you know exactly how many characters to input, it's just a matter of brute forcing the number--and for all I know, there may be some kind of structure that Mitnick found out.

Meeting with the board sounds like an embellishment for sure, especially for Mitnick's initial report, but I could definitely see--especially if someone was looking for a big chunk of money to strengthen the system--the report eventually being given to them.

The check on the silver platter is the most believable part of the story. Have you ever met a CEO? And why wouldn't the architect of the system be there to receive the report on the security of the system? Who else should be there?

For me, the only truly unbelievable part of this story is that he needed the CEO's voice at all. And for all we know, he just said he recorded the CEO's voice for a laugh.

mekoka• 3 years ago

I understood it as him (Mitnick) asking his own phone number back. "Did I give you my card earlier? Is it the new card? I don't recall. Which number does it have?"

If you've already identified a security system that has this vulnerability you get a phone number with all these digits and begin shopping for any institutions that bough that system.

samstave6• 3 years ago

The 80s was a helluva drug.

Mitniks social engineering really formed me. And I did all sorts of nefarious stuff in the 80s, from mapping the 411 call centers, to the tape vending machine hack and other phreaking as I had an original captain crunch whistle to (not a hack) but there was a bunch of easy fraud to be had with “calling cards” back in the day

stuff4ben3• 3 years ago

This is the 90's and early 2000's. We didn't have the security processes and checks like we do nowadays. I worked for a bank right after the dot-com crash and was in charge of their internet banking web presence. I was witness to other employees passing around CDs and printouts containing the private information of hundreds, maybe thousands of customers. This was the era when your SSN was your userid. So these CDs contained SSNs, names, addresses, bank account numbers, passwords (not even encrypted, much less salted), etc. I moved into a new cubicle one time and saw these CDs just left over. It was a free-for-all for people like Kevin Mitnick.

breezeTrowel2• 3 years ago

He was pretty famous when he started doing security consulting so it doesn't seem like a stretch to me.

Bank account numbers are written on the bottom of checks along with the routing code. If you have a check from them, you have their checking account number.

Phone numbers are ten digits long. So a number like (213)485-7690 contains all digits from 0 to 9. Caller ID spoofing is trivial even back then. For example, you could ANI fail to a calling card system which would drop you to an operator. Then you just tell them the number you're "calling from" and that number would show up as your Caller ID and ANI.

Using voice authentication is pretty stupid but, iirc, at least one US bank still does something similar. That said, I imagine part of the authentication was probably caller ID based. This was/is also why voicemail systems don't prompt you for a PIN when you call them from your own phone - they use caller ID for authentication.

conductr• 3 years ago

He probably gained the CEO's trust at some point. Something like "I bet I can break into your personal bank account given public info?"

CEO interest is piqued. Gives him a business card, let's talk soon.

The on the call,

KM: what is your checking account number?

CEO: that's private

KM: it's printed on every personal check you write, so definitely not private

CEO: ok, good point, #######

KM: great, now tell me the numbers on the card I gave you

CEO: your phone number?

KM: yes

CEO: ok, ########

KM: ok I think I have what I need

CEO: really? that's it?

KM: yep, let me get to work, we'll talk soon

AlecSchueler• 3 years ago

I read it as he asked the CEO to repeat the number that Mitnik had given him earlier to ensure that it was correct.

pelasaco2• 3 years ago

maybe just a legend, who knows. Thats part of his Myth. Now it doesnt matter anymore.

tiffanyg• 3 years ago

Nonsense like "silver platter", almost certainly embellished (unless a "Barnum" or "Wonka" or some shiite was running the bank). The fundamentals, totally believable.

It's incredibly easy (still) to do certain kinds of "social engineering". Terms like "psychological sleight-of-hand" can sometimes make it a little clearer how humans just have blind spots - ways our perception works and doesn't. And, people who are used to being VERY "in control", intelligent / experienced (compared to others in room), etc., can sometimes be the easiest to manipulate in certain ways.

But, really, it boils down, sometimes, to something as simple as "how long can you keep a person talking?" Mitnick was probably in a good position to do these sorts of things - assuming the story is from after he "turned White Hat". And, in this case, the even simpler deal with the numbers is something like "oh, shoot, I had a misprint on old cards, did I give you the right one? What's the phone number on it?" Drop something abruptly like that, at some random point in a conversation, most people wouldn't think twice... Even if their current context involves a heavy dose of thinking about voices and numbers. They might easily enough realize in the morning, but, too late, by then. Further, getting bank account numbers is not necessarily hard either. Could even be as simple as "dumpster diving", back then. Did the CEO always shred every single document, with a "secure shredder" (as much as that's possible) when home? Or maybe burn everything, always?

And, in any case, you're even mixing up aspects of the story. The phone number isn't the bank account digits, it's just all the numbers from 0 through 9 (you can even get one twice, for a 10-digit [w/ area code] number).

I propose that your sureness in dismissing this story, misapprehensions about it, etc., make you an unwittingly "good mark."

jahsome• 3 years ago

Based on my understanding of the story in the post, Mitnick asked the CEO to read back the number he gave the CEO earlier that day.

I don't disagree it's likely all bullshit, but if you're going to post snarky, nitpicking comments at least make sure you're understanding what was communicated. It makes it all too easy to dismiss any valid points you may have when there are such fundamental flaws.

thathndude• 3 years ago

You know that your checking account number is on the bottom of every check you right?

Spooky23• 3 years ago

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

redbar0n• 3 years ago

«Can you see the number I’m calling from? Just to make sure, could you read it aloud to me. Slowly, please. … Thanks, yes it’s correct.»

sbilstein• 3 years ago

As a kid I ate this stuff up. In the eighth grade, I defaced my middle school website.

The IT person easily figured out it was me and then tricked me into thinking I would be expelled within days. She pulled me out of class, told me such in the hallway, let me return to class where I held in tears until the end of the day.

Nothing happened and the school year ended a few weeks later. Towards the end of the summer I realized it had been a bluff and I wouldn’t be punished. Took me a few years later to realize how much of a favor that all was! The county school of conduct clearly said cybercrime was punishable by expulsion so she could have absolutely put me in some kind of hell. The fear set me straight hah.

ntietz• 3 years ago

I had a similar thing happen. I distributed some malware I wrote on the shared drive and had some people run it (it was extremely basic, just locked people out of the computer with no recovery by taking advantage of how locked down they were; but people lost a lot of work). My programming teacher, who was already dealing with me being a distraction in class, went to bat for me so I didn’t get strongly punished but made me clean it off the drive continuously; other students kept putting it back, so I had to monitor for it.

busyant2• 3 years ago

The IT person easily figured out it was me and then tricked me into thinking I would be expelled within days.

Similar. I wrote a program to emulate a the logon text on a PDP-11 terminal in high-school in the mid-80s and steal a bunch of student passwords. Didn't do anything with them. They were like "trophies."

Nevertheless, the computer teacher found out and had mercy on me. He gave me a project to work on to help him compile stats on a student survey. He was a nice guy.

edit for clarity.

steviedotboston• 3 years ago

Mitnick was a hacker hero of mine in my youth. I think I’ve understood his role as jester prior to conviction less as I’ve grown older, but there’s something about the boyhood charm of being so divorced from the potential consequences of one’s actions that is almost unique.

Yeah, I remember watching "Freedom Downtime" as a teenager and thinking how ludicrous it was that he was sentenced to prison for computer hacking, but now that I think about it as an adult of course he should have been. Sure solitary confinment, the specifics of his sentence, etc. may have been extreme and I'd like to think that the court system has progressed in their knowledge of computer security since then, but what he did was still a breach of corporate security. He knew at the time it was illegal, and he just thought he was too smart to get caught.

That idea that we had at the time that it was a "victimless crime" or something was very immature.

andromaton• 3 years ago

I think it's trolling. Single source.

CaliforniaKarl3• 3 years ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/technology/kevin-mitnick-...

neiman1• 3 years ago

RIP. I loved reading about Kevin whilst growing up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlbUYl67LTY

glitchc• 3 years ago

It's a lovely obituary. God speed.

embit• 3 years ago

Just came here to say Resr In Peace Kevin. You will always be remembered.

anjel• 3 years ago

The real OG of hacking

Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book and Kevin Mittnick taught me the noun form meaning of exploit. RIP

mottiden• 3 years ago

Rest In Peace Kevin. You were the reason why I started programming. I loved reading your books when I was younger.

mindcrime4• 3 years ago

Oh man, oh man. This is heart-breaking. Even though I never met Kevin IRL, he was always something of a.. well, maybe not a "role model" exactly, but certainly an inspiring character in many regards. Some of my earliest forays into the world of phone phreaking and related activities were inspired by the stories I read about Mitnick and his crew out in LA, in Markoff and Haffner's book Cyberpunk. For a while me and some of the guys I ran with would use the word "Kevin" as a sort of code-word for this stuff to avoid telling our parents any more than necessary about what we were doing

"Where are you going to night boys?"

"Oh, we're going to hang out with Kevin."

(this meant a night of trashing telco dumpsters, fucking around with payphones, and various other dubious activities)

"Oh, OK. Well, be careful."

That sort of thing.

Wow. Never saw this coming. I didn't even know he'd been ill.

Anyway... RIP, Mr. Mitnick. May there be clueless operators to social engineer, on "the other side".

29athrowaway6• 3 years ago

Everything Markoff ever wrote was untrue.

https://youtu.be/3zgLHEqIlJg?t=528

mindcrime4• 3 years ago

Yep. I'm familiar with the issues around the veracity of that book. That isn't really the point. Back in 1995 that was pretty much all we had to go on, and Mitnick still became a hero to a bunch of us.

In the subsequent years I've read all of Kevin's books, as well as pretty much all the other books written about his life, and watched the various movies and documentaries that dealt with his story. It seems like Markoff was kind of a dick and frankly contributed to some of Kevin's problems. Sad. :-(

programmarchy3• 3 years ago

Serious question: why revere Mitnick, but not someone like SBF? Mitnick is admired for his technical skill and social engineering prowess, but the same argument could be made that SBF is also exceptional in this regard on an even larger scale. Both are (alleged) criminals. Genuinely curious what makes Mitnick morally good in the eyes of HN. Was it his redemption arc as a “white hat”?

zer8k3• 3 years ago

The term "hacker" describes someone skilled at tricking systems into doing what they can't. Mitnick was not only one of the first popular hackers he also had many famous exploits. His arrest was a major rallying cry for the hacker community at large (now known as the overly corporate "infosec community"). There's no redemption arc. You do not need to do what society considers "good" to be considered righteous.

There's no such thing as objective moral and ethical good. To me, Mitnick is a hero deserving of the highest praise. He inspired myself and many others to get started in this world. It may be difficult to understand if you didn't come into computers in the late 80s/90s.

programmarchy3• 3 years ago

On one hand you assert there’s no such thing as moral good, yet you describe him as righteous? That word is a superlative for “good” steeped in religious tones!

Anyway, I suppose you could make the case that Mitnick was taking on “the Man” which is more utilitarian, but that’s a bit anemic imo.

CoastalCoder• 3 years ago

There's no such thing as objective moral and ethical good.

I'm curious how your framework handles some particularly unpleasant examples.

E.g., is there nothing universally wrong with what Hitler / Mengele did to Jews? Or how about raping, torturing, and then killing toddlers?

I have trouble accepting an ethics in which there's no real basis for telling such people that what they're doing is genuinely wrong.

(I apologize if these examples seem like straw-men. It's possible I don't understand your original point.)

mgbmtl• 3 years ago

Mitnick was not just skilled, he was creative, pushed things too far, and the internet rallied around him nonetheless. He went after corporations that people didn't like, even if he did it for personal gain.

SBF seems like an average white collar criminal next to Mitnick. He wanted to become those big corporations with their names on stadiums.

programmarchy3• 3 years ago

Yeah, this makes sense. Wasn’t super familiar with the target of Mitnick’s hacks but looks like mostly monopolies like Pac Bell and government. SBF was also “hacking” SV investors and politicians, but probably inflicted more collateral damage on the little guy.

SpaghettiCthulu• 3 years ago

Real people lost significant amounts of money thanks to SBF. I know of no comparable case involving Mitnick.

sgammon3• 3 years ago

it is well documented that he did not steal from anyone (i believe this was mentioned at his federal trial, by a witness)

chasontherobot• 3 years ago

SBF wasn't anything new, just the latest in a long line of scammers and frauds. Mitnick, for all of his faults, inspired a generation of people to poke and prod at technology and opened their eyes to the ways in which it could be used (and abused). Also, I don't think many people consider him "morally good". Definitely a "morally gray" character more than anything.

ldargin2• 3 years ago

Mitnick didn't steal anything except source code. He didn't do anything that was truly reprehensible. I feel it's premature to comment on SBF. He hasn't even been tried yet.

muzani4• 3 years ago

Mitnick wasn't malicious, more curious. He tried things, some of which shouldn't be tried, because it was illegal.

He also educated the entire industry on how it works. Most people today show off that they're a security consultant but they haven't really had any experience breaking into things, and a lot of the advice is impractical. Like everyone knows that MD5 is insecure, but who's going to actually use it as an attack vector? Mitnick does the attack and then documents it. Some people claim he made stuff up, but even having the kind of imagination to make up these scenarios puts him above many security experts.

ironfootnz• 3 years ago

RIP my friend.

imperialdrive• 3 years ago

Storytime: He randomly came over for dinner while cruising around LA with a friend of a friend, aaages ago... asked if I had a disposable tablecloth, luckily yes. Orders like 10 entrees/appetizers/desserts for delivery for just the 3 of us. Over a few hours picking at food, drinking case of beer etc., the entire table was covered in tech gibberish, diagrams, code etc. Really wish I saved that, but at the time I was like "who IS this guy?" and it was a disgusting mess. I do recall appreciating that level of openness and bonding, and have never had such an experience with anyone else like that in the industry since then. RIP

iJohnDoe4• 3 years ago

Thanks for sharing your story. A rare anecdote about a young legend.

elif• 3 years ago

I can't say enough about how influential Kevin has been in every decade, continually staying at the head of the snake of hacking. I am so lucky not just for how he inspired me in my youth, but how he relit the fire of security paranoia in the last decade when I was fortunate to work for an organization he hacked (by contract).

All software engineers are now more vulnerable with Kevin gone. Stay paranoid friends, now more than ever.

renewiltord• 3 years ago

What in the world. That's really young to go. I really did not expect this guy, being just one generation away, to have died.

dekhn• 3 years ago

Reading how he did social engineering was a huge influence on me... basically, taught me how to interact with normies.

IIAOPSW• 3 years ago

Pardon my tasteless skepticism, but are we sure this isn't a social engineering trick of his yet?

kristopolous• 3 years ago

I'm fine with it remaining perpetually ambiguous, like L. Ron Hubbard. Legends need legends.

throwaway88008• 3 years ago

The post mentions Dutchman Stu Sjouwerman as a close friend. Kevin was partnered with Stu in the security company KnowBe4.

Stu is a dedicated Scientologist, and has donated millions and millions of dollars to that corrupt organization. I know because I served in the Scientology Sea Org and knew Stu when he was on “OTVII”. This was before KnowBe4, but he was still something of a big donator. He really hit it big with KnowBe4 and became one of the few whales still funneling massive amounts to the church.

I found out about the connection between Stu and Kevin while I was working as a developer for a tech company. One day we started getting those security tips and tricks emails, white labeled so they looked like they came from our own AppSec team. At the end of the emails it ended with the line “the price of freedom is constant alertness, constant willingness to fight back”. A direct quote from L Ron Hubbard and one Scientologists (and former Scientologists like me) know well. After digging deeper I found out they were coming from KnowBe4 and saw Kevin listed on the site as being a partner.

Business relationship aside, after reading Ghost, you get the sense that Kevin would not and could not stop hacking. Maybe he matured and that urge dulled but I always wondered if he ever did some covert snooping into what Stu was up to with Scientology. The Sea Org computer and communication systems are ancient (they still use pagers for some things!). It would have been a blast for someone like him to compromise their systems. And they are right there in Clearwater down the road from KnowBe4 headquarters…

Posting with throwaway because I ain’t tryna win a covert Scientology harassment and stalking op and have my family disown me which happens to virtually every former member who speaks out publicly.

autoexec3• 3 years ago

They seem to hook a lot of clever people. I always assumed it was some kind of weird tax dodge, but maybe Scientology doesn't get enough credit for their social engineering skills

TremendousJudge• 3 years ago

Just because somebody is somehow "clever" doesn't make them immune to scams -- they just need to be a specific type. Scientology targets a person's sense of self-importance and empowers the feeling that they are somehow special and mentally gifted. Something that many "clever" people have.

estomagordo• 3 years ago

Posting with throwaway because I ain’t tryna win a covert Scientology harassment and stalking op and have my family disown me which happens to virtually every former member who speaks out publicly.

What vile and quite obviously delusional people!

kaydub• 3 years ago

Kevin still red teamed all the time through his other company.

I seriously doubt he ever tried to hack SCN.

placesalt• 3 years ago

Sad to see. Pancreatic cancer is one of the scary ones, since there are so few symptoms before you hit stage 4.

For those who haven't seen it, Freedom Downtime is a movie by the 2600 gang which is mostly about Mitnick's imprisonment, and the whole Free Kevin movement.

(I wonder who wrote the obituary, it's especially wide-ranging, and poetic in parts.)

jamal-kumar• 3 years ago

Obligatory link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ILA5Cso3w

kaishiro• 3 years ago

Terrible news, especially at that age. I remember reading "The Art of Deception" in college.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone have anything else corroborating this? Everywhere seems to be sharing the same dignitymemorial.com link.

ineedasername6• 3 years ago

damn, fuck cancer

giantg22• 3 years ago

If you're looking for other stories, The Art of Deception (Mitnick specific) and The Art of Intrusion (not all Mitnick) have a ton.

muzani4• 3 years ago

I used to read these while procrastinating on network security exams. Damn, they were a lot more fun than expected.

freedomben2• 3 years ago

Those two books, plus Ghost in the Wires, are absolute must reads for anyone who visits HN

blackoil• 3 years ago

The question is should we buy them or pirate!

dylan604• 3 years ago

In a similar vein of social engineering, Exploding The Phone is good read about the Phreakers of yore.

unethical_ban3• 3 years ago

It's in my Amazon list and now I know why. I'm 34 and learned about phreaking well after it was a thing but it inspired me.

Now I'm a cybersecurity consultant (glorified sysadmin) making a nice salary but without any of the joy that was present in my 20s rebelling against my F100 company's IT policy. Installing Dokuwiki on a shadow server just to get shit done. Helping write a custom request system to get shit done. Consequences came after.

I'm not comparing myself to Mitnick, rest in peace, only reflecting on the passing of a titan before my prime that represents a moment in communication hacking that may never exist again.

JKCalhoun• 3 years ago

I wish I remember which book I read about Mitnick (and others).

I developed a strong dislike for Mitnick, however. As others have said, he came across as an adolescent with an over-sized ego. More "Jackass" than "Silicon Valley". Although I'm sure he's not the only "hacker" for whom illegal entry into computer systems gave him a sense of self-importance.

No thanks.

Edit: yeah, probably was "Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier". I still don't think "bullshit artist" is something to aspire to.

DropInIn• 3 years ago

Eh, social engineering was and still is a major component of infosec, right?

He was very good at that segment of the industry ("penetration testing" via social engineering).

ec109685• 3 years ago

That was the book I remembered. Great set of stories.

NovaDudely• 3 years ago

I never saw anything inspirational about what he did but it did highlight just how human fallilble our computer technology could be.

Could have got the message out in a better way but the story of him avoiding the law provides that sort of thriller plot line that engages people.

celticninja• 3 years ago

I think it's more that he was one of the first/earliest to use technology to amplify his skills on a scale previously out of reach of most people. Coupled with the fact that he was way ahead of his opponents and a young man, it is quite understandable the path he took.no one is perfect, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

m4jor5• 3 years ago

Ghost in the Wires is a good one too

frellus• 3 years ago

Wow. My first encounter with Kevin Mitnick was a random one.. joining one of my school's IRC channels one day there was there guy on it who was bragging about how he had broken into our central AIX server, would read the admins' e-mail all the time and for every hole they plugged he would just find another one.

I was just a university Freshman just starting my CS classes, and seeing this discussion, it was like I had entered some underground revolutionary meeting. It opened my eyes to mischief and testing the boundaries of systems and order where this guy who was on IRC as root@system was just calmly saying how the technical universe I was just learning about was controllable in ways I had no clue about.

I never followed the case after he was prosecuted, and I didn't go down the hacker route in my career, but it was a life-changing moment for me to see this outsider live out "War Games" in real life.

RIP, root. Your crimes and mischief certainly didn't define you, especially as you went down the ethical hacker path (the first?). Pancreatic cancer is a horrible way to go, I am sorry to see this story today and condolences to his family and friends.

dumdumchan• 3 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MctHTxESCFM

eddieroger• 3 years ago

May his memory be a blessing.

ChrisArchitect• 3 years ago

Legend.

A name of inspiration, igniting curiosity across ages. And of course, the only crime was curiosity.

RIP

anonu• 3 years ago

Kevin came to speak at CMU in the University Center. Maybe around 2003/2004. I recall it was standing room only. For me, it was like seeing your favorite action hero in real life. Yes he was convicted of some crimes, but he showed you could be redeemed and continue to live a good, fulfilling life educating others what not to do. RIP

newsclues• 3 years ago

Free Kevin.

mabbo2• 3 years ago

Donations can be made in Kevin's memory to The National Pancreas Foundation https://pancreasfoundation.org/ or The Equal Justice Initiative https://eji.org/
These are two causes of great importance to Kimberley and Kevin; both organizations put the majority of donated funds to work in the communities they serve.

If Kevin inspired you, perhaps a donation in his name would be a nice gesture.

grayhatter2• 3 years ago

Mitnick's legend (and his books) are definitely a big part of why I have a job I love.

I was tempted to send a box of donuts as a gift... but instead I think I'll send the two dozen as a donation to the EJI instead.

https://eji.org/

geocrasher• 3 years ago

My first thought, genuinely, was 'This is zero cool'

An icon for many of us here. I feel worse for his mate and unborn child. Losing a mate is very, very, hard. Going through that myself...

strictnein• 3 years ago

Going through that myself...

Sorry to hear that

r3trohack3r• 3 years ago

Much love geocrasher, sorry to hear

trashcanman2• 3 years ago

Wow didn’t see that coming. I met him at a HOPE conference with Steve Wozniak. Followed him for years from hacker zine texts distributed on CDs back in the day. Wow that’s really sad what a fun guy he was. His social engineering book was pretty interesting. That OKI phone story was so fascinating I bought a couple to see if I could do it too, although by then 900MHz was phased out. This guy made a difference in my life how very strange

myself248• 3 years ago

MENU SND END RCL STO CLR

trashcanman2• 3 years ago

Lol! and the Sun story was hysterical. Mailing update floppies to a target and letting them install the malware for you. That’s just priceless comedy

b212• 3 years ago

Just woke up my wife with a loud sigh. I remember all my childhood friends pretending to be Zidane or Figo or Rivaldo. I always wanted to be Mitnick. Sucked at soccer but never stopped hacking. Holy f, he was so young. Out of all people I really hoped to meet him one day. The rockstar of my childhood. What a shitty day.

ecohen162• 3 years ago

When Kevin first found out he had Cancer, the doctors gave him "weeks". But you know Kevin -- he refused to accept his fate and found the top doctors in the world, tried experimental procedures and was able to get himself all the way into remission just 11 months later. It was incredibly inspiring, we all thought he had yet again beaten the system. It's tragic how the last 10 weeks played out, he fought all the way until the end. He's was a legend who paved the way for millions in the cybersecurity space. We will miss him.

melling• 3 years ago

Looks like he died from pancreatic cancer. This cancers always reminds me of the Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. He was a CMU professor who also died from pancreatic cancer 15 years ago.

https://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/

Here’s an HN discussion from a few years ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24972377

jseliger• 3 years ago

There is some hope for improved M&M in pancreatic cancer: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06063-y, thanks to personalized mRNA vaccines and PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitors.

Grazester• 3 years ago

I remember that lecture very well and thought about it a few days ago.

e40• 3 years ago

Seriously, fuck pancreatic cancer. My best friend died of it in Oct 2020. I've had 10+ people I know (or someone that I know know) die of it. It's my worst fear, cancer-wise.

faeriechangling• 3 years ago

Mitnick did remind myself as a preteen, even if it never seems he quite outgrew his own preteen antics. He was a gutsy guy who made life more rich and interesting in his own way. He never seemed to bend to the system’s will long after many of us so called anti-authoritarians would have thrown in the towel.

When I read his books I alternated between fascination, revulsion, admiration, and shock. Mitnick above all wasn’t boring and I think “not boring” doesn’t get enough credit in the measure of a man.

RajT882• 3 years ago

Mitnick above all wasn’t boring and I think “not boring” doesn’t get enough credit in the measure of a man.

My wife might agree or disagree with you, depending on the day.

beebmam• 3 years ago

My ex certainly wasn't boring. But they certainly were physically abusive. I don't believe that automatically qualifies someone as deserving of credit.

metalforever• 3 years ago

This is a big deal to me in a man, probably the primary thing I look for. I don't want to have a boring life.

kykeonaut• 3 years ago

I first learned about Mitnick on a network security course where we had to recreate the now iconic TCP spoofing attack he employed against Shimomura's X-Terminal [0].

He was definitely a legend.

[0] http://wiki.cas.mcmaster.ca/index.php/The_Mitnick_attack#The...

eelhazred2• 3 years ago

RIP.

concernedctzn• 3 years ago

hack the planet!

alfanick• 3 years ago

He made me. I remember back in my teen years reading interviews with him, I was back in phreaking scene. He was a hero. He is a hero. What a loss.

ineedasername6• 3 years ago

I missed meeting Kevin Mitnick at the infamous HOPE 2006 conference where he was set to speak, but he was waylaid by something or other and he landed in the hospital. His reputation was still a presence through those few days though, just a few short years after his release from prison.

atum47• 3 years ago

Takedown was my favorite movie as a kid. It influenced me a lot. In Brazil is not common to have a bathtub in your bathroom, we used suicide showers (term that I recently learned on YouTube); anyway, the image of Mitnick hacking in the tube on his laptop resonated with me, I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

May he rest in peace.

r3vo2• 3 years ago

Worth noting that Wikipedia at the time of this post is refusing to acknowledge his death, citing poor sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&act...

Hope he is alive and well. May he rest in peace if not

CaliforniaKarl3• 3 years ago

The New York Times has their obituary up: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/technology/kevin-mitnick-...

RIP

r3vo2• 3 years ago

Rest in peace :(

jmbwell• 3 years ago

Oh my god. I was on the phone with him not that long ago discussing a red team project. I had no idea what was going on.

He was always generous and kind yet professional, despite us kind of fanning out. He had the ease of someone who knew what they were doing and didn’t feel they had anything to prove, which of course he didn’t.

I was looking forward to working with him more. I hate how you never know how a thing’s going to go.

Here’s to the innumerable things about modern connected society that are the way they are, whether indirectly or directly, because of Kevin Mitnick.

xwdv• 3 years ago

Fuck man, this hit me hard and unexpected. Ghost in the Wires was one of my favorite books. Was fun to read about a true hacker, definitely inspired me. He was too young.

Can’t believe there is no black banner. This is hackernews.

biglyburrito2• 3 years ago

BoingBoing is now confirming it:

https://boingboing.net/2023/07/19/kevin-mitnick-1963-2023.ht...

capableweb2• 3 years ago

Confirming? They're reiterating from the same source as everyone else (dignitymemorial.com) hardly confirmed and can't even call that journalism.

biglyburrito2• 3 years ago

Here's another source that independently confirmed Mitnick died:

https://www.securityweek.com/famed-hacker-kevin-mitnick-dead...

You're right, though, about my original post -- that was my bad! I read their blurb but didn't click through the link... thank you for the callout.

david_shaw• 3 years ago

For those looking for an official source outside of the obituary: Dave Kennedy (a longtime infosec pro and, in my opinion, a trusted source) confirmed in a tweet: https://nitter.net/HackingDave/status/1681838080355966976

Although I haven't seen an "official" statement, I believe that this news is legitimate.

RIP Kevin.

CaliforniaKarl3• 3 years ago

The New York Times has also posted their obituary: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/technology/kevin-mitnick-...

mgdev• 3 years ago

There goes my hero.

freedomben2• 3 years ago

Sad news. His biography/story "Ghost in the Wires" is one of the most amazing books I've ever read. I highly recommend it. The audiobook is read by Ray Porter and is gold. I'll be giving it a re-listen.

His books "The Art of {Deception,Invisibility,Intrusion}" are absolute bangers for most of the people here. Can't recommend enough

1024core• 3 years ago

Damn! Didn't Steve Jobs also die from pancreatic cancer?

kennyloginz• 3 years ago

This guy was so dedicated, he got a job at the DMV. Kind of sad, it sounded like he was liked and got a long with his coworkers at that job.

brightball• 3 years ago

An absolute legend! I have 2 of his books here at my house.

nemo44x3• 3 years ago

Kevin is free, now.

shaunxcode• 3 years ago

Black bar.

ChuckMcM2• 3 years ago

I was not aware he was ill. Always sad to hear people that are taken by cancer.

I didn't know Kevin, but am friends with Tsutomu Shimomura who worked with authorities to get him arrested. Tsutomu worked with me a bit when I was at Sun trying to get a cryptographically secure subsystem into the base system specification. It was fun to listen to his side of this story.

The 80's was a really weird time for computer enthusiasts, and it was the period of time when what was then considered the "hacker" community schismed into what today we might call "white hat" vs "black hat" hackers.

As a person who considered themselves to be part of that community I was personally offended by how the story of Kevin painted everyone who thought of themselves as a "hacker" as a criminal. It made for good story telling to make these folks "pirate" or perhaps more accurately "privateer" types in their swashbuckling ways of sticking it to the man. People would say, "Exposing security holes is like solving puzzles (which is fun) and important because if I don't do it, well somebody 'bad' will." And while I'm here, why not make it hurt for them a little bit to incentivize them to fix this problem quickly!"

I didn't disagree with the importance of pointing out security problems, but the flamboyant way it was done scared the crap out of people who were both clueless and in a position to do stupid things. As a result we got the CFAA and the DMCA which are both some of the most ridiculous pieces of legislation after the so called "patriot" act.

The damage that did to curious people growing up lost the US a significant fraction of their upcoming "innovation" talent. While not diminishing the folks who leaned in to the illegality of it.

larrywright3• 3 years ago

I really enjoyed the book Takedown, about Shimomura's pursuit of Mitnick - I must have read it three or four times. I always wondered what happened to Shimomura, since he just seemed to drop out of sight after that book came out.

sshd• 3 years ago

NSA has entered the chat

iJohnDoe4• 3 years ago

Shimomura was an egotistical asshole at the time. However, he was younger then and can hopefully acknowledge he was still learning about himself and wasn’t all-wise yet.

I hope Shimomura can realize that Mitnick made him a better version of himself, both personally and professionally.

ChuckMcM2• 3 years ago

He started at company called Neofocal which had some really cool LED products. He also has had some health issues of his own to deal with. I last talked with him about 5 years ago in 2018.

0ct4via2• 3 years ago

Alas the book (and the movie) were trash, rather like Shimomura. Anyone who knew Kevin, knew that Takedown was egotistical BS.

If you really want to know about "the pursuit of Mitnick," watch Freedom Downtime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Downtime

https://archive.org/details/FreedomDowntime-TheStoryOfKevinM...

29athrowaway6• 3 years ago

Markoff and Shimomura received $750,000 for their book rights and $650,000 for the film rights. The most sensational parts in the book or the movie had absolutely nothing to do with the truth.

Sharknado is closer to reality than Track Down. The cringest part is Tsutomu's fictional gf.

dijit• 3 years ago

Take Down (the movie) was fantastic fiction, and even showed Mitnick as convicted before he even was.

However my cringiest take away from the book was Simomura's detailing of what he was eating which seemed to have so many mentions that at times I thought it was a healthy eating dialogue.

jonahx• 3 years ago

but the flamboyant way it was done scared the crap out of people who were both clueless and in a position to do stupid things. As a result we got the CFAA and the DMCA which are both some of the most ridiculous pieces of legislation after the so called "patriot" act.
The damage that did to curious people growing up lost the US a significant fraction of their upcoming "innovation" talent.

The causal leap from flamboyant hackers to the DMCA/CFAA, and then to damaging the US's innovation talent feels... speculative.

AnthonyMouse• 3 years ago

The causal leap from flamboyant hackers to the DMCA/CFAA

That isn't much of a leap. The penalties aren't rooted in the actual damages, because for most of this kind of curiosity-based intrusion, there isn't any real damage and the damage imputed to them is the cost of cleaning up after the vulnerability, which the "victim" ought to have paid regardless. Getting trolled by some kid isn't what costs you money, implementing a vulnerability that allows some kid to troll you is.

The reason the penalties are high is because of that embarrassment. Some major institution that ought to have done better gets pwned by some pranksters and they lose face. So they want to throw the book at the guy to deter anyone else, not from maliciously causing them undue harm, but from making a fool of them in public.

But blaming the youth for bragging about it is blaming the victim. The perpetrators are the institutions that abuse the law, and the process of creating the law, to severely punish not evildoers but the child who points out that the emperor has no clothes.

and then to damaging the US's innovation talent

These are the laws they use to charge the likes of Aaron Swartz, are they not?

specialist2• 3 years ago

Moral panics incite all sorts of stupid policy making.

mcv3• 3 years ago

I was not aware he was ill. Always sad to hear people that are taken by cancer.

It was pancreatic cancer, which is the deadliest cancer. It kills very quickly and as far as I know, it's impossible to cure.

It killed my mom: 3 months between diagnosis and death. She didn't want treatment because it couldn't save her; it would only postpone the inevitable and she didn't want to spend the rest of her days in hospitals.

vmurthy• 3 years ago

:-(. Always sad to hear such news. Stay strong mate!

glimshe2• 3 years ago

I'm sorry to hear about your mom. It's not impossible to cure, but it's very uncommon. I think that if it is caught early, only 10% of people eventually become disease-free.

jjkaczor• 3 years ago

It took my dad last year, diagnosis in April, gone by mid-June. It was so aggressive he chose "medical assistance in death" (MAID), because he didn't want to be in hospitals all-the-time. He had half-completed the process, then had a stroke on June 4th, where he was then admitted to hospital. The stroke cause aphasia, so he couldn't communicate very well (speech was very disjointed, but he could understand everyone) - they brough in a speech pathologist, after a couple weeks they we able to confirm that he still wanted 'MAID', so - I had to make the decision as to when. (And - I agreed, spending time in hospitals, fighting the inevitable was antithetic to his whole personality)

Cleared by 2nd round of medical professionals to make the MAID decision on a Wednesday, so - we scheduled for Friday - he passed away naturally Thursday morning.

puzzlingcaptcha• 3 years ago

Note that it really depends on the type of the pancreatic cancer. While pancreatic adenocarcinomas are some of the worst cancers out there (overall 5y survival of 8%), others like pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours have a fairly good prognosis. Famously, Steve Jobs sought alternative medicine solutions to the latter, which was probably misguided.

joshmanders2• 3 years ago

A friend of mine survived it, I wouldn't wish pancreatic cancer on even my enemies. That stuff is tough. I do the Purple Stride with her every year to celebrate her battle.

RIP Kevin, hearing your stories and the movie Hackers was a huge inspiration in me getting into what we do.

nemo44x3• 3 years ago

A friend of mine who is a surgeon originally was learning to become a pancreatic cancer surgeon. She changed to GI because the mortality rate was just so high and so fast that it was extremely heartbreaking and depressing.

kjs35• 3 years ago

There is some reason to hope, tho regrettably too late for your family:

https://www.mskcc.org/news/can-mrna-vaccines-fight-pancreati...

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...

_whiteCaps_• 3 years ago

My mom's situation was almost exactly the same. Our family has a history of cancer and it turned out she had the harmful BRCA2 variant.

Were you offered any kind of genetic testing?

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/geneti...

withinboredom3• 3 years ago

Pro-tip: CFAA only applies if you cross state lines between you and the server. Otherwise, state laws applies and there are/were some states that never passed any 'anti-hacking' laws.

Source: experience.

marcus0x622• 3 years ago

Pro-er tip: if you are in the US and access a computer over any kind of service provider network (Internet, leased line, etc.) you should operate on the assumption your traffic is crossing state lines and the CFAA applies to your activities.

Tools like traceroute cannot show you where your traffic is physically being sent because: there may be no geographic information in the router reverse DNS records, that information might not be accurate if it is present, and layer 3 tools cannot show you the underlying layer 1/2 path (which might be wildly different than the layer 3 hops would suggest.)

ja27• 3 years ago

Absolutely not. Any computer connected to the internet, even behind a firewall / NAT / etc. is considered to be involved in interstate or foreign commerce and thus a "protected computer" subject to 18 USC 1030. It's not your actions that make it a protected computer. 1030(e)(2)

Mindwipe• 3 years ago

The damage that did to curious people growing up lost the US a significant fraction of their upcoming "innovation" talent. While not diminishing the folks who leaned in to the illegality of it.

It is very difficult to see how that is the case when pretty much every functioning nation has substantially similar laws.

nekoashide• 3 years ago

Nobody really cared in the scene about the DMCA until the FBI started taking people offline. Even then? It stopped nobody, people just got more security aware.

detourdog5• 3 years ago

The hacks had to be flamboyant. If the hacks weren’t embarrassing the “adults” in suits would deny the hairy person in a t-shirt knew what they were talking about.

loup-vaillant3• 3 years ago

This even happens when there is not nearly as much status difference between the two.

I was once tasked to work with TPM 2.0 provisioning in an embedded position. They specifically chose me and pulled me from another team because of my skills in cryptography (I wrote Monocypher). Fast forward a couple weeks, I notice that the way the provisioning was specified, it would allow us to provision a fake TPM without noticing. My team lead didn’t believe me.

Sometimes later we had an actual provisioning procedure in place, and what do you know, it worked to completion even with a fake (software) TPM and a real certificate from the manufacturer. Because, well… we just didn’t compare the relevant public keys. My team lead was still sceptical.

I had to mention the issue in a meeting with some higher-ups and the security guy to be allowed to fix the problem. I believe this goes a bit deeper than a status game. I think it’s downright magical thinking: this hope that ignoring problems (especially vague threats like security vulnerabilities), could make the problem actually disappear.

msarrel• 3 years ago

Having been around for the long haul and meet Kevin a few times, I'm sad to hear of his passing. Yet, his white hat influence will live on.

I completely agree. There was a time when hacker did not mean criminal. That was the time during which Kevin was active. It was also the time during which I was active, not that that matters right now. But there was a rapid shift from computers being something you could explore to if you're exploring that then you are a bad person. And I also agree that trying to scare policy makers isn't necessarily going to work because they don't understand what they're scared of. Curiosity is no longer rewarded in general in our society.

Those of you who don't think what Kevin did was important, there seem to be a lot of people discussing him, aren't there?

pcunite• 3 years ago

As a result we got the CFAA and the DMCA which are both some of the most ridiculous pieces of legislation after the so called "patriot" act. The damage that did to curious people growing up lost the US a significant fraction of their upcoming "innovation" talent. While not diminishing the folks who leaned in to the illegality of it.

I was escorted out of my job as a shipping clerk in 1999 for creating an entry in an NT 4.0 group with my name in it to impress the IT Admin so I could get a job in the computer department.

ranl• 3 years ago

RIP. Kevin

chmod600• 3 years ago

I didn’t meet him, but to me he was a symbol of the freedom in a newly-created world. Sad that he passed away a few decades too soon.

wayeq• 3 years ago

I'm still upset I fell for Markoff and Shimomura's self serving narrative about Mitnick in the 90's.

iJohnDoe4• 3 years ago

Amen.

mats852• 3 years ago

RIP.

tern• 3 years ago

"FREE KEVIN MITNICK, NOW" https://youtu.be/xkKa-jvh4Ik (@1:55)

Does anyone know where this samples comes from?

kraig911• 3 years ago

He left us too soon. Does anyone else see a correlation of pancreatic cancer and our industry? It feels as if there's something about our profession. Steve Jobs, Randy Pausch, Now Mitnick? I've also had two coworkers who died of kidney/pancreatic cancer.

Beyond that I remember reading about him in 2600 and my mind being blown. He definitely helped leave the world we live in better than when he found it.

jijji• 3 years ago

pour out some liquor for my homie

jboy552• 3 years ago

My parents vaguely remembered who Kevin Mitnick was when I gave my father my copy of 'Ghost in the Wires' to read.

I told him, this was the 'hacker' of the 80s, read how he managed to 'hack' all these places. My father replied, "I'm pretty sure I won't understand anything he would do". Me, "Just give it a chance, you'll be surprised"

When he gave the book back, I asked my father if anything Kevin did my father wouldn't have understood. My father said, "I understood everything he did". I asked, "Now, when you get a call from someone you don't know claiming to be an authority figure, what do you do?". Father: "Hang up"

dryrun• 3 years ago

Would there be a modern version of this? I haven't read it and I'm interested, but mostly my parents are getting old, and with AI on the corner, I fear a bit the next level scams.

brailsafe• 3 years ago

I don't think it's ever gone away, and stands to get even worse now. Good to have a safe word with your family in-case they ever get an important call from you or the reverse

jboy552• 3 years ago

The scams are still the same as how he hacked.

He called someone, claimed to be an authority, knew the lingo, asked for help and time was the critical.

Someone calls your parents and claims to be an authority figure, that there is a crisis, and they must act now.

chris_wot• 3 years ago

The modern version is "hang up".

TheBigSalad• 3 years ago

Any time a big hack makes the news it turns out that either some system had no security, they used social engineering, or a disgruntled former employee. Hackers aren't sitting there with a super computer in a Guy Fawkes mask trying to decrypt data. The scams are the same now as back then.

elchief• 3 years ago

The internet is a safer but sadder place

Read Ghost in the Wire as a young man and it inspired me to get into computers

Rest in Peace, brother

par• 3 years ago

His recent enterprise, KnowBe4, was doing security training for companies, trying to make the internet safer! So you could say we're less safe with him gone :(

iJohnDoe4• 3 years ago

This is triggering real crying and emotional breakdown. Mitnick was a friend I never had. An older brother or cool guy that sparked inspiration. Such a strange feeling to be so sad about a person I never met. Like losing a friend. He had such an influence on my life. Hits close to home.

Thanks Kevin. RIP.

blindriver2• 3 years ago

Wow, this is seriously upsetting. The fact that so many people are dying of pancreatic cancer is very, very scary to me, and it's so many young people at this point.

nicetryguy2• 3 years ago

It's one of the few that's still difficult to detect, and by the time you show symptoms you are basically stage 4... it's treatable if you catch it early, but therein lies the problem; My grandfather passed away from it.

blindriver2• 3 years ago

I'm sorry to hear that, someone I knew closely died of pancreatic cancer and died 6 weeks after diagnosis which is why it scares me so much. Did your grandfather smoke, or drink a lot of alcohol? Or drink a lot of tea or coffee?

asow92• 3 years ago

Ghost in the wires was a fantastic read. Rip

cryptoz• 3 years ago

Well I’m crying. Kevin was my hero for so many years growing up and inspired me to do nearly everything I’ve done. I met him at The Last HOPE so many years ago and I feel so privileged for that opportunity.

RIP Kevin, we’ll miss you so much.

captainkrtek• 3 years ago

Rest in peace. Like many others here, Mitnick was an inspiration to me when I was younger, believe he truly embodied the hacker ethos. “Ghost in the wires” is a fantastic and fun read.

anta40• 3 years ago

RIP Kevin.

Many many years ago, during undergraduate days, I used to study "Art of Deception", wanted to became a security hacker one day.

Now my topic of interest has shifted. Nevertheless, that book still reminds me that human is still the weakest link in security chain. You don't have to be super smart in exploiting code.

godzillabrennus• 3 years ago

I met Kevin in Chicago when he was hired to speak at a bank event that a friend got me into. His presentation was world class. He was quite a guy. Rest in peace.

yousifa• 3 years ago

RIP legend. Not sure that I would be where I am today without Kevin being an inspiration and hero to me growing up.

garfieldnate• 3 years ago

Having read and loved Ghost in the Wires, I felt a special bond with Kevin. I loved his antics combined with his fearless exploration of how everything around him works. I'm really sad reading of his death today. He was far too young. My favorite story from the book is how he set up a computer to tail the logs of cell towers in his area for phone numbers matching the FBI agents assigned to his case so he would be alerted when they were on to him. Wow, that's bold! But also, reading that I realized how our society had allowed ourselves to be surrounded by tracking machines that the government could use to find us at any time, and man it was beautiful to see it turned back on them.

technick• 3 years ago

Kevin is partially the reason I decided to work in information security. I remember reading his book, art of deception, and it gave a name to the skill I had practiced most of the childhood, social engineering. Later on in life I got to meet him and spent the first at least 2 hours of time in shock n awe. Afterwards, he was great to talk with and offered me his number if I ever needed another set of ears. Sadly I haven't talked with him since the pandemic, but he will forever be remembered.

Hopefully our paths will cross again.

EMCymatics3• 3 years ago

RIP. The world lost a true talent today.

89vision• 3 years ago

What a legend. I remember reading text files about his lore in my early days of exploring the web and being absolutely captivated by it all. Rest easy, Kevin

yreg3• 3 years ago

mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20230719235437/https://www.digni...

Rip. I've read Art of Deception in high school and I think it had a lasting influence on me. It reads like a collection of interesting stories. I recomend that book to everyone, especially to people outside of tech.

egberts1• 3 years ago

Not sure if this is folklore but Kevin Mitnick installed a firewall for the White House.

sgammon3• 3 years ago

Mitnick was a hero to me. Very sad to hear this.

throwaway892238• 3 years ago

When I was 16 years old, I started a 2600 meeting at a local mall food court. We joined in the 'Free Mitnick' movement, and would go around handing out flyers, explaining the implications of his case, peppering the place with stickers, putting them in copies of 2600 in Barnes & Noble and Borders. His case was an inspiration to a budding little hacker and taught me to become more idealistic and push for legal reforms and the rights of people who were punished far more than they deserved. Later in life I got to meet him at hacker conventions, and he was a super nice guy. I even got one of his lock-pick-set business cards! I know he's somewhat of a controversial figure, but he was also inspirational.

29athrowaway6• 3 years ago

The authorities obsession with Mitnick was because John Markoff and the New York Times made the public believe that hackers were effectively in control of everything and could go as far as starting WW3 by hacking into NORAD and other similar caliber BS that never happened.

bluedays• 3 years ago

I talked to Mitnick once on the phone. I was on a partyline back in the AIM days and a hacker friend of mine called him up. Kevin seemed very frustrated that he kept calling him. I was just dumbfounded I was actually on the phone with Kevin Mitnick so I didn't say anything. Was shocked and saddened to see this. Sorry about that night, Kevin. Rest in peace.

sgammon3• 3 years ago

for those of us who grew up without a father, as technologists, especially in the 90's and early 2000's, kevin mitnick was something of a guiding light.

he gave us permission to explore the darker underbelly of technology and was emblematic of a freer (free as in freedom) time on the internet. yes, he was a convicted criminal, but he was also a complex character who loved to solve puzzles and his competitive nature ultimately drove his work.

the famous story of the fbi showing up at his house and kevin saying, "no problem, I'll report to the fbi office tomorrow"... yeah, that didn't work, but he was the type to try and that was beautiful.

riow• 3 years ago

Relevant: https://twitter.com/th3j35t3r/status/1681835933052575745

booleandilemma• 3 years ago

Rest in peace, Kevin.

bdn_• 3 years ago

Who knows where I would be today if not for Kevin's influence... Kevin was (and will continue to be!) a role model in many ways. RIP

thallavajhula• 3 years ago

OMG! This is so sad. I read about Kevin a lot and read the book, "The Art of Deception" during my teen years and was fascinated by how interesting social engineering was. Once I got into college, I got busy and never followed him anymore. I recently read about him in some random article and then I read about him now. I opened HN to see the black band on top and was worried to know who it could be and turns out, it was Kevin.

manca• 3 years ago

I will always remember when the "Takedown" movie came out. I loved the original "Hackers" and couldn't wait for "Hackers 2" which was Takedown.

I had learned about Mitnick few years prior to the movie and was fascinated by his life story and what he had done up to that point (including his "takedown" by the FBI). It's an understatement to say that his work, character and some sort of positive social manipulation put a great influence on my upbringing and later my professional career. Back then I enjoyed playing pranks with my friends and "hacking" them with all sorts of trojans and ejecting their CD roms :)

I am very sad to hear that he's gone. RIP Legend.

hedgehog• 3 years ago

It's funny, though I didn't really know him I did have two chance interactions 15 or so years back that are in a way core lessons for me about business.

Back when he started doing consulting I ended up spending some hours on the phone with him over a week or so as an evenings/weekends side project (I had a more than full time job too). He seemed like a nice enough dude, basically a middle aged guy trying to put his life back together, and he was understandably not up to speed on web app security due to his recent stint in prison. I don't think that business ever panned out but he eventually pivoted and built a multi-billion dollar company around the concept he was known for (social engineering).

The second is embedded in his somewhat famous lock pick business card. It turns out those cards are a direct copy of a friend's card, conceived by me, designed by a second friend, and inspired by a third friend who'd discovered the shop that did etched steel cards. Kevin's card traded in usability by shortening the tools to make more space for contact information. Regardless, his ability to capture the spotlight helped ensure his version is by far the best known.

RIP.

deepfield67• 3 years ago

This is really sad. I can't overstate the impact Kevin had on my life. The world is suddenly less interesting and less secure and my heart goes out to family and friends. Rest in peace, Kevin.

jeremy_carroll• 3 years ago

To be candid; fuck this narrative. Nobody "Beats" cancer based on sheer will. Same scenario as those that did not "Fight hard enough". It's a disease. It does not care about your wants, and needs.

seabass-labrax2• 3 years ago

Parent was not saying that Kevin Mitnick made himself better with sheer will, rather that he was enabled by his personality and wealth to obtain experimental and/or risky treatments that turned out to improve his condition.

prmoustache3• 3 years ago

The thing is even that is speculative. You cannot know that these treatments specifically worked better. These are things we can only assess via statistics on more than a single patient.

I.E. x% more patient survive after n years while using this or this treatment. And same treatment could increase odds of dying sooner from other decease out of scope with the research years later.

scirpaceus• 3 years ago

And conversely, nobody loses to cancer. It's a draw at best, considering that the cancer dies with the host.

Typhon• 3 years ago

That's not true in the sense that the cancer doesn't have objectives per se, therefore it doesn't have anything to lose in the sense that matters.

austinjp• 3 years ago

Not necessarily:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks

rowanG077• 3 years ago

The cancer doesn't really win or lose. Does fire lose when it has consumed all there is?

ghosty141• 3 years ago

You just misunderstand it… Beating a disease is synonymous with overcoming it. Thats it.

diffeomorphism• 3 years ago

No, it is not. It deliberately uses a different word and that difference matters.

jacurtis• 3 years ago

I agree, this is a common narrative, that does a disservice for people that actually are consumed by the disease in the expected timeframe as if they weren't willing to fight it with sheer will.

I knew a guy who was diagnosed with stomach cancer at 27 years old. Never had a health problem in his life, he didn't even know how insurance worked yet. It was late stage and he was given 6 months to live. He was recently engaged before that and they moved their wedding up to 3 months away in order to have it before he passed. But he was gone from us just 6 weeks after the original diagnosis. He fought like hell to survive. He had every reason to. He was diligent with everything the doctors told him and he was gone within weeks despite being given months.

Cancer is horrible and it is unpredictable by its very nature. Cancer is literally at its definition a collection of unpredictable mutated cells. Thats why it is so hard for doctors to estimate or predict. It is unpredictable. Sometimes the unpredictability works in your favor and sometimes it works against you. But cancer cells do not listen to willpower, despite the common narrative. The reality is it is good and bad luck that often determines your fate.

As a secondary anecdote. I have a friend who's mom had skin cancer, a small patch the size of a dime on her hip. Skin cancer is generally incredibly survivable and low risk (in the world of cancers). She had it removed as a simple procedure and thought she was fine. 3 months later she started having periods of confusion or getting lost doing simple things like going to the store for milk, she would end up gone for the hours and hours forgetting why she even left the house and ending up on the other side of town. It turns out it spread to her brain and she died just 10 days after that first episode. Cancer is brutal.

lynx233• 3 years ago

He was diligent with everything the doctors told him

I know I am going to be hated for this comment, but... Given my own experience with the medical system, I can't resist and state the (for me) obvious: Maybe that was the reason for him to pass so early...

(To put my comment in context, I was abused for a medical experiment by a high ranking doctor at the age of 7, and am 100% blind since then.)

4gotunameagain3• 3 years ago

Any doctor will tell you that mentality is incredibly important in fighting (yes, fighting) diseases.

It is well known that your psychological state influences the immune system a lot, and even from anecdata, you can see that people rapidly deteriorate when they give up. It is not a coincidence all these terms are used.

Can all cancers be beaten by sheer will? Of course not.

But it does play a huge factor in many cases.

mizaru• 3 years ago

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/survivorship/coping/attitudes-...

master-lincoln2• 3 years ago

It is well known that your psychological state influences the immune system a lot, and even from anecdata, you can see that people rapidly deteriorate when they give up. It is not a coincidence all these terms are used.

citation needed. This meta study seems to not have found many biological links: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361287/

throwaway290• 3 years ago

Let's put it that way, the will is never sheer. Looks like the will pushed Kevin to deal with it and relentlessly look for solutions (and put his money to use) instead of succumbing to it. If so, then in the end obviously it's his will that helped him score a win against cancer.

raffraffraff• 3 years ago

Every type of cancer is different. I think that if you're young enough and lucky enough to have avoided close dealings with terminal cancer, you might be fooled into thinking that the are all kinds of new treatments that can cure you if you get diagnosed. But what you eventually realise is that every cancer is different. Some are treatable, and others are an extremely aggressive and don't respond to anything. My sister's ovarian cancer made itself known in March, was officially diagnosed in early April and she was gone by September. It did not slow down for anything. On the other hand an old boss of mine was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer and lived 4 years, eventually choosing to end his treatment because he'd just be dragging out a final two painful weeks into 6 painful months. And then there are the lucky ones that get a lump removed and never hear from it again.

lgvld• 3 years ago

Sorry for your loss. Chin up.

natebc• 3 years ago

Very sorry for your loss. Fuck cancer.

tinsmith• 3 years ago

People with a lot of money can "fight," at least in terms of throwing everything medical science has to offer at it. I suspect that's where the narrative originated, then took on the mythos that it was somehow sheer will.

Meanwhile, the rest of us ride on pure luck as we watch cancer destroy our loved ones. They gave my dad a month with a glial blastoma. He lasted about 6, most of which the dad I knew was not present for. Tbfh, I feel like he would have rather gone quick, not enduring the twisted shit we watched him go through.

mensetmanusman• 3 years ago

Will can help though, which is why the placebo effect is a real thing.

radicalace• 3 years ago

wrong. this would be correct if doctors gave you perfect instructions as a rule. but doctors dont care about maximizing the probability of good health or long lifespan. they only care whether your outcomes are up to the standard defined by the medical establishment and the expectations of laypeople. as long as your doctor meets those standards, they wont be sued, lose their practice, be fined or suffer an insult to their high status. so often there are better treatments and overlooked treatments that got lost in that incentive scheme. patients who are proactive and singleminded will definitely do better with all illnesses including cancer. never understood this until i saw both my parents through cancer. but by far the biggest advantage is to have advocates, family with you at all times, especially in the hospital.

dools• 3 years ago

It can make a pretty big difference if you have lots of money though.

dorfsmay• 3 years ago

To make it worse, and to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, it's your own cells, your own body killing you.

cpncrunch• 3 years ago

One of the few known modifiable risk factors is sun exposure, which reduces risk by 30-40%:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24075798/

Whether it would be too late to do anything after getting the diagnosis is another question. Studies that look at sun exposure over time and mortality (e.g. Lindqvist's studies) show that it takes decades of sun exposure to lower the mortality risk by this amount.

nemo44x3• 3 years ago

We just say these types of things because it makes us feel better. And that's OK. I don't think anyone accuses someone who dies of "not fighting hard enough".

specialist2• 3 years ago

IDK.

The way I read u/ecohen16's telling is that Mitnick first beat apathy and bureaucracy just to have a shot at mitigating a disease, thereby postponed the inevitable.

I've lived it. Late 80s, I had a terminal diagnosis. Lucky me, my doc found a clinical trial, and fought like hell to get my HMO to pay. Justification was for org to use me to learn about emerging treatment (stem cell transplant is current variation).

A few years ago, my buddy got a terminal diagnosis. Apparent chronic sports related injury turned out to be a late stage tumor, which had spread. Prognosis was 3 - 6 months. None of his care providers were interested in escalating, only talking about palliative care and hospice. He did exactly as Mitnick. Managed to get enrolled in a clinical trial using immunotherapy for his precise diagnosis. Timing wise, a few weeks either way and he'd be dead. Dumb luck.

I can give a few more examples. (And 100s of counter examples.)

Do patients beat cancer?

Of course not. Among the survivors I know, disease (like cancer) is part of life and you deal with it. Or not.

But, some times, if we're really stubborn, and have sufficient resources and support and dumb luck, we can do things to live a little bit longer.

that did not "Fight hard enough"

Sometimes the patient, family, and especially the care providers don't fight hard enough. For all sorts of reasons. Probably because awareness of mortality made humans neurotic and we're all just winging it. Probably because everything is russian dolls of triage.

Any way, it's just a metaphor. Chose the one that works for you.

Just like I refuse to victim blame/shame, I'm not going to judge another person's coping mechanisms.

dang4• 3 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36795786 and marked it off topic.

wordsarelies• 3 years ago

He was childlike in his pranksterism. He never seemed to lose his wonder or his ability to make you feel like a jackass.

The man who could whistle the nuclear codes has passed away. And now maybe I can strike the social engineering village before the sun comes up.

nhggfu• 3 years ago

the greatest.

aestetix• 3 years ago

RIP Kevin. What a loss. That guy's court case basically defined the 90s for many of us.

submeta• 3 years ago

Taking a detour from the current thread, this sad news about Kevin Mitnick serves as a poignant reminder of the impermanence of life, but also of the value of vigilance. It's a note to all of us about the importance of our health. Remember, routine health checkups, especially as we age, can have a significant impact on our wellbeing.

Cancer, if detected early, does not have to be a death sentence. In fact, many forms of cancer are treatable and even curable if caught in their initial stages. Our advancements in medical science and technology have indeed made it possible. Yet, they can only do so much if we, as individuals, do not take the responsibility of regularly visiting our doctors.

system2• 3 years ago

When I was a child I had a poster of him in my room. It is so sad to see the news here. He will always be remembered.

ianpenney2• 3 years ago

The hacker community needs a word akin to “Silent Key” - in the ham radio community - that means a contributor that’s passed on.

Never met the guy but you’re damn right I know who he is. And I come from the middle of nowhere.

jacquesm2• 3 years ago

AFK.

ianpenney2• 3 years ago

Update: had no idea Kevin was a ham. His licence got yanked. N6NHG SK.

https://twitter.com/kevinmitnick/status/551997777031340032

log101• 3 years ago

Ghost in the Wires has had a huge influence on me choosing a programming career. So sad, rest in peace.

victorbjorklund• 3 years ago

Oh no. He is a hero that taught so many people.

dncosta• 3 years ago

Just read about this.

So many memories from way back, reading up on his story (and stories), reading his books, watching "Takedown" over and over again ...

No matter how polarising he was, his influence in the field and in leading many young people to get into computers and turn that into a career is unquestionable, imho.

RIP

eddie_catflap• 3 years ago

Ghost in the Wires is a laugh out loud read for me. I told him it should be a movie and he said there was a screenplay. Hope it sees the light of day.

noufalibrahim• 3 years ago

The Cyberthief and the Samurai (along with a few other books like Snow Crash, Hackers, the Cuckoos egg etc.) were books that made a big impact on me earlier in my life. It wasn't as much about facts as much as about building a virtual map of the digital world in my head. This was before I had actual access to a fast internet connection.

I had a printout of the MIT guide to lock picking and used to try out stuff with some hand crafted "tools". I'd forgotten about Mitnick and later (probably via. Slashdot) came across his site again and saw this https://www.mitnicksecurity.com/kevin-mitnicks-famous-lockpi... which suddenly brought back the same image I had formed about him. Playful to the extent of not caring, irreverent, and curious.

Rest in Peace.

mocmoc• 3 years ago

Hero

pvaldes• 3 years ago

Gone too young.

Pancreatic cancer is terrible. Hacking the disease with RNA would be the better homage possible to Mitnick. Lets pray for the vaccine coming soon.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/mrna-va...

revskill• 3 years ago

I'm not sure if i should admire Kevin. I don't see his Github contributions at all.

hknmtt• 3 years ago

Event after decades, I remember that name.

pjmq• 3 years ago

Recently re-discovered him due to a Business Wars podcast episode on him. The dude deserves his own movie. Not a nice way to go but he'll surely be remembered.

slowhadoken• 3 years ago

All my immediate family is very young so I always thought 50 was old. Then I lost a stepfather to cancer when he was in his 50’s. I couldn’t believe it, he was so young.

biguss• 3 years ago

RIP Kev, you were quite a legend!

q-base• 3 years ago

I will by no means say that I followed or knew him. But the name was familiar and I suddenly remembered who he was and that I had his book on my wishlist for christmas. Sorry to hear about the loss.

I do like some of his approaches to life. There are some similarities between him and Richard Feynman.

Who comes to mind if I would like to follow some still living people that has this rebellious, "joire de vivre" way of life?

tunnuz• 3 years ago

RIP.

ttrrooppeerr• 3 years ago

A mentor and a beacon for many of us. Rest in peace.

throwaway67743• 3 years ago

Is there an obit that isn't on a dumb site that blocks entire countries for no reason?

gumballindie• 3 years ago

Hackers never die, they elevate. RIP.

tankenmate• 3 years ago

My first memory of Mitnick was a very early web viral 8bit sound file (ADPCM if memory serves) that was purported to be Mitnick (it turned out later to not be Mitnick); "I know sendmail technique. ...". I can still hear it in my head today. I got my start into infosec working as an admin at my university; trying to keep on top of students being naughty was a good introduction.

prmoustache3• 3 years ago

"He is survived by his brother-in-law, Ricky Barry and his wife Roxy"

What a strange way to phrase it. Why don't they mention his sister first? Is it plain sexism or were they in bad terms?

alias_neo2• 3 years ago

I'm assuming you know something I don't (about who Roxy is), but it's entirely possible to have a brother-in-law married to someone that is not your sister.

I have a brother-in-law; my wife's brother.

prmoustache3• 3 years ago

I think I simply forgot about that use case and assumed she was her sister ha ha. Makes sense indeed.

Lolaccount• 3 years ago

RIP ... absolutely opened my eyes as a kid ... tonight, I'm going to dig out the old 30 threadbare paperback about hackers where I first learned of him.

Zobat• 3 years ago

Rarely has "Hacker News" been a more appropriate page name.

RIP Kevin.

rajc111• 3 years ago

RIP

myshpa• 3 years ago

Real hackers get:

"Sorry, you have been blocked"

"You are unable to access dignitymemorial.com"

;)

smcl• 3 years ago

I think we should have a link that isn't totally broken. I guess a lot of people here read the headline and came to comment and share some anecdotes, which is totally fine. But the link is broken, so we should at least fix that. Here are a couple of alternatives:

https://www.engadget.com/kevin-mitnick-formerly-the-worlds-m...

https://boingboing.net/2023/07/19/kevin-mitnick-1963-2023.ht...

theodric• 3 years ago

I guess he's never getting put back then.

RIP Kevin

nimmen• 3 years ago

Surely legend of the era. Remember some obscure court restrictions for him at the time, not quite sure they were real, or hoax, or urban legends...

bussiere• 3 years ago

Fuck ...

He was kind of role model for me, i was inspired by the way he saw the world, in everything he was able to see hole and flaw and how to exploit them. Where "normal" people just don't think about it.

His stories and mischiefs will be missed for me.

tazjin• 3 years ago

Archive link for those in countries that this page doesn't allow access from: https://archive.is/13uNy

mitnk• 3 years ago

R.i.P - My id was originated from his name..

seanhandley• 3 years ago

I met Kevin at a conference in Manchester where he cloned my HID access card and made an amazing demo of how easily this can get a company's workstations compromised with keyloggers. It was like watching a magician - he was a very skilled, funny, intelligent man with a wealth of knowledge. He gave me his business card (which is also a lock-picking kit) and I will treasure it.

Thanks for all you taught us Kevin, and thanks for being a beacon of curiosity and exploration.

bubblematrix• 3 years ago

Rest in Peace Kevin, I read your The Art of Human Hacking in 7th grade after learning about you from The Screen Savers TV show.

Too young

atlanta90210• 3 years ago

https://www.mitnicksecurity.com/kevin-mitnicks-famous-lockpi...

A link to his famous business card which doubled as a lock pick kit. Rip Kevin.

chrisrickard• 3 years ago

When I wad 13 I printed out “FREE KEVIN” stickers and stuck them all over the locker room of my school. …kind of a weird thing to do in Australia back then.

henrik_w• 3 years ago

I really enjoyed reading his book Ghost in the Wires. It is the story of Mitnick’s hacking career, from the start in his teens, through becoming the FBI’s most wanted hacker, to spending years in jail before finally being released. It’s a fascinating book that at times reads like a thriller. One of the things that struck me when reading it was how often he used social engineering to gain access to systems.

I wrote more about it here:

https://henrikwarne.com/2015/12/27/social-engineering-from-k...

user3939382• 3 years ago

I have a lot of nostalgia for the old 80s/90s hacking counterculture which doesn't seem to really exist anymore.

"FREE KEVIN" :'(

marinhero• 3 years ago

I never met him but his books and anecdotes fueled the mind of a young me. All I wanted was to be a hacker like him. Rest in peace Mr Mitnick. You’ll be missed.

major505• 3 years ago

Man, fuck cancer. He still was young, and his wife is pregnant. I remember as a kid reading about his exploits, and how much that influenced my carrer choice and interest in computers.

Hope he can hack his way into heaven.

motbus3• 3 years ago

Mitnick was a warrior battling giant corps alone. I believe he did that just because he could only, but it does not take the merit of one guy being able to outweight the whole industry.

paul7986• 3 years ago

He was expecting his first child at 59/60 which is awesome especially those 10 to 15 years younger or so who like to still also, yet he dies before his child was born. Heartbreaking!

RIP

ryanmercer• 3 years ago

That's sad. I imagine Crunch will be next.

effingwewt• 3 years ago

Rest in Peace.

A hacker far before it was cool.

A pioneer in so many ways.

A hero as I was growing up.

megraf• 3 years ago

I snuck into a banking conference in Miami Florida to meet Kevin. I forged my badge, using the previous years design as inspiration. I got in, and met him, and gave him my badge.

He said "that's really cool" and signed a copy of Ghost in the Wires for me.

Really incredible guy. Rest in peace my friend.

whynotkeithberg• 3 years ago

I read his book when I was younger... And at DEFCON 19 I got selected to get paired with a celebrity hacker in the 10,000 cent hacker pyramid. I ended up getting paired with Kevin Mitnick & we played against Dan Kaminsky. It was a really cool experience & even though Kaminsky went on to win... It was a ton of fun and Kevin was a really cool guy.

I hope his family is doing well.

pizzalife• 3 years ago

You can watch some of Kevin's telnet logs here: http://www.takedown.com/evidence/transcripts/index.html

No disrespect to the dead, but I always thought he kind of lived in a lame timeframe. It used to be a lot easier to do what he did. If you check the terminal logs, he was a script kiddie at best (I know he's more famous for the social engineering). How many CVEs did Mitnick have to his name..? (AFAIK, zero)

Anyway, I'm prepared to get some downvotes but do check out the logs. It's pretty entertaining regardless.

gt565k• 3 years ago

May he rest in peace.

I first heard of Kevin Mitnick in the early 2000's when I was watching "The Broken" with Kevin Rose and he interviewed Mitnick in one of the episodes.

I was 14-15 years old at the time! Wow!

Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcWByfwkf4k

omgmajk• 3 years ago

This hit hard, free Kev!

wanderingmoose• 3 years ago

There was something I always wanted to ask him:

He was so meticulous is setting up new identities and moving to random places around the country to avoid the authorities. But would then log back into his previously compromised systems in a way that would expose his current geographic location. It always seemed like such a glaring hole in his otherwise well thought out personal opsec. I'm sure the story was more complicated than what appeared in the press at the time, or in the 2600 knock-off zines that were going around at the time, or in his books. It always confused me. I could never figure out if that was an oversight, or he just wasn't aware he was being watched.

I think I share a similar pendulum swinging feelings about km as other folks here, especially as his story unfolded across many different phases of my life: from adulation as a teen, to realizing that he was just another a*hole who would lie to your face to get what they want. Recently it has swung waaay back the other way -- especially as more of our access to customer service for critical aspects of our lives get buried behind obstructionist systems -- to understanding that we always need people who can tear any system apart.

As an addendum...I think the term hacker should be handed to the sys admin that started was instrumental in getting km located by (If my foggy mind remembers correcly) by emailing logs or log stats to himself and noticing that size was shrinking so someone was deleting them -- that blew my mind at the time.

He will be missed.

arbitrage• 3 years ago

I believe that at first it was a game for him. Eventually he got tired of running, and this may have been a way of taunting his pursuers and forcing an end-game situation that he overestimated his chances against.

He was not prepared for four years of solitary and unconstitutional delaying of his trial. He did not ultimately have a game plan for what to do if his opponent cheated.

If the government had acted justly (that is, according to their own laws) he would have been found innocent and walked at his trial. However, the prosecutors lied, they cheated, corrupted the system they claimed to protect, and that was it. Game over, no redos.

zirgs2• 3 years ago

From Wikipedia: "Mitnick also intercepted and stole computer passwords, altered computer networks, and broke into and read private emails." - what a nice guy he was.

0xbadcafebee• 3 years ago

Would you want someone to pop up after you're dead to remind people of your misdeeds?

zirgs2• 3 years ago

His misdeeds are the only reason why people are talking about him now.

r00f• 3 years ago

I got into IT because of him mainly. When I was 12, where I was growing up I was the only one who knew what a computer is. I remember reading his story somewhere, then I got to my mom's computer at her office and read all I could find about his story.

I wrote "Free Kevin Mitnick!" with a black marker on my tshirt and was walking around my town proudly wearing it. Nobody understood anything about it but it made me feel like involved into some secret society.

Next year I convinced parents to pay for me learning QBasic (the only computer course in my town back then), and 3 years later I got into university on an Information Security specialization. Some of my friends say that I was the reason why they got into IT. Well, I guess we all owe that to Kevin.

I talked to him in person once at a conference and was happy like a little puppy, but being socially awkward as I am I didn't tell him that he is my childhood hero. I hope now when he has trandcended to the cloud, he has a bird's eye view on our realm and can see all the positive impact that he had had on my life and lives of people I've influenced...

The very brightest memories

joshmanders2• 3 years ago

The movie Hackers and Kevin's story were two pinnacles of me getting into computers in 1997.

neonate• 3 years ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20230720113741/https://www.dignit...

https://archive.ph/13uNy

pelasaco2• 3 years ago

super influential in my life in the end of 90s. If you work in the security branch, and had to stay alert on Christmas, because hackers love to hacker while Christmas, he was the main responsible by this Tradition. Fuck how thrilled I was when I watched first time some video of his telnet hacking sessions, back in the days... Resist in Peace (RIP)

metalloid• 3 years ago

A true legend.

glonq• 3 years ago

Fuck cancer. I picked it up a couple months ago at the ripe age of 50, and spend my days getting nuked with chemo and rads now.

dariushro• 3 years ago

Was he vaxxed?

blondie9x• 3 years ago

Feel bad for the unborn child that will have to be raised without a father because his parents decided selfishly to conceive him or her due to illness.

Raising a child is more than genetics.

PettingRabbits• 3 years ago

Pancreatic cancer really sucks. A friend of mine passed away from it a few months ago at the ripe old age of 25. She was first diagnosed with it at 20, beat it, and then nearly three years later it came back at stage 4. Like Kevin she also underwent a few different experimental treatments, the first of which worked remarkably well. (Until it didn't, which is typical of these treatments) A cure or effective treatment feels so close, and I'm sure if one comes soon I'll be having a bittersweet celebration.

I never did get to meet Kevin, but it's clear that I missed out on an amazing person. RIP Mr Mitnick.

bennylava• 3 years ago

Wow, so much idolatry on here for a criminal.

skeaker• 3 years ago

He hasn't been a criminal for a very long time. He more than payed his dues as well when he was unconstitutionally held in solitary confinement without bail. Reducing a man who has done so much to something so trivial as this reflects poorly on you alone.

daniel-cussen• 3 years ago

Passive voice, better title is Kevin Mitnick died, or passed away, sugar coat it like he never did if you want, we all know what it means. I suddenly feel bad for him, though. He deserved the black ribbon.

swayvil• 3 years ago

Ahhh fuckaduck. He's a superhero.

mike503• 3 years ago

Just realized I mailed away my lock pick money a few weeks ago. Still haven't got anything yet.

Kevin Mitnick has died

Related Stories