A man was gifted his dream car by Kevin Mitnick, who he helped put in prison

https://www.thedrive.com/news/this-man-was-gifted-his-dream-car-by-the-notorious-hacker-he-put-in-prison

by mauvehaus • 1 month ago

230 153 1 month ago

kkaske• 29 days ago

I'm old enough to remember all the "Free Kevin" gifs scattered around the internet.

This helps to fill in some of the details. It's a really nice story showing the humanity that can be found in situations when you look close.

kstrauser3• 29 days ago

At DEF CON and related events now, you commonly see stickers saying "PUT KEVIN BACK".

sudo_cowsay2• 29 days ago

Well, he has passed so I don't know if that sticker is relevant anymore.

devmor• 29 days ago

From what I can tell, defcon is largely law enforcement and companies that sell to them these days, so I'm not surprised at all to hear that.

firefax6• 29 days ago

I'm old enough to remember all the "Free Kevin" gifs scattered around the internet.

A generation of hackers (specifically, the vBulletin generation) stayed as far away from the CFAA as possible after that fiasco, which I suspect is exactly the chilling effect that the DOJ intended.

mindcrime• 29 days ago

Call me nostalgic or whatever, but my laptop to this very day...

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

netsharc• 29 days ago

Hah, he social engineered the God of social engineering...

mcfunley3• 29 days ago

I worked at a company that had hired Mitnick as a security consultant.

His report for a client that turned out to have been rife with SQL injection at the time was largely movie plot physical security stuff. Not wrong exactly, but not the center mass of the threat model they needed either.

He seemed to lack systems thinking, producing a report that focused on calling out specific employees as dumb or incompetent. Counterproductive at best. It seemed like his PR exceeded his utility by a great deal.

That trend continues beyond the grave, maybe.

lern_too_spel• 29 days ago

He social engineered your company into contracting him, and that adds to the legend, but people don't see how many other companies he failed to social engineer.

topham• 29 days ago

The hero worship of him makes me physically ill, always has.

He did cost people their jobs though, so I guess he's a good person.

deepsun3• 29 days ago

It's like we don't have any messiah's today that are mediocre professionals at best.

shuwix2• 28 days ago

Being incompetent didcause people to lose job which required certain level of competence. Job they shouldn't have in fiest place.

Social engineering is just that, exploiting people having insufficient intellect for the job.

kingforaday• 29 days ago

"He was a hacker-turned-security consultant who, later in life, helped shape the modern white-hat."

They left out convicted criminal.

firefax6• 29 days ago

I have so many stories about his absolutely terrible behavior at conferences. He once refused to pay the entry fee to a charity event and had to be physically ejectedy.

Absolutely better at PR than any actual work, pay careful attention and none of his early stuff was particularly novel, from a technical perspective.

But for whatever reason, we venerate him just because he was victimized by the state. The world is not a dichotomy -- sometimes bad things happen to bad people.

ActorNightly2• 29 days ago

You act like thats a bad thing given the nature of his crimes.

If more people strived to be like Mitnick today, the tech world would have a lot more power.

the_af• 29 days ago

Kevin's security company is also a mess, and the training videos they produce are embarrassing at best.

I understand he probably just lent his name to the company (though he did show up in some of the videos), but still...

anthk• 29 days ago

This is what happens when the 90's PC community renamed crackers as hackers. Proper hackers would have been the ITS/WAIS ones doing crazy things with computers for its era.

leetrout2• 29 days ago

Dude I was called out by name in the report either right before you got there or the first one you were there. I was called out in the one where they got B's Audi keys in his office.

Whole thing was so dumb. A floor full of smart monitors that they could have put a keylogger on. A plethora of physical network access and I get called out for leaving my laptop on the lock screen and going downstairs for food.

And they got found out because I ran little snitch I paid for myself and it caught their hijacked chrome making all sorts of weird network calls. But I don't remember being given credit for that.

(Sips mojito)

sersi• 29 days ago

How would they have been able to install a hijacked Chrome if your computer was on the lock screen?

alfiedotwtf• 29 days ago

He also took MG’s O.MG usb cable and got it manufactured and sold from under him.

All that “Free Mitnick” support from the early 2000s he got must have gone to his head, or he was just a dick all along

skeaker• 29 days ago

In all fairness, a genuine attacker WILL be abrasive and abusive. They WILL single out employees that are gullible and exploit them. It's not pretty because a genuine attack is not pretty. Of course a simulated attack will be indecent and discourteous in nature, that is how attacks are.

deepsun3• 29 days ago

Not necessarily WILL. I've seen awesome attackers who were mostly checkbox spreadsheet clerks. Friendly, methodical, boring, expert.

wjnc4• 29 days ago

Yeah, this is a part about itsec I don’t understand in my firm. They run social engineering tests, but never notify management when individuals fail, only in general terms. While being psyopped needs to be activelly discussed among coworkers imho.

firebot• 29 days ago

He mostly used social engineering. Not technical exploits. So that's how he succeeded. Call it crazy, but it worked.

fma• 29 days ago

Why hack a password when you can get the employee to just tell you.

ErroneousBosh• 29 days ago

And now all that shitty KnowBe4 nonsense we have to sit through every couple of months is all "What do you do if your manager phones you up and says they're on a business trip and need you to use the company credit card to buy Amazon gift cards", over and over and over.

Bold of them to assume I'll answer the phone if I see my manager's number come up.

esikich• 29 days ago

"He didn't breach us the way we wanted him to do it so it was dumb." Idk man, sounds like you locked your doors but left the windows open. That's the point of these things.

murderfs• 29 days ago

"a client that turned out to have been rife with SQL injection" sounds more like they left the doors open, but the report focused on the lack of security bars on the windows.

mcfunley3• 29 days ago

The point is really after working through remediations, there were pretty massive issues remaining that weren’t hard to find and were relatively vastly easier to exploit if the attacker is a Russian teen and not Bruce Lee. And the budget for such things was blown. Priorities, etc

bawolff• 29 days ago

Isn't he famous for social engineering/physical security type things? If you hire an expert in X, you are probably going to get X.

mcfunley3• 29 days ago

Yeah I agree, caveat emptor and all that. The blameful framing is bad work product though.

rixed• 29 days ago

Isn't he famous for getting caught?

ActorNightly2• 29 days ago

I mean, the landscape changed quite a bit since early days of what Mitnick did as a blackhat. He did his best to adapt and make money, which given his prison term, isn't really that surprising.

shuwix2• 29 days ago

Dumb people are dumb. And will be. Their ability to learn from experience is almost non-existent. They are biggest security threat. Corporate structure didn't identify their mental limits and gave them way more access. So Mitnick, as outsite observer identified them and did good job.

I might say "sorry for your loss of job" .... but seriously not. You shouldn't got that job in first place.

Atleast you can brag about getting unemployed thanx to Mitnick.

bootload• 29 days ago

“He seemed to lack systems thinking, producing a report that focused on calling out specific employees as dumb or incompetent.”

2002 “Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls, encryption, and secure access devices and it's money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain: the people who use, administer, operate and account for computer systems that contain protected information.” — Kevin Mitnik

“Amateurs hack systems, professionals hack people.” — Bruce Schneier

source < https://archive.md/LiQN4> / (paywall) <https://economist.com/special-report/2002/10/26/the-weakest-...>

TurdF3rguson• 29 days ago

I heard he can launch nukes by whistling into a pay phone.

jagged-chisel• 29 days ago

Maybe I'm mistaken, but that sounds more like Chuck Norris.

Wait ... no fists involved. My mistake.

alex11384• 29 days ago

It's in his (Mitnick's) autobiography Ghost in the Wires. In his telling of the story they put him in a more restrictive environment exactly because of the reason given (launching nukes by whistling into a phone)

uberex• 29 days ago

With Chuck Norris, the nukes whistle at him, just to keep on his good side.

fallous• 29 days ago

Nukes launch Chuck Norris at their enemies.

RetroTechie3• 29 days ago

Impressive.. what pay phones?

ww5202• 29 days ago

I read the book by Tsutomu Shimomura, who caught Mitnick's hacking and tracked him down. It's a fascinating read. He was able to locate Mitnick in physical world based on his online activities and his cellular phone usage. In those early days, few people understood the cyber landscape and cellular technologies to exploit them.

alex11384• 29 days ago

Yes but AFAIUI Mitnick was upset Shimomura had the full weight of the police on his side, right? He used techniques that shouldn't have been available to him

Interesting fact about Shimomura, he was a student of Feynman's

Sleaker2• 29 days ago

... All's fair in love and war?

ww5202• 29 days ago

I think he didn't know cellular well enough and thought a wireless phone was unlocatable because it was mobile and not tied down to a landline. As a physicist, Shimomura would have known all about radio and signal. He just used old WW2 tech of radio triangulation to find the location of the cell phone radio transmitter. It didn't help that cell phones were rare back then and the signal of his cell transmitter frequency was standing out like a sore thumb.

Regarding the full weight of the police, Shimomura did have an easier time to convince the ISP and phone companies to give him access to the logs. He was able to ask the cellular company to locate the cell tower where Mitnick's cell phone connected and traced him to the general area. If Mitnick had been careful, he could have hacked into the ISP/phone companies and erased all his access logs.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS2• 29 days ago

He used techniques that shouldn't have been available to him

Why not? Sometimes it's not what you know, it's who you know.

simg2• 29 days ago

used techniques that shouldn't have been available to him

odd for a hacker to take that attitude ...

HaphazardGuess• 29 days ago

to add to this:

I highly recommend this Youtube video....its 4 hours long but it is pretty amazing!

Takedown Evidence: Kevin Mitnick's "sessions" (Complete Transcripts) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5EGMYsr6uY

ubermonkey• 29 days ago

I read a mess of books about Mitnick's escapades including Hafer's and Shimomura's, and definitely came away with the impression that while Mitnick was a criminal, Shimomura was a bit of an asshole.

nba456_• 29 days ago

Too bad he wasn't colorblind.

lovich• 29 days ago

I don’t need to know an iota of his activities as a hacker to hate him. I hate him because of how many times I had to be put through mind numbing security training with his mug as the opener. “I’m Kevin Mitnick” and KnowBe4 are seared into my brain at a ptsd level for terminal boredom.

nunley7• 29 days ago

I'm going to defend Kevin here because I see a lot of comments from people I am sure have no valid reason to be hating on him.

Kevin was particularly annoying because he never failed to penetrate a target. The reason that's annoying is it just takes one slip, one weak point, one inattentive admin and it's over. People will stay mad about that. I get it.

But those who say he had no talent are just ignorant.

His goal was to make the world safer, and making people pay attention to risk didn't make him a lot of friends. All the hate I am reading here is just sad.

If you hate Kevin and did not know Kevin, I feel bad for you. Hate is an expensive emotion, even when you're just being a keyboard warrior. It should be reserved for people who have really wronged you. Kevin is not with us anymore. The hate is hurting you, not him. And he has a son who will read this someday. Have a heart.

reinitctxoffset• 29 days ago

I would petition all other community members to appreciate the gravity of the parent's comment.

Speaking for myself as someone very early in my journey during the time when Mitnick was still active as a grey hat: he advanced our thinking about security and the nature of trust itself in ways that have never been more timely.

Paradoxically he profited personally far more as a white hat than he ever did in the grey area, his motivations were clearly not extractive. The authorities compelled him to go do lucrative things! (after persecuting him mercilessly).

RIP Kevin. We are ill equipped for the vulns of the AI, but without you we'd be helpless.

jjulius• 29 days ago

In case folk don't connect the dots, this appears to be Shawn Nunley from the article.

Barrin922• 29 days ago

But those who say he had no talent are just ignorant.

I don't think anyone says he had no talent, what rubs people the wrong way is that the thing he had talent for is the same thing that the people have who try to scam call your grandmother out of her pension money. You can be the world's greatest burglar, you're still a burglar. The whole cringy "social engineering" thing turned media persona and consulting business is to engineering what chiropractics is to medicine.

He leaned pretty heavily into monetizing his own image and for a lot of people what he did became synonymous with the word 'hacking' in a not particularly positive way and critising that isn't hate.

nunley7• 29 days ago

That's just nonsense. First of all, social engineering was a small part of his work, and it's OK that you don't know that. But your totally blatant ignorance of what his career covered is exactly what I'm talking about.

Look, I know that people form their opinions in a bubble. All I am saying here is you should expand your bubble. You know nothing about Kev. Again, that's OK, but it also means you should try to understand what you're hating.

You'd try to make money on your image if you could, I'm betting. Especially if you had been put in prison and left there with no bail hearing, and put in solitary confinement for 'hoarding tuna' in your cell. For 9 months. While your father died. This was not a normal treatment of any person in custody.

Kev was a good person. Full stop. Just as curious as all of us in that era.

1970-01-01• 29 days ago

This story is itself evidence that Kevin had good parts to him. This 911 GTS is not some shit joke prize.

billehunt2• 29 days ago

Shawn and I worked together at Novell back when this was going down. It was fascinating at the time and more so in hindsight. FWIW, Shawn's a really good guy.

myrandomcomment• 28 days ago

I can echo that sentiment. Shawn is a friend and a genuinely nice and interesting person.

nunley7• 28 days ago

Been a crazy ride, Bill!

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS2• 29 days ago

I'm old enough to remember Kevin as both hero and villain. People are complex, Kevin seemed to be no exception. His exploits - and the ones of those who caught him - were fascinating to follow in realtime.

But be honest...

How sweet is that 911?

nunley7• 28 days ago

I'm going with 'pretty sweet'

tmach322• 29 days ago

Yeah, I am shocked a little, because he wasn't a monster or something. Critique is valid, but speaking with obvious resentment and disrespect about someone who died is pretty gross. Again, unless they're, like, a _monster_.

gosub100• 29 days ago

If you're a high profile public figure, you are subject to scrutiny. Even after you pass away.

NitpickLawyer2• 29 days ago

I am sure have no valid reason to be hating on him.

TBF that's likely a symptom of social media and people commenting on things they don't know about with a bit too much confidence. You can see similar takes on snowden today.

Back in the day (90s, 00s) he was both widely supported and a bit of a myth in the early Internet communities.

olalonde• 29 days ago

I did not realize Mitnick had passed away, very sad. I first learned about him as a kid through the book Takedown, and his exploits definitely fueled my early fascination with computers and hacking. It's heartwarming to see how he later befriended Shawn Nunley, though it's unfortunate that he and Shimomura apparently never buried the hatchet. He undoubtedly influenced an entire generation of hackers, RIP.

boombapoom• 29 days ago

good god how did he get a car into prison?

appden• 29 days ago

Ghost in the Wires is one of all time favorite reads, and I still hope to see it as a dramatized film. It would be a fun “period piece” taking the audience through the 80’s and early 90’s, with some hilarious social engineering scenes (kinda like Catch Me If You Can) and tense moments where the audience roots for Kevin. I really think a film adaptation would help introduce his story to a new generation and be a nice tribute to his legacy.

foobarbecue• 29 days ago

Except actually real whereas Frank Abagnale fabricated all of his supposed cons (read The Greatest Hoax).

alex11384• 29 days ago

Kevin Mitnick, substitute teacher

Kevin Mitnick, airline pilot. What's a deadhead?

e12e3• 29 days ago

Having read and enjoyed ghost in the wires (and at some point all of mitnicks books) - I still enjoy the infamous takedown movie. I think it still shows a lot of mindset around social engineering - and realistic holes in security measures. I do understand why a lot of people were pissed off, though.

Ed: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159784/

Ed2: can't recall if I ever got around to reading takedown - I think I did. Much prefer ghost in the wires.

georgehotz• 29 days ago

For what it's worth, I'm George Hotz, and Kevin Mitnick's books were a big influence on me. I ran into him at a party at DEFCON one year and we talked for 20 minutes before I found out who he was. Gave me a lock pick business card. Cool guy.

RyJones• 29 days ago

I enjoyed supporting you in the AllJoyn/AllSeen Alliance era. Sadly, those lessons were never learned.

aculver2• 29 days ago

Since we're talking about Kevin Mitnick on Hacker News, I have to mention:

I recently re-read "Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier". It was published in 1991 and the first third of the book provides an early contemporary account of Kevin Mitnick. It's a great book that I first read in my high school library in the 90s and it completely captured my imagination.

However, I had never connected the dots that the subject of the last third of the book was Robert Tappan Morris, creator of the Morris worm, who went on to cofound Y Combinator! Paul Graham is also quoted in the book.

The book has aged pretty great. They added an updated epilogue in 1995 in the early part of the Free Kevin era, but honestly re-listening to the book in 2025, I was wondering where the updated Y Combinator epilogue was!

mesrik• 29 days ago

Agreed what you wrote. It's great and well written book. I did read the book again last fall after couple decades.

Then few weeks after finishing book I ran into his LinkedIn post (bit OT sure) if what book told was his recollection still accurate in part where book refers his work at DEC Systems Research Center (SRC) at the time. Following is what he replied to me:

" markoff and hafner did extensive research and the book is accurate in all ways i could know. note that while mitnick has paid his debt to society (jail time), i've never received from him an apologia. my only other written mention of those breakins was here:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/burdens-blame-paul-vixie/ "

e12e3• 29 days ago

If that tickled you, I also recommend "The New New Thing" by Michael M. Lewis.

aculver2• 28 days ago

Say less! Appreciate the recommendation and it's on its way!

Simulacra• 29 days ago

I also have Kevin Mitnick's business card and it is one of my most prized possessions. A great inspiration and influence on my life.

billehunt2• 29 days ago

His famous metal lock-pick business card - https://imgur.com/a/caareoI

nunley7• 28 days ago

A rather terrible video I made many years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzQY3KgOT8E

kmoser• 29 days ago

He put himself on the proverbial map in 1979 by dialing into a software company’s server and copying its forthcoming operating system release in its entirety. Imagine convincing a Microsoft server to cough over an early copy of Windows 12 using little more than a phone number.

Windows 12 was in development back in 1979? I think that timeline is a bit off.

NitpickLawyer2• 29 days ago

The first phrase is what he did. The second phrase asks you to imagine how silly that sounds in today's world. (i.e. imagine that all it took back then was a phone number)

Kevin was from a different time. Back then security wasn't even an afterthought. He was exploring the shiny new thing of digital worlds, with an attacker mindset, and that was new at the time (and quite unique to a small set of humans back then).

sborra• 29 days ago

*whom

Tade0• 29 days ago

As kids in the 90s in eastern Europe hardly anyone of us knew the name Kevin Mitnick, but if you were interested in computers at all, you'd certainly recall Condor.

I think this was the first time I heard someone being forbidden by court from accessing the internet. At the time we had like two, maybe three kids in class who even used dial up regularly.

RetroTechie3• 29 days ago

What I don't see mentioned here:

It's entirely possible to be on opposite sides of the fence, hate the other party's actions, but still respect (or even like) them on a personal level. Imagine yourself in their shoes & dial it up to 11.

[insert favorite movie scene here]

hoherd• 28 days ago

There is a part of Ghost in The Wires that is pretty close to that:

Ring me up, Mate.

Neill.

That made me smile. But what the hell? I figured: he already knew he had been hustled, so I had nothing to lose.

I called.

“Hey, Neill, what’s up?”

“Hey, mate.” No anger, no threats, no hostility. We were like two old friends.

We spent hours talking, and I shared all the intricate details of how I’d hacked him over the years. I decided I might as well tell him, since it wasn’t likely to work on him again.

We became telephone buddies, sometimes spending hours on the phone together over several days.

e12e3• 29 days ago

Looks like op mostly a rehash of the linked Wired story?

https://www.wired.com/2002/02/mitnick-meets-his-pigeon/

https://archive.is/oMcKd

wyclif• 29 days ago

That 2002 Wired article is still behind a paywall. Shameful.

silexia• 29 days ago

The glorification of scammers needs to stop and we need to return to harsh Hammurabi law style punishment.

metalman• 28 days ago

should say "grifted his dream car"

A man was gifted his dream car by Kevin Mitnick, who he helped put in prison

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