Ex-”Computer Terrorist” Teaches Security

Rob Updegrove (GHoosdum) Famous hacker Kevin Mitnick is now in the business of teaching. He travels around the world, teaching anti-hacking security techniques to companies much like those he previously hacked.

March 8, 2006 10:14 AM ET in News,

Famous hacker Kevin Mitnick is now in the business of teaching. He travels around the world, teaching anti-hacking security techniques to companies much like those he previously hacked.

“Hackers find the hole in the human firewall,” Mitnick told an information technology security conference on Wednesday in Johannesburg, South Africa. “What’s the biggest hole? It’s the illusion of invulnerability.”

“Social engineering” — as hackers call tricking people — formed the main thrust of his career, in which he penetrated some of the world’s most sophisticated systems often by persuading unwitting staff to hand over top-secret information.

Mitnick, now in his early 40s, started hacking phone systems in his teens before moving on to computers, but says he never stole money or caused deliberate damage and hacked just for the thrill of it.

The hobby earned him a place on the FBI’s most wanted list and an almost five-year stint in U.S. jail in the 1990s.

On his release he was initially banned from surfing the Web, and has since written two books about hacking and started an IT security consulting firm.

Source: Reuters

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6 Comments:

  1. Dilligaf? (Guest)
    9 Mar '06, 2:16 am

    Mitnick is not and never was a hacker. He's just a lame bitch with the gift of gab. Social engineering is not hacking. Never was, never will be. It's nothing but BSing people to get some info. Compulsive liars do it all the time. No story here, move on...go on.

  2. GHoosdum
    9 Mar '06, 8:29 am

    Social engineering itself may not be hacking, but that doesn't mean the security threat it poses is any smaller.

  3. Dilligaf? (Guest)
    9 Mar '06, 11:10 am

    I never said the security threat was any less. In fact it's so easy to do that the threat is actually greater. Most security problems are through social engineering or theft. Neither is 'hacking'. To call Mitnick a hacker is a line of crap. Now, call him a social engineer and I have to say he's a good one. After all, he's still making a killing doing the same thing he did before he got caught. Feeding people a line of crap. He, I'm assuming, found out he could make as much money off his BSing skills in the open than trying to gain entry by SEing. Yea, he's good....he's not a hacker though.

  4. jradmin
    9 Mar '06, 3:22 pm

    Wow, sounds like you have some issues yourself. Mitnick is nobody to look up to in any way, but Websters Dictionary defines "Hacker" as the following.

    hacker
    One entry found for hacker.
    Main Entry: hack·er
    Pronunciation: 'ha-k&r
    Function: noun
    1 : one that hacks
    2 : a person who is inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity
    3 : an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer
    4 : a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system

    Whatever your views on Hacking are is your opinion, however the facts are that Mitnick DID gain access to systems illegally and purposfully tampered with information (although he says in a non-threatening way). That makes him a Hacker by definition. That may not be your opinion of him, but I would care to wager that most Info Systems Security professors around the country would consider him one aswell. I know mine did.

    One of our first lessions back when I was going through school for my IS Security degree was about Social Engineering and how some security consulting companies have planted social engineers within a company to gather info just so they can go back to that company later and show them all their security flaws. It's a very lucrative business.

  5. Leonardo
    9 Mar '06, 5:24 pm
    Wow, sounds like you have some issues yourself.

    Take it easy, JrAdmin! DilliGaf was not defending Mitnick, merely stating that what Mitnick did and does, right or wrong, he did and does well.

    There is a purest definition of hacking, and a more generalized, common definition of hacking. Let's not sweat it. Nothing wrong with taking issue with each others' arguments, but let the issues be with the arguments, not the person stating the argument.

    There now, all warm and fuzzy!

  6. jradmin
    10 Mar '06, 8:48 am

    My reply was just in defence of GHoosdum and his article. I think it's pretty lame when someone wants to smack down a factual article that he's spent time posting, especially when they do it over their own opinion and not facts.

    I found his reply to be very inappropriate for the new section and corrected him as such.

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