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WHO?! Kevin David Mitnickis an American computer security consultant, author, convicted criminal, and hacker. In the late 20th century, he was convicted of various computer and communications-related crimes. At the time of his arrest, he was the most-wanted computer criminal in the United States. He was of a 31-year old computer programmer, who had been given a number of chances to get his life together but each time was seduced back to the dark side of the computer world. Kevin David Mitnick reached adolescence in suburban Los Angeles in the late 1970s, the same time the personal computer industry was exploding beyond its hobbyist roots. *A COMPUTER HACKER BEFORE AND NOW A SECURITY CONSULTANT
WHAT?! First known Breakin by Mitnick and Friends Kevin's first known break-in occurred over Memorial Day weekend in 1981, when Kevin and two friends decided to physically enter Pacific Bell's COSMOS phone center in downtown Los Angeles. COSMOS, or Computer System for Mainframe Operations, was a database used by many of the nation's phone companies for controlling the phone system's basic recordkeeping functions. The group talked their way past a security guard and ultimately found the room where the COSMOS system was located. Once inside they took lists of computer passwords, including the combinations to the door locks at nine Pacific Bell central offices and a series of operating manuals for the COSMOS system.. ." A run-in with the police might have persuaded most bright kids to explore the many legal ways to have computer adventures, but Mitnick appeared to be obsessed by some twisted vision. Rather than developing his computer skills in creative and productive ways, he seemed interested only in learning enough short-cuts for computer break-ins and dirty tricks to continue to play out a fantasy that led to collision after collision with the police throughout the 1980s. Kevin obviously loved the attention and the mystique his growing notoriety was bringing. Early on, after seeing the 1975 Robert Redford movie Three Days of the Condor, he had adopted Condor as his nom de guerre. In the film Redford plays the role of a hunted CIA researcher who uses his experience as an Army signal corpsman to manipulate the phone system and avoid capture. Mitnick seemed to view himself as the same kind of daring man on the run from the law. Mitnick first received national attention in 1982 when he hacked into the North American Defense Command (NORAD). Mitnick's hack into NORAD is thought to have inspired the 1983 film "War Games Mitnick's Hacks in the Early 1980's -- War Games
His next arrest was in 1983 by campus police at the University of Southern California, where he had gotten into minor trouble a few years earlier, when he was caught using a university computer to gain illegal access to the ARPAnet. This time he was discovered sitting at a computer in a campus terminal room, breaking into a Pentagon computer over the ARPAnet, and was sentenced to six months at the California Youth Authority's Karl Holton Training School, a juvenile prison in Stockton, California. After he was released, he obtained the license plate "X HACKER" for his Nissan, but he was still very much in the computer break-in business. Several years later he went underground for more than a year after being accused of tampering with a TRW credit reference computer; an arrest warrant was issued, but it later vanished from police records without explanation. Kevin's Second Arrest -- ArpaNet Hacking – 1983 Kevin's Third Arrest -- The Santa Cruz Operation -- 1987 By 1987, Mitnick seemed to be making an effort to pull his life together, and he began living with a woman who was taking a computer class with him at a local vocational school. After a while, however, his obsession drew him back, and this time his use of illegal telephone credit card numbers led police investigators to the apartment he was sharing with his girlfriend in Thousand Oaks, California. He was convicted of stealing software from the Santa Cruz Operation, a California software company, and in December 1987, he was sentenced to 36 months probation. That brush with the police, and the resultant wrist slap, seemed only increase his sense of omnipotence.
Early0's -- Social Engineering Kevin's Fourth Arrest -- DEC's Palo Alto Research Center In 1987 and 1988, Kevin and a friend, Lenny DiCicco, fought a pitched electronic battle against scientists at Digital Equipment's Palo Alto research laboratory. Mitnick had become obsessed with obtaining a copy of Digital's VMS minicomputer operating system, and was trying to do so by gaining entry to the company's corporate computer network, known as Easynet. The computers at Digital's Palo Alto laboratory looked easiest, so every night with remarkable persistence Mitnick and DiCicco would launch their modem attacks from a small Calabasas, California company where DiCicco had a computer support job. Although Reid discovered the attacks almost immediately, he didn't know where they were coming from, nor did the local police or FBI, because Mitnick was manipulating the telephone network's switches to disguise the source of the modem calls. After he finished his jail time and his halfway-house counseling sentence for the 1989 Digital Equipment conviction Mitnick moved to Las Vegas and took a low-level computer programming position for a mailing list company. His mother had moved there, as had a woman who called herself Susan Thunder who had been part of Mitnick's phone phreak gang in the early 1980s, and with whom he now became reacquainted. Two months later a federal judge issued a warrant for Mitnick's arrest for having violated the terms of his 1989 probation. There were two charges: illegally accessing a phone company computer, and associating with one of the people with whom he'd originally been arrested in 1981. His friends claimed Mitnick had been set up by the detective firm; whatever the truth, when the FBI came to arrest him, Kevin Mitnick had vanished.
Activities at the California DMV in 1992 In late 1992 someone called the California Department of Motor Vehicles office in Sacramento, and using a valid law enforcement requester code, attempted to have driver's license photographs of a police informer faxed to a number in Studio City, near Los Angeles. Smelling fraud, D.M.V. security officers checked the number and discovered that it was assigned to a Kinko's copy shop, which they staked out before faxing the photographs. But somehow the spotters didn't see their quarry until he was going out the door of the copy shop. They started after him, but he outran them across the parking lot and disappeared around the corner, dropping the documents as he fled. The agents later determined that they were covered with Kevin Mitnick's fingerprints. His escape, subsequently reported in the Southern California newspapers, made the authorities look like bumblers who were no match for a brilliant and elusive cyberthief. The FBI Arrest Warrant for the Shimomora Hack -- 1995 MITNICK, 31, was convicted by Federal authorities in 1988 in Los Angeles for stealing computer programs and breaking into corporate networks.He received a one-year sentence in that case, and a Federal warrant was issued following MITNICK's violation of probation.In this latest incident, MITNICK is alleged to have electronically attacked numerous corporate and communications carriers located in California, Colorado, and North Carolina where he caused significant damage and stole proprietary information. One of the attacked sites was the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), and Tsutomu Shimomura, a system administrator at SDSC, provided significant assistance to law enforcement personnel during the investigation. MITNICK is also under investigation by state law enforcement authorities in Seattle for separate activities there.
Mitnick, Tuna, Reviewing Evidence -- 1997 and 1998 Mitnick Put in Solitary Confinement for "Hoarding Tuna" -- 2/1/97 Kevin Mitnick was arrested in February 1995 after a nationwide search by federal investigators that later became the subject of several books. He faces three separate federal indictments: possession of cellular phone account information, violating the conditions of a supervised release program relating to a 1989 conviction of computer fraud, and alleged computer fraud committed between November 1992 and his arrest.Alleged software thief Kevin Mitnick was put in solitary confinement at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center on February 1, 1997 for apparently for hoarding 74 cans of tuna in his cell, his lawyer said. When asked why Mitnick would have so many cans of tuna in his cell, Mitnick's lawyer answered, "Fish is brain food, you know."Mitnick Not Allowed to Use Computer to Review Evidence -- 3/31/1998 Hacker Protest at Takedown Film Content -- July 16, 1998 Mitnick Wins Narrow Victory to Review Evidence with Laptop -- 7/1998
WHEN and WHERE?! • Kevin’s First known Breakin – PacBell’s COSMOS 1970’s • Mitnick's Hacks in the Early 1980's -- War Games • Kevin's Second Arrest -- ArpaNet Hacking -- 1983 • Kevin's Third Arrest -- The Santa Cruz Operation -- 1987 • Kevin's Fourth Arrest -- DEC's Palo Alto Research Center • Early 90's -- Social Engineering • Activities at the California DMV in 1992 • The FBI Arrest Warrant for the Shimomora Hack – 1995 • Mitnick, Tuna, Reviewing Evidence -- 1997 and 1998 • (Kevin Mitnick's Guilty Plea)
