Phones led to computers, and Mitnick showed himself to be a persistent, if not stellar, hacker. An overweight, lonely teenager, he dropped out of high school and found friends only when he stumbled into the world of phone phreaks - teens who used stolen phone codes to make free long-distance calls. Mitnick had been raised in the bleak Los Angeles suburb of Panorama City by his mother, who divorced his father when he was 3. For that, he served a year in a rehabilitation center, deemed by a federal judge as being addicted to computer tampering. Mitnick had first been arrested for computer crimes at age 17 for brazenly walking into a Pacific Bell office and taking a handful of computer manuals and codes to digital door locks. In his prepared testimony, Mitnick boasted that he had “successfully penetrated some of the most resilient computer systems ever developed.” Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., about what motivated him. “My hacking activity actually was a quest for knowledge, the intellectual challenge, the thrill and the escape from reality,” Mitnick said during a March 2000 congressional hearing in response to a question by Sen. Senate a few years before Mitnick did the same. He will remain a testament to the uncharted power of curiousity,” tweeted Chris Wysopal, who as a member of the white-hat hacking group L0pht testified before the U.S. “His ingenuity challenged systems, incited dialogues, and pushed boundaries in cybersecurity. He would impersonate company employees to obtain passwords and data, a technique known as pretexting that remains among the most effective in hacking and which typically requires considerable research to pull off successfully. Those requirements were gradually eased but he wasn’t allowed back online until December 2002. He was initially barred for three years from using computers, modems, cell phones or anything else that could give him internet access, and from public speaking.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |