[Info-vax] Famed US hacker Kevin Mitnick dies aged 59

[Scott Dorsey]

Dan Cross <cross at spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
>In article <u9uvfm$1j9$1 at panix2.panix.com>,
>Scott Dorsey <kludge at panix.com> wrote:
>>Dan Cross <cross at spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>I don't wish to speak ill of the dead; I met Mitnick once (I
>>>probably still have one of his "lock pick" business cards
>>>somewhere), but I don't think anyone thinks he was particularly
>>>technically adept.  His hacking "skill" was more along the lines
>>>of social engineering, at which I understand he was masterful.
>>
>>He had very limited technical skills.
>>
>>But he spent no more than five minutes on the phone with our head of 
>>computer security and we had to shut every system on the field down 
>>and change every password.
>
>Oh my.
>
>Sounds like the quip where the prosecutor told the judge that he
>could whistle nuclear launch codes and start World War III over
>the phone.

Well, our computer security director didn't know anything about computers
either, so he had a tendency to overreact in berserk ways.  2600 Magazine
profiled him and said he was "like a tickle-me-elmo doll... just mention
Sendmail and watch him go into convulsions." 

But if Mitnick's goal was to shut everything down and cause chaos, which I
suspect it was, he was very successful.
--scott
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."