It doesn’t matter who the Gerber Baby really is. Society has chosen to associate the Gerber Baby with certain attributes regardless of who the person behind the photo really is, and so it is with Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick, the real person, excelled at social engineering more than any other trait and was arguably subjected to malicious prosecution. But in his later years, there’s a lot of documentation online indicating that he didn’t live up to the myth that grew around him and he was not a pleasant person [1].People here are mostly reminiscing about Mitnick--the myth, not the man.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;cybersecurity&#x2F;comments&#x2F;uk6wgd&#x2F;why_does_the_cybersecurity_community_dislike&#x2F;i7oo9f0&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;cybersecurity&#x2F;comments&#x2F;uk6wgd&#x2F;why_d...</a>

The....Gerber Baby? Is there a story there? She seems pretty normal and pleasant from her Wikipedia.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ann_Turner_Cook" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ann_Turner_Cook</a>

I didn&#x27;t know him personally, do you have any stories you can share?

Like the Gerber baby, the symbol people recognized didn&#x27;t necessarily have that much to do with the actual person.RIP dude.

I&#x27;m still rocking one on my laptop to this very day.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fogbeam.com&#x2F;free-kevin.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fogbeam.com&#x2F;free-kevin.jpg</a>

RIP. I still have my FREE KEVIN sticker on an old freezer.One of my fond memories with my now-dead mother was going to see him during a prison transfer in Los Angeles and yelling outside the place until he waved to us and the rest of the crowd through a window.

RIP. Same here, I read the whole book on a Sony Ericsson W810i Walkman cell phone in high school. The phone I read it on had a 176x220 pixels tiny little screen. Book was captivating.

Aw this is a bummer. RIP. I&#x27;ll never forget reading The Art of Deception in high school.

As I write this, there&#x27;s a pending edit, accepted for review, of Mitnick&#x27;s death.That seems to have been reverted pending a reliable source:Edit: &lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;w&#x2F;index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&amp;oldid=1166195415" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;w&#x2F;index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&amp;old...</a>&gt;Revert: &lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;w&#x2F;index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&amp;oldid=1166195630" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;w&#x2F;index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&amp;old...</a>&gt;Wikipedians typically resolve such issues pretty quickly.

I&#x27;m asking the same, Wikipedia page is not updated and based on the note he died on Sunday...

Yeah seems like it was something he kept hush hush.Sad to hear the news :\

KnowBe4 has confirmed. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20230720043020&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;07&#x2F;20&#x2F;technology&#x2F;kevin-mitnick-dead-hacker.html&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20230720043020&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytim...</a>

I&#x27;m wondering the same thing. Wikipedia page isn&#x27;t updated, I don&#x27;t see any updates on <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mitnicksecurity.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mitnicksecurity.com&#x2F;</a> or <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.knowbe4.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.knowbe4.com&#x2F;</a>, and I can&#x27;t find any other news mentions about this.I also can&#x27;t find mention of him having pancreatic cancer, but that&#x27;s not necessarily a confirmation of anything. He certainly could have kept it private.

There are similar ones on AliExpress, if you just look for lockpicks in CC format

I, too, was concerned it was some kind of hacker gotcha trick, but took the leap of faith and mailed the cash.They did ship the card to me.

As of a few years ago, KnowBe4 was sending them out (well, a KnowBe4 branded version) to companies that partnered with them.

Can you still get one of these? It says send cash in the mail so… I’m skeptical

He gave me his business card at CES and it&#x27;s one of my most prized possessions. I am heartbroken.

toool is an organization worthy of the support, and they sell a version of it.

damn i missed this! do you know if its possible to still get one of those???

I miss Adrian, looking at this picture now gives me a wistful feeling <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;commons.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:Lamo-Mitnick-Poulsen.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;commons.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:Lamo-Mitnick-Poulsen...</a> Hope Kevin Poulsen is doing okay tonight.

Wasn’t sure who that was, but wikipidia says:“Lamo was best known for reporting U.S. soldier Chelsea Manning to Army criminal investigators in 2010[7] for leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks.[8][9] Lamo died on March 14, 2018, at the age of 37.[10]”Kind of the wrong side in history there. But RIP, regardless.

Adrian Lamo also passed away at an early age (37), coincidentally enough.

&gt; fake their own death to engineer access to somethingCare to elaborate?

I had a similar thought, his social engineering abilities were very strong. If there was one person in the world willing to fake their own death to engineer access to something, it would have been him. A sad day.

For years I planned to get one by sending him the $10, but I never got around to do it…

Wired story about the origin of the cards: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2007&#x2F;06&#x2F;lock-pick-busin&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2007&#x2F;06&#x2F;lock-pick-busin&#x2F;</a> (I looked it up because I thought they looked like some cards someone I knew designed, and sure enough…)

Wow. He was only 59.I&#x27;ve always loved his lockpicking business card: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mitnicksecurity.com&#x2F;kevin-mitnicks-famous-lockpick-business-card" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mitnicksecurity.com&#x2F;kevin-mitnicks-famous-lockpi...</a>While I assume this is real, part of me does feel like a combination of how young he is and who is is leads me to be slightly skeptical. Assuming it&#x27;s real, hopefully he would have appreciated the skepticism.

I remember when takedown.com was taken down! ;)

I remember when KevinMitnick.com was defaced.

RIP to the legend.Remember when Yahoo! was defaced with a &quot;FREE KEVIN&quot; message? Good times.

He was the person I associated the word hacker with, when I came across his name back in 2003 as a kid when I was searching for &#x27;top hackers in the world&#x27;. (Google was functional back then...).RIP

To reach moderators, email hn@ycombinator.com with your request.&lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a>&gt;&lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsfaq.html">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsfaq.html</a>&gt;(I&#x27;d just made this suggestion via email on seeing this post.)

Indeed. Given the site&#x27;s name is Hacker News, it would be so fitting.

Dang, that’s a big loss. A pioneer in his own unique way.

RIP Kevin. Too young to be gone. I only met him once but he was definitely one of a kind and his story inspired a lot of people.

I&#x27;n guessing the hug of death will be forthcoming for this site: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20230719235437&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dignitymemorial.com&#x2F;obituaries&#x2F;las-vegas-nv&#x2F;kevin-mitnick-11371668" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20230719235437&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dignit...</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kevin_Mitnick" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kevin_Mitnick</a>

RIP - He was a role model to upcoming social engineering folks,

He&#x27;s social engineering his way through the pearly gates now. Rest in peace, Kevin

First I’ve heard they are scientologists. Although I’m not a shoot the messenger type.

KnowBe4 is the bane of my work existence. It&#x27;s honestly the worst thing about my job, having to take their courses. It&#x27;s too bad Mitnick sold out to Scientologists (KnowBe4), but I guess he had to cash in somehow. It kind of upsets me that I&#x27;m forced to watch Mitnick&#x27;s videos about social engineering, considering his own nefarious use of the tricks he&#x27;s teaching people to avoid. I mean, I guess learn from an expert? That service just rubs me the wrong way, maybe it&#x27;s the scientologists that run it.

I&#x27;ll go in tomorrow and update our August KnowBe4 training deployment for August to be a couple of his modules. Our users won&#x27;t know, and I guess he won&#x27;t either, but cancer sucks and it&#x27;ll make me happy to do it.

Rest in peace, Kevin.  I am so glad that a much younger me got to meet you one day at a conference.  Best to your family.

A brillant man who, as a kid, inspired and motivate me by his cool exploits (even though I didn&#x27;t end up pursuing cybersecurity).

RIP. I can&#x27;t appropriately explain to anyone who wasn&#x27;t around for it just how much he influenced my thinking from the late 80s to late 90s.

Well just doing the math, they must have conceived after his diagnosis, so presumably that was baked in sadly just knowing the actuarials on pancreatic cancer.

Wow, this comment is the most profound thing I&#x27;ve read in a while on HN. I find myself a) intuitively agreeing and b) trying to pick it apart. Society as a whole seems to have a very complicated love&#x2F;hate relationship with rebellion and rebels. But with Mitnick it&#x27;s like he personified Chaos vs law enforcement&#x27;s Order in an almost mythological, Jungian sense that goes beyond any utilitarian justification.

That&#x27;s very specific to US society. Authorities treat computer intrusion more seriously than many violent crimes because it can affect companies and the government.Companies and the government can spy on people all they want (see Snowden) but the reverse is punished severely (see Assange)

Everything is high school.  A rebel thumbing their nose at the system must be punished, while the conventionally corrupt deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Doesn&#x27;t that statistic depend heavily on how old the child is to begin with?

It might also be loaded with the assumption the man has a child - I&#x27;d assume outcomes are different for those with and without? I wonder by how much.

yo if people like looked at an actuarial table they&#x27;d have a better idea what that means

How many men are having their first child at 57? I’ll be well under 57 when my oldest child is 23.

&gt; a 57-year-old man in the US has only a 50% chance of living to see their child reach 23 years of agePerhaps a clearer way to put it: a 57-year-old man in the US has a 50% chance of living to 80, which doesn&#x27;t seem quite as shocking of a statement.

&gt;And FYI, while he died unexpectedly young, a 57-year-old man in the US has only a 50% chance of living to see their child reach 23 years of age. I, personally, wouldn&#x27;t feel comfortable risking leaving a child with a likelihood of dealing with my death at that relatively young age.To me it seems more like he wanted to have a child with his wife before he passed so they planned it out so it would happen.

I&#x27;m sure the child will grow up knowing that they were wanted and loved.Obituaries mention surviving family members by convention, but otherwise leave very personal matters to the family.The death of someone can be a reminder of our own mortality. Maybe a later HN post can work through some of those thoughts.

The question is about whether the child will be thrilled to have a father who died before they were born.

I think it&#x27;s pretty amazing to be 57 and expecting a child. I&#x27;d be thrilled. I&#x27;m 54 no kids and I wish I could have great relationship with a woman that is so good we had a child. Seeing how sick he was and sterility is a possibility from cancer drugs I think Kevin would be thrilled about the child as anyone would be.

Right who needs a father figure when you have cash....

Please make your substantive points without calling names. This is in the site guidelines: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a>.

He decided to have a child knowing that an average man had decent chance he would be dead before they entered college. Being in remission from one of the more deadly and rapid forms of cancer meant he knew or should have known that the child would likely grow up without a father. That does not seem like support to me.And Warren Buffet will tell you that you want to give your kids enough money so that they can do anything, not so much that they can do nothing. Have you spent time around kids who know they will be millionaires when they grow up? Really messes with your head. A buddy of mine was supported by his parents as an expat in a resort city and ended up brutally murdering his dad after they clashed about money.And FWIW, I will be able to give my kid enough money to do anything, have been carefully developing his mental and physical aspects, travel abroad, language immersion, etc. So your attack is inaccurate in my case.

None of the commenters expressing this bullshit sentiment will provide their children with 1% of the education, health, freedom, security, etc that Mitnick will have left for his child. We struggle our whole lives to provide, it looks like he already assured that for his family, even into perpetuity if managed well.It&#x27;s not like he gave himself cancer on purpose and chose to leave a child with nothing out of spite. He played the hand he was dealt, it seems.&quot;Mitnick has filed a 13G form with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing ownership of 9,379,829 shares of KnowBe4, Inc. Class A (KNBE). This represents 6.9 percent ownership of the company. &quot;&quot; companies announced on Wednesday that they have entered into a definitive agreement, with KnowBe4 stockholders set to receive $24.90 per share in cash, &quot;&quot;Vista Equity Partners to Acquire Security Awareness Training Firm KnowBe4 for $4.6B&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fintel.io&#x2F;news&#x2F;mitnick-kevin-discloses-stake-in-knbe-knowbe4-inc-class-a-0.5683683029169924" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fintel.io&#x2F;news&#x2F;mitnick-kevin-discloses-stake-in-knbe...</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.securityweek.com&#x2F;vista-equity-partners-acquire-security-awareness-training-firm-knowbe4-46b&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.securityweek.com&#x2F;vista-equity-partners-acquire-s...</a>

On the flip side, his child will grow up knowing he had the coolest dad ever.

He certainly was an interesting person. It was always amazing the degree to which law enforcement prosecuted his hacking and cracking, when it seems like much more impactful crimes involving computers go uninvestigated. Plenty of people are hounded by threats of violence into leaving their jobs and homes, that seems far more impactful than Mitnick&#x27;s crimes.And FYI, while he died unexpectedly young, a 57-year-old man in the US has only a 50% chance of living to see their child reach 23 years of age. I, personally, wouldn&#x27;t feel comfortable risking leaving a child with a likelihood of dealing with my death at that relatively young age.

Its a pretty cool movie, surprisingly realistic with a focus on social engineering. No idea how accurate it was otherwise, probably not really.Sad to see, he was way too young to go. RIP

I&#x27;m a bit &quot;on the younger generation&quot; but I remember the movie based on his story: &quot;Take Down&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt0159784&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt0159784&#x2F;</a>.To this day I know the difference between a cracker and a hacker :)RIP.

Very sad that he did not see his first child.

Wow that&#x27;s so unexpected. He&#x27;s been an icon in the computing community for 30 years. He&#x27;s gone way too soon. I didn&#x27;t even know he was sick.

Same! His book on social engineering was profound to my teenage mind. Rest in peace.

I remember reading Kevin Mitnick books in the early 2000s and it really open my eyes about social engineering and how hacking is more than just cracking a code. Help me become a better DevOps and Software Engineer.

I second in backing this request. 1+ pls give black banner.

+1, he was a figurehead of computer science and technology, he should get the black banner.

It isn’t about thinking highly of him. His impact on security is well documented and very extensive. The black banner is used for honoring notable technologists who pass away. Regardless of personal thoughts, he was a very notable technologist and sort of first famous social engineer.I’m sorry he stole your cc.

As the black hats at 2600 would say, &quot;It was just for educational purposes.&quot; &lt;wink&gt;

As someone too young to have a credit card in 1995, I’m curious: was its theft more of a “big deal” back then?My Amex account number was stolen a month ago. It took me three minutes on the call with a rep to get it locked + a new card issued. I think I spent more time and effort on the phone with my dentist later that week.

I&#x27;m sorry to hear that you suffered from the event, and although I&#x27;m sure you&#x27;re not the only one with a negative experience, I do think the positive experiences people had from interacting&#x2F;watching&#x2F;hearing&#x2F;meeting&#x2F;reading Mitnick outweigh the negative ones.

Did this cost you money personally, or just inconvenience you?

As someone else whose credit card info was stolen from Netcom, I strongly support it.

Is that Mitnic’s fault? Or the incompetent greedy executives of Netcom?

As one of the people whose credit card number was stolen from Netcom, I would strongly object to this. I&#x27;m not here to speak poorly of the dead, but I&#x27;m definitely here to judge those who think too highly of him.

What a great idea. He was part of the hacker subculture - regardless of what your opinion of him or his abilities is. This made me think of the takedown.com telnet transcripts - what a blast from the past.Really sad day, RIP - will definitely have a drink for him tonight.

The man who put the term &quot;hacker&quot; on the map, for better or for worse.

The company running this website was cofounded by the man who wrote the first internet worm, there&#x27;s a chapter about rtm and pg in some of the same books that talk about Mitnick.Nobody&#x27;s perfect.

I am going to swim against the current and ask that you please not do this. His crimes weren&#x27;t victimless and his actions hurt real people. While I think pancreatic cancer is a terrible thing to die from, and while I feel for his loved ones, HN&#x27;s black banner is a mark of honor, and that is not something I think he earned.

Absolutely. This is &quot;hacker&quot; news after all, and if there ever was one it was him. You don&#x27;t have to think highly of him, but Mitnick was an institution.

I was just thinking, his obituary is both the worst kind of, and the absolute definition of, the term &quot;hacker news.&quot;

Comments are a no-op.  To reach moderators, email hn@ycombinator.com.

dang &#x2F; mods: if anyone passing deserves the HN black banner, I think Mitnick deserves the banner.

And read &quot;Ghost in the Wires&quot;:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Ghost-Wires-Adventures-Worlds-Wanted-ebook&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B00FOQS8D6?ref_=ast_author_dp" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Ghost-Wires-Adventures-Worlds-Wanted-...</a>

Watch &quot;Freedom downtime&quot;.There they make it clear that the New York Times columnist and book author John Markoff made up absolutely everything.The movie &quot;Track Down&quot; (US) &#x2F; &quot;Takedown&quot; is also full of BS.

He used the CEO’s voice to access AN account, I don’t think it was the CEO’s specifically. But just an account, verified by the CEO’s voice, to his.

Mitnick was exceptionally gifted at social engineering information out of various company departments over the phone.

Bank account numbers aren&#x27;t secret, they&#x27;re written on the bottom of every check you write. The story lacks the details of how he got his hands on it but its not unreasonable to assume he was able to access such unprotected information.

&gt; How would he have known the CEO&#x27;s bank account number?Welcome to the american banking system.

How would he have known the CEO&#x27;s bank account number?  Did the CEO write him a check at some point?  Or maybe a bank&#x27;s CEO traditionally gets account number 1…

int(phone number) &quot;contained all ten digits&quot; is the main embellishment. KM used different acct#. check delivery was weeks later, after negotiations. either way kevin was OG AF ..|..

Seemingly sensible? This one?&gt; the authentication mechanism was reading out your own account number in your voiceThat&#x27;s the most suspect part of it to me - even vulnerability to malicious attack like this aside, who would think that&#x27;s a good idea or going to work well?What percentage of people could successfully use a voice assistant to make a note of their bank account number the first time? Nevermind have it determine that it was indeed their voice not someone else&#x27;s.

All of the stories in his books are like this. An existing seemingly sensible system is used in a creative way to get access. Every time you read one the creative solution is so elegant you just go &quot;Ah, can&#x27;t believe I didn&#x27;t think of that&quot; (and then go try it yourself obviously - had lots of fun as a teenager taking down websites&#x2F;stealing ppl&#x27;s passwords&#x2F;etc as a party trick for my friends).

I know a Bank in Italy that uses voice recognition but you also have to provide 2 digits from a &quot;voice password&quot; in addition to the voice match.

About 15 years ago I was using telephone banking, when you had to put in a 4-digit PIN to access banking. I could still hear background call centre noise so I asked the operator if they were still on the phone when I put the PIN in, and he confirmed he was.&quot;Okay, so you heard me type in the PIN? So now you can know my PIN?&quot;&quot;Oh no&quot;, he said, &quot;it&#x27;s just beeps, like this - &quot;, and pressed a few digits.&quot;Right so you typed 1 6 3 2 4, there.&quot;&quot;...&quot;&quot;That&#x27;s what you typed, isn&#x27;t it?&quot;&quot;Uhm... yes, how did you guess?&quot;&quot;I didn&#x27;t guess, I could hear the beeps. I&#x27;ve got a reasonable ear for pitch, so I can tell what the numbers are from the tones. Any chance you could escalate this to your manager after the call, and tell them to give me a phone if they&#x27;ve any questions?&quot;They rang me the next day, and I explained the situation to them.Now, at least in the UK, you get transferred away from the call handler when you put your PIN in.

there is a bank in Italy currently that uses this voice recognition mechanism which with current AI tech is fakeable within 20 min. Nothing much changed since back then I guess

Or have the Pinkertons sic&#x27;d on his home and family. Sup friendlyjordies?

He did this as an adult while being paid by the bank as security consultant.

I wonder if the same scenario happened today, where a Kid has an interaction like that with a bank CEO, showing an insane vulnerability... The kid would just be sentenced to jail time and charged as an adult.

Mitnick could have been hired as a advisor for their system, personally by the CEO.He calls the CEO to ask a &quot;personal question&quot; so to skip the assistant, asks something innocent, then let&#x27;s the CEO he has a new number and provides a fake number. He asks the CEO to confirm he heard the number correctly, but it&#x27;s a bad line, so speak clearly please.The &quot;new phone number&quot; has all the digits of the bank account he&#x27;s trying to hack. The account is likely the account number that he&#x27;s being paid for the consultancy work with. He could have got this simply by asking to confirm from which account he&#x27;d be paid from to confirm the transaction.He is asked to report his review of the new security system to the board (given it was a large investment by the Bank, or just the wrong word used) and the architect would of course be invited to his own project&#x27;s review?The board then asked Mitnick to design a new system and said that cost wouldn&#x27;t be an issue.That all seems pretty easy to put together?

&gt; He somehow has the bank account number?Being able to login if you have the bank account number is still a pretty big flaw.If you are a bank, your security threat model should assume that a hacker has access to somebody&#x27;s account number and basic personal details.Particularly for a high profile&#x2F;value account, you can see how it might be possible to get soundclips of them saying the numbers 1 to 9 (see: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=xWcldHxHFpo">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=xWcldHxHFpo</a>)

If you&#x27;re dealing with the bank in a security-consultant capacity, then these kinds of requests would be both intriguing and informative.If he&#x27;s a customer of the bank, then it had better be a very small bank or I&#x27;m also skeptical.

He was already meeting with the CEO in some capacity, so it&#x27;s very clear he had access to the CEO, maybe as a security consultant. Then getting him to read the number is easy, &quot;Hey, I just got a new cell, but I might have given you my old card, can you read the number back to me?&quot;Getting a phone number with all the necessary digits is a bit of a stretch, but not impossible. And I would suspect, because this is the way phone systems generally work, that there was no bound on the number of attempts to enter the account number. Account numbers are all the same length, so you know exactly how many characters to input, it&#x27;s just a matter of brute forcing the number--and for all I know, there may be some kind of structure that Mitnick found out.Meeting with the board sounds like an embellishment for sure, especially for Mitnick&#x27;s initial report, but I could definitely see--especially if someone was looking for a big chunk of money to strengthen the system--the report eventually being given to them.The check on the silver platter is the most believable part of the story. Have you ever met a CEO? And why wouldn&#x27;t the architect of the system be there to receive the report on the security of the system? Who else should be there?For me, the only truly unbelievable part of this story is that he needed the CEO&#x27;s voice at all. And for all we know, he just said he recorded the CEO&#x27;s voice for a laugh.

I understood it as him (Mitnick) asking his own phone number back. &quot;Did I give you my card earlier? Is it the new card? I don&#x27;t recall. Which number does it have?&quot;If you&#x27;ve already identified a security system that has this vulnerability you get a phone number with all these digits and begin shopping for any institutions that bough that system.

The 80s was a helluva drug.Mitniks social engineering really formed me. And I did all sorts of nefarious stuff in the 80s, from mapping the 411 call centers, to the tape vending machine hack and other phreaking as I had an original captain crunch whistle to (not a hack) but there was a bunch of easy fraud to be had with “calling cards” back in the day

This is the 90&#x27;s and early 2000&#x27;s. We didn&#x27;t have the security processes and checks like we do nowadays. I worked for a bank right after the dot-com crash and was in charge of their internet banking web presence. I was witness to other employees passing around CDs and printouts containing the private information of hundreds, maybe thousands of customers. This was the era when your SSN was your userid. So these CDs contained SSNs, names, addresses, bank account numbers, passwords (not even encrypted, much less salted), etc. I moved into a new cubicle one time and saw these CDs just left over. It was a free-for-all for people like Kevin Mitnick.

He was pretty famous when he started doing security consulting so it doesn&#x27;t seem like a stretch to me.Bank account numbers are written on the bottom of checks along with the routing code. If you have a check from them, you have their checking account number.Phone numbers are ten digits long. So a number like (213)485-7690 contains all digits from 0 to 9. Caller ID spoofing is trivial even back then. For example, you could ANI fail to a calling card system which would drop you to an operator. Then you just tell them the number you&#x27;re &quot;calling from&quot; and that number would show up as your Caller ID and ANI.Using voice authentication is pretty stupid but, iirc, at least one US bank still does something similar. That said, I imagine part of the authentication was probably caller ID based. This was&#x2F;is also why voicemail systems don&#x27;t prompt you for a PIN when you call them from your own phone - they use caller ID for authentication.

He probably gained the CEO&#x27;s trust at some point. Something like &quot;I bet I can break into your personal bank account given public info?&quot;CEO interest is piqued. Gives him a business card, let&#x27;s talk soon.The on the call,KM: what is your checking account number?CEO: that&#x27;s privateKM: it&#x27;s printed on every personal check you write, so definitely not privateCEO: ok, good point, #######KM: great, now tell me the numbers on the card I gave youCEO: your phone number?KM: yesCEO: ok, ########KM: ok I think I have what I needCEO: really? that&#x27;s it?KM: yep, let me get to work, we&#x27;ll talk soon

I read it as he asked the CEO to repeat the number that Mitnik had given him earlier to ensure that it was correct.

maybe just a legend, who knows. Thats part of his Myth. Now it doesnt matter anymore.

Nonsense like &quot;silver platter&quot;, almost certainly embellished (unless a &quot;Barnum&quot; or &quot;Wonka&quot; or some shiite was running the bank). The fundamentals, totally believable.It&#x27;s incredibly easy (still) to do certain kinds of &quot;social engineering&quot;. Terms like &quot;psychological sleight-of-hand&quot; can sometimes make it a little clearer how humans just have blind spots - ways our perception works and doesn&#x27;t. And, people who are used to being VERY &quot;in control&quot;, intelligent &#x2F; experienced (compared to others in room), etc., can sometimes be the easiest to manipulate in certain ways.But, really, it boils down, sometimes, to something as simple as &quot;how long can you keep a person talking?&quot; Mitnick was probably in a good position to do these sorts of things - assuming the story is from after he &quot;turned White Hat&quot;. And, in this case, the even simpler deal with the numbers is something like &quot;oh, shoot, I had a misprint on old cards, did I give you the right one? What&#x27;s the phone number on it?&quot; Drop something abruptly like that, at some random point in a conversation, most people wouldn&#x27;t think twice... Even if their current context involves a heavy dose of thinking about voices and numbers. They might easily enough realize in the morning, but, too late, by then. Further, getting bank account numbers is not necessarily hard either. Could even be as simple as &quot;dumpster diving&quot;, back then. Did the CEO always shred every single document, with a &quot;secure shredder&quot; (as much as that&#x27;s possible) when home? Or maybe burn everything, always?And, in any case, you&#x27;re even mixing up aspects of the story. The phone number isn&#x27;t the bank account digits, it&#x27;s just all the numbers from 0 through 9 (you can even get one twice, for a 10-digit [w&#x2F; area code] number).I propose that your sureness in dismissing this story, misapprehensions about it, etc., make you an unwittingly &quot;good mark.&quot;

Based on my understanding of the story in the post, Mitnick asked the CEO to read back the number he gave the CEO earlier that day.I don&#x27;t disagree it&#x27;s likely all bullshit, but if you&#x27;re going to post snarky, nitpicking comments at least make sure you&#x27;re understanding what was communicated. It makes it all too easy to dismiss any valid points you may have when there are such fundamental flaws.

You know that your checking account number is on the bottom of every check you right?

I take it you haven’t been exposed to Important People(TM).

«Can you see the number I’m calling from? Just to make sure, could you read it aloud to me. Slowly, please. … Thanks, yes it’s correct.»

He has the CEO’s number and successfully calls him, and through some miracle gets through directly to ask this trivial question — as opposed to getting the number from the assistant who answers his phone - sure ok but then under what pretense does he then ask him to repeat his phone number? “Please repeat the phone number I just dialed.”The phone number contains all the digits needed to recreate the bank account number?He somehow has the bank account number?He meets the CEO (despite just being a security consultant) and gives his report to the board of directors?! That is not how companies usually work, especially the board part.Check on a silver platter? architect of the voice system is brought into the room with the board to be humiliated? This reads like something a 13 year old would dream up (nothing against OP maybe someone even Mitnik really did claim this happened).The tale is absolutely embellished if it has any truth at all.

I had a similar thing happen. I distributed some malware I wrote on the shared drive and had some people run it (it was extremely basic, just locked people out of the computer with no recovery by taking advantage of how locked down they were; but people lost a lot of work). My programming teacher, who was already dealing with me being a distraction in class, went to bat for me so I didn’t get strongly punished but made me clean it off the drive continuously; other students kept putting it back, so I had to monitor for it.

&gt; The IT person easily figured out it was me and then tricked me into thinking I would be expelled within days.Similar. I wrote a program to emulate a the logon text on a PDP-11 terminal in high-school in the mid-80s and steal a bunch of student passwords. Didn&#x27;t do anything with them. They were like &quot;trophies.&quot;Nevertheless, the computer teacher found out and had mercy on me. He gave me a project to work on to help him compile stats on a student survey. He was a nice guy.edit for clarity.

As a kid I ate this stuff up. In the eighth grade, I defaced my middle school website.The IT person easily figured out it was me and then tricked me into thinking I would be expelled within days. She pulled me out of class, told me such in the hallway, let me return to class where I held in tears until the end of the day.Nothing happened and the school year ended a few weeks later. Towards the end of the summer I realized it had been a bluff and I wouldn’t be punished. Took me a few years later to realize how much of a favor that all was! The county school of conduct clearly said cybercrime was punishable by expulsion so she could have absolutely put me in some kind of hell. The fear set me straight hah.

&gt; Mitnick was a hacker hero of mine in my youth. I think I’ve understood his role as jester prior to conviction less as I’ve grown older, but there’s something about the boyhood charm of being so divorced from the potential consequences of one’s actions that is almost unique.Yeah, I remember watching &quot;Freedom Downtime&quot; as a teenager and thinking how ludicrous it was that he was sentenced to prison for computer hacking, but now that I think about it as an adult of course he should have been. Sure solitary confinment, the specifics of his sentence, etc. may have been extreme and I&#x27;d like to think that the court system has progressed in their knowledge of computer security since then, but what he did was still a breach of corporate security. He knew at the time it was illegal, and he just thought he was too smart to get caught.That idea that we had at the time that it was a &quot;victimless crime&quot; or something was very immature.

Mitnick was a hacker hero of mine in my youth. I think I’ve understood his role as jester prior to conviction less as I’ve grown older, but there’s something about the boyhood charm of being so divorced from the potential consequences of one’s actions that is almost unique.Mitnick had so many stories that entranced the people around him. I heard one second hand of Mitnick dealing with a bank who had early voice verification software. Upon meeting the CEO he gave the executive his card and departed for the evening. Arriving back at his hotel, he called the CEO and asked him to read his phone number to him. The phone number contained all ten digits which Mitnick had neatly tape recorded so as to make the CEO’s voice reproducible. He then proceeded to use the bank’s vocal banking system to transfer $1 from the CEO’s account to his as the authentication mechanism was reading out your own account number in your voice.When Mitnick arrived back in the board room the architect of the voice verification system was crestfallen and the bank CEO delivered a check on a silver platter.Now how much of that tale is embellished I will never know as it was second hand, but that was the kind of whimsy Mitnick brought to our world.Rest in Power.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;07&#x2F;20&#x2F;technology&#x2F;kevin-mitnick-dead-hacker.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;07&#x2F;20&#x2F;technology&#x2F;kevin-mitnick-...</a>

I think it&#x27;s trolling. Single source.

RIP. I loved reading about Kevin whilst growing up.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=PlbUYl67LTY">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=PlbUYl67LTY</a>

Just came here to say Resr In Peace Kevin. You will always be remembered.

&gt;The real OG of hackingAbbie Hoffman&#x27;s Steal This Book and Kevin Mittnick taught me the noun form meaning of exploit. RIP

Rest In Peace Kevin. You were the reason why I started programming. I loved reading your books when I was younger.

Yep. I&#x27;m familiar with the issues around the veracity of that book. That isn&#x27;t really the point. Back in 1995 that was pretty much all we had to go on, and Mitnick still became a hero to a bunch of us.In the subsequent years I&#x27;ve read all of Kevin&#x27;s books, as well as pretty much all the other books written about his life, and watched the various movies and documentaries that dealt with his story. It seems like Markoff was kind of a dick and frankly contributed to some of Kevin&#x27;s problems. Sad. :-(

Everything Markoff ever wrote was untrue.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;3zgLHEqIlJg?t=528" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;3zgLHEqIlJg?t=528</a>

Oh man, oh man. This is heart-breaking. Even though I never met Kevin IRL, he was always something of a.. well, maybe not a &quot;role model&quot; exactly, but certainly an inspiring character in many regards. Some of my earliest forays into the world of phone phreaking and related activities were inspired by the stories I read about Mitnick and his crew out in LA, in Markoff and Haffner&#x27;s book Cyberpunk. For a while me and some of the guys I ran with would use the word &quot;Kevin&quot; as a sort of code-word for this stuff to avoid telling our parents any more than necessary about what we were doing&quot;Where are you going to night boys?&quot;&quot;Oh, we&#x27;re going to hang out with Kevin.&quot;(this meant a night of trashing telco dumpsters, fucking around with payphones, and various other dubious activities)&quot;Oh, OK. Well, be careful.&quot;That sort of thing.Wow. Never saw this coming. I didn&#x27;t even know he&#x27;d been ill.Anyway... RIP, Mr. Mitnick. May there be clueless operators to social engineer, on &quot;the other side&quot;.

On one hand you assert there’s no such thing as moral good, yet you describe him as righteous? That word is a superlative for “good” steeped in religious tones!Anyway, I suppose you could make the case that Mitnick was taking on “the Man” which is more utilitarian, but that’s a bit anemic imo.

&gt; There&#x27;s no such thing as objective moral and ethical good.I&#x27;m curious how your framework handles some particularly unpleasant examples.E.g., is there nothing universally wrong with what Hitler &#x2F; Mengele did to Jews? Or how about raping, torturing, and then killing toddlers?I have trouble accepting an ethics in which there&#x27;s no real basis for telling such people that what they&#x27;re doing is genuinely wrong.(I apologize if these examples seem like straw-men. It&#x27;s possible I don&#x27;t understand your original point.)

The term &quot;hacker&quot; describes someone skilled at tricking systems into doing what they can&#x27;t. Mitnick was not only one of the first popular hackers he also had many famous exploits. His arrest was a major rallying cry for the hacker community at large (now known as the overly corporate &quot;infosec community&quot;). There&#x27;s no redemption arc. You do not need to do what society considers &quot;good&quot; to be considered righteous.There&#x27;s no such thing as objective moral and ethical good. To me, Mitnick is a hero deserving of the highest praise. He inspired myself and many others to get started in this world. It may be difficult to understand if you didn&#x27;t come into computers in the late 80s&#x2F;90s.

Yeah, this makes sense. Wasn’t super familiar with the target of Mitnick’s hacks but looks like mostly monopolies like Pac Bell and government. SBF was also “hacking” SV investors and politicians, but probably inflicted more collateral damage on the little guy.

Mitnick was not just skilled, he was creative, pushed things too far, and the internet rallied around him nonetheless. He went after corporations that people didn&#x27;t like, even if he did it for personal gain.SBF seems like an average white collar criminal next to Mitnick. He wanted to become those big corporations with their names on stadiums.

it is well documented that he did not steal from anyone (i believe this was mentioned at his federal trial, by a witness)

Real people lost significant amounts of money thanks to SBF. I know of no comparable case involving Mitnick.

SBF wasn&#x27;t anything new, just the latest in a long line of scammers and frauds. Mitnick, for all of his faults, inspired a generation of people to poke and prod at technology and opened their eyes to the ways in which it could be used (and abused). Also, I don&#x27;t think many people consider him &quot;morally good&quot;. Definitely a &quot;morally gray&quot; character more than anything.

Mitnick didn&#x27;t steal anything except source code. He didn&#x27;t do anything that was truly reprehensible. I feel it&#x27;s premature to comment on SBF. He hasn&#x27;t even been tried yet.

Mitnick wasn&#x27;t malicious, more curious. He tried things, some of which shouldn&#x27;t be tried, because it was illegal.He also educated the entire industry on how it works. Most people today show off that they&#x27;re a security consultant but they haven&#x27;t really had any experience breaking into things, and a lot of the advice is impractical. Like everyone knows that MD5 is insecure, but who&#x27;s going to actually use it as an attack vector? Mitnick does the attack and then documents it. Some people claim he made stuff up, but even having the kind of imagination to make up these scenarios puts him above many security experts.

Serious question: why revere Mitnick, but not someone like SBF? Mitnick is admired for his technical skill and social engineering prowess, but the same argument could be made that SBF is also exceptional in this regard on an even larger scale. Both are (alleged) criminals. Genuinely curious what makes Mitnick morally good in the eyes of HN. Was it his redemption arc as a “white hat”?

Thanks for sharing your story. A rare anecdote about a young legend.

Storytime:  
He randomly came over for dinner while cruising around LA with a friend of a friend, aaages ago... asked if I had a disposable tablecloth, luckily yes.  Orders like 10 entrees&#x2F;appetizers&#x2F;desserts for delivery for just the 3 of us.
Over a few hours picking at food, drinking case of beer etc., the entire table was covered in tech gibberish, diagrams, code etc.  Really wish I saved that, but at the time I was like &quot;who IS this guy?&quot; and it was a disgusting mess.  I do recall appreciating that level of openness and bonding, and have never had such an experience with anyone else like that in the industry since then.
RIP

I can&#x27;t say enough about how influential Kevin has been in every decade, continually staying at the head of the snake of hacking. I am so lucky not just for how he inspired me in my youth, but how he relit the fire of security paranoia in the last decade when I was fortunate to work for an organization he hacked (by contract).All software engineers are now more vulnerable with Kevin gone. Stay paranoid friends, now more than ever.

What in the world. That&#x27;s really young to go. I really did not expect this guy, being just one generation away, to have died.

Reading how he did social engineering was a huge influence on me... basically, taught me how to interact with normies.

I&#x27;m fine with it remaining perpetually ambiguous, like L. Ron Hubbard. Legends need legends.

Pardon my tasteless skepticism, but are we sure this isn&#x27;t a social engineering trick of his yet?

Just because somebody is somehow &quot;clever&quot; doesn&#x27;t make them immune to scams -- they just need to be a specific type. Scientology targets a person&#x27;s sense of self-importance and empowers the feeling that they are somehow special and mentally gifted. Something that many &quot;clever&quot; people have.

They seem to hook a lot of clever people. I always assumed it was some kind of weird tax dodge, but maybe Scientology doesn&#x27;t get enough credit for their social engineering skills

&gt; Posting with throwaway because I ain’t tryna win a covert Scientology harassment and stalking op and have my family disown me which happens to virtually every former member who speaks out publicly.What vile and quite obviously delusional people!

Kevin still red teamed all the time through his other company.I seriously doubt he ever tried to hack SCN.

The post mentions Dutchman Stu Sjouwerman as a close friend. Kevin was partnered with Stu in the security company KnowBe4.Stu is a dedicated Scientologist, and has donated millions and millions of dollars to that corrupt organization. I know because I served in the Scientology Sea Org and knew Stu when he was on “OTVII”. This was before KnowBe4, but he was still something of a big donator. He really hit it big with KnowBe4 and became one of the few whales still funneling massive amounts to the church.I found out about the connection between Stu and Kevin while I was working as a developer for a tech company. One day we started getting those security tips and tricks emails, white labeled so they looked like they came from our own AppSec team. At the end of the emails it ended with the line “the price of freedom is constant alertness, constant willingness to fight back”. A direct quote from L Ron Hubbard and one Scientologists (and former Scientologists like me) know well. After digging deeper I found out they were coming from KnowBe4 and saw Kevin listed on the site as being a partner.Business relationship aside, after reading Ghost, you get the sense that Kevin would not and could not stop hacking. Maybe he matured and that urge dulled but I always wondered if he ever did some covert snooping into what Stu was up to with Scientology. The Sea Org computer and communication systems are ancient (they still use pagers for some things!). It would have been a blast for someone like him to compromise their systems. And they are right there in Clearwater down the road from KnowBe4 headquarters…Posting with throwaway because I ain’t tryna win a covert Scientology harassment and stalking op and have my family disown me which happens to virtually every former member who speaks out publicly.

Obligatory link<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=77ILA5Cso3w">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=77ILA5Cso3w</a>

Sad to see. Pancreatic cancer is one of the scary ones, since there are so few symptoms before you hit stage 4.For those who haven&#x27;t seen it, Freedom Downtime is a movie by the 2600 gang which is mostly about Mitnick&#x27;s imprisonment, and the whole Free Kevin movement.(I wonder who wrote the obituary, it&#x27;s especially wide-ranging, and poetic in parts.)

Terrible news, especially at that age. I remember reading &quot;The Art of Deception&quot; in college.Just out of curiosity, does anyone have anything else corroborating this? Everywhere seems to be sharing the same dignitymemorial.com link.

I used to read these while procrastinating on network security exams. Damn, they were a lot more fun than expected.

The question is should we buy them or pirate!

Those two books, plus Ghost in the Wires, are absolute must reads for anyone who visits HN

It&#x27;s in my Amazon list and now I know why. I&#x27;m 34 and learned about phreaking well after it was a thing but it inspired me.Now I&#x27;m a cybersecurity consultant (glorified sysadmin) making a nice salary but without any of the joy that was present in my 20s rebelling against my F100 company&#x27;s IT policy. Installing Dokuwiki on a shadow server just to get shit done. Helping write a custom request system to get shit done. Consequences came after.I&#x27;m not comparing myself to Mitnick, rest in peace, only reflecting on the passing of a titan before my prime that represents a moment in communication hacking that may never exist again.

In a similar vein of social engineering, Exploding The Phone is good read about the Phreakers of yore.

Eh, social engineering was and still is a major component of infosec, right?He was very good at that segment of the industry (&quot;penetration testing&quot; via social engineering).

That was the book I remembered. Great set of stories.

I never saw anything inspirational about what he did but it did highlight just how human fallilble our computer technology could be.Could have got the message out in a better way but the story of him avoiding the law provides that sort of thriller plot line that engages people.

I think it&#x27;s more that he was one of the first&#x2F;earliest to use technology to amplify his skills on a scale previously out of reach of most people. Coupled with the fact that he was way ahead of his opponents and a young man, it is quite understandable the path he took.no one is perfect, but don&#x27;t let perfect be the enemy of good.

I wish I remember which book I read about Mitnick (and others).I developed a strong dislike for Mitnick, however. As others have said, he came across as an adolescent with an over-sized ego. More &quot;Jackass&quot; than &quot;Silicon Valley&quot;. Although I&#x27;m sure he&#x27;s not the only &quot;hacker&quot; for whom illegal entry into computer systems gave him a sense of self-importance.No thanks.Edit: yeah, probably was &quot;Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier&quot;. I still don&#x27;t think &quot;bullshit artist&quot; is something to aspire to.

If you&#x27;re looking for other stories, The Art of Deception (Mitnick specific) and The Art of Intrusion (not all Mitnick) have a ton.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=MctHTxESCFM">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=MctHTxESCFM</a>

Wow. My first encounter with Kevin Mitnick was a random one.. joining one of my school&#x27;s IRC channels one day there was there guy on it who was bragging about how he had broken into our central AIX server, would read the admins&#x27; e-mail all the time and for every hole they plugged he would just find another one.I was just a university Freshman just starting my CS classes, and seeing this discussion, it was like I had entered some underground revolutionary meeting. It opened my eyes to mischief and testing the boundaries of systems and order where this guy who was on IRC as root@system was just calmly saying how the technical universe I was just learning about was controllable in ways I had no clue about.I never followed the case after he was prosecuted, and I didn&#x27;t go down the hacker route in my career, but it was a life-changing moment for me to see this outsider live out &quot;War Games&quot; in real life.RIP, root. Your crimes and mischief certainly didn&#x27;t define you, especially as you went down the ethical hacker path (the first?). Pancreatic cancer is a horrible way to go, I am sorry to see this story today and condolences to his family and friends.

Legend.A name of inspiration, igniting curiosity across ages. And of course, the only crime was curiosity.RIP

Kevin came to speak at CMU in the University Center. Maybe around 2003&#x2F;2004. I recall it was standing room only. For me, it was like seeing your favorite action hero in  real life. Yes he was convicted of some crimes, but he showed you could be redeemed and continue to live a good, fulfilling life educating others what not to do. RIP

&gt; Donations can be made in Kevin&#x27;s memory to The National Pancreas Foundation <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pancreasfoundation.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pancreasfoundation.org&#x2F;</a> or The Equal Justice Initiative <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eji.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eji.org&#x2F;</a>&gt; These are two causes of great importance to Kimberley and Kevin; both organizations put the majority of donated funds to work in the communities they serve.If Kevin inspired you, perhaps a donation in his name would be a nice gesture.

Mitnick&#x27;s legend (and his books) are definitely a big part of why I have a job I love.I was tempted to send a box of donuts as a gift... but instead I think I&#x27;ll send the two dozen as a donation to the EJI instead.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eji.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eji.org&#x2F;</a>

&gt; Going through that myself...Sorry to hear that

My first thought, genuinely, was &#x27;This is zero cool&#x27;An icon for many of us here. I feel worse for his mate and unborn child. Losing a mate is very, very, hard. Going through that myself...

Lol! and the Sun story was hysterical. Mailing update floppies to a target and letting them install the malware for you. That’s just priceless comedy

Wow didn’t see that coming. I met him at a HOPE conference with Steve Wozniak. Followed him for years from hacker zine texts distributed on CDs back in the day. Wow that’s really sad what a fun guy he was. His social engineering book was pretty interesting. That OKI phone story was so fascinating I bought a couple to see if I could do it too, although by then 900MHz was phased out. This guy made a difference in my life how very strange

Just woke up my wife with a loud sigh.
 I remember all my childhood friends pretending to be Zidane or Figo or Rivaldo. I always wanted to be Mitnick. Sucked at soccer but never stopped hacking. Holy f, he was so young. Out of all people I really hoped to meet him one day. The rockstar of my childhood. What a shitty day.

There is some hope for improved M&amp;M in pancreatic cancer: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41586-023-06063-y" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41586-023-06063-y</a>, thanks to personalized mRNA vaccines and PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitors.

I remember that lecture very well and thought about it a few days ago.

Looks like he died from pancreatic cancer. This cancers always reminds me of the Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. He was a CMU professor who also died from pancreatic cancer 15 years ago.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cmu.edu&#x2F;randyslecture&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cmu.edu&#x2F;randyslecture&#x2F;</a>Here’s an HN discussion from a few years ago.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24972377">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24972377</a>

Seriously, fuck pancreatic cancer.  My best friend died of it in Oct 2020.  I&#x27;ve had 10+ people I know (or someone that I know know) die of it.  It&#x27;s my worst fear, cancer-wise.

When Kevin first found out he had Cancer, the doctors gave him &quot;weeks&quot;. But you know Kevin -- he refused to accept his fate and found the top doctors in the world, tried experimental procedures and was able to get himself all the way into remission just 11 months later. It was incredibly inspiring, we all thought he had yet again beaten the system. It&#x27;s tragic how the last 10 weeks played out, he fought all the way until the end. He&#x27;s was a legend who paved the way for millions in the cybersecurity space. We will miss him.

My ex certainly wasn&#x27;t boring. But they certainly were physically abusive. I don&#x27;t believe that automatically qualifies someone as deserving of credit.

&gt; Mitnick above all wasn’t boring and I think “not boring” doesn’t get enough credit in the measure of a man.My wife might agree or disagree with you, depending on the day.

This is a big deal to me in a man, probably the primary thing I look for. I don&#x27;t want to have a boring life.

Mitnick did remind myself as a preteen, even if it never seems he quite outgrew his own preteen antics. He was a gutsy guy who made life more rich and interesting in his own way. He never seemed to bend to the system’s will long after many of us so called anti-authoritarians would have thrown in the towel.When I read his books I alternated between fascination, revulsion, admiration, and shock. Mitnick above all wasn’t boring and I think “not boring” doesn’t get enough credit in the measure of a man.

I first learned about Mitnick on a network security course where we had to recreate the now iconic TCP spoofing attack he employed against Shimomura&#x27;s X-Terminal [0].He was definitely a legend.[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.cas.mcmaster.ca&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;The_Mitnick_attack#The_attack" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.cas.mcmaster.ca&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;The_Mitnick_attack#The...</a>

He made me. I remember back in my teen years reading interviews with him, I was back in phreaking scene. He was a hero. He is a hero. What a loss.

I missed meeting Kevin Mitnick at the infamous HOPE 2006 conference where he was set to speak, but he was waylaid by something or other and he  landed in the hospital. His reputation was still a presence through those few days though, just a few short years after his release from prison.

Takedown was my favorite movie as a kid. It influenced me a lot. In Brazil is not common to have a bathtub in your bathroom, we used suicide showers (term that I recently learned on YouTube); anyway, the image of Mitnick hacking in the tube on his laptop resonated with me, I thought it was the coolest thing ever.May he rest in peace.

The New York Times has their obituary up: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;07&#x2F;20&#x2F;technology&#x2F;kevin-mitnick-dead-hacker.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;07&#x2F;20&#x2F;technology&#x2F;kevin-mitnick-...</a>RIP

Worth noting that Wikipedia at the time of this post is refusing to acknowledge his death, citing poor sources.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;w&#x2F;index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&amp;action=history" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;w&#x2F;index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&amp;act...</a>Hope he is alive and well. May he rest in peace if not

Oh my god. I was on the phone with him not that long ago discussing a red team project. I had no idea what was going on.He was always generous and kind yet professional, despite us kind of fanning out. He had the ease of someone who knew what they were doing and didn’t feel they had anything to prove, which of course he didn’t.I was looking forward to working with him more. I hate how you never know how a thing’s going to go.Here’s to the innumerable things about modern connected society that are the way they are, whether indirectly or directly, because of Kevin Mitnick.

Fuck man, this hit me hard and unexpected. Ghost in the Wires was one of my favorite books. Was fun to read about a true hacker, definitely inspired me. He was too young.Can’t believe there is no black banner. This is hackernews.

Kevin Mitnick has died