I think a lot of this was social engineering, but at one time the fbi considered mitnik some kind of super hacker. How did that disconnect happen? I imagine because his targets didn’t want to admit to the fbi how crappy their security was, so they would just say omg! We got hacked!
Big moments I remember from his book.
1. Gaining access to a telco C/O and social engineering his way out after being caught
2. Ultimately being caught by sloppy practices himself, logging into systems he was comfortable with and getting traced, and then forgetting some sort of identification in a ski jacket he hadn’t used in a long time, which was in his closet in a place he was living under a new identity.
It’s been awhile so I could be partly off on those details. But I’d say at least those pieces are very believable.
It should be illegal for the government to keep redactions in anything made public/declassified. It's a slap in the face to see entire sections of text (that most certainly contain important context) blocked out with a white blob.
This is pretty damn interesting, it's definitely the earliest example of a computer intrusion incident response report that I've ever seen. These reports detail stuff he was doing in 1980/1981 at the earliest I can see just skimming the top few pages. His own side of this particular chapter of his history is maybe worth a read, maybe not - he was known for embellishments:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090317050834/http://www.themem...
Surprised that personal info such as Kevin’s SSN wasn’t removed prior to release.
s/Mitnik/Mitnick/
1981? Security mostly was knowing which phone number to dial in, according to a deceased friend of mine.
The password to the system was "BRIS," the name of the vendor.
I have read Ghost in the Wires many times. I'm excited to see the other side of the tale. Thanks for sharing!
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Do they have a processing step where they add in random dots everywhere?
This will pair well with Mitnick's autobiography Ghost in the Wires, in which you get to read Mitnick's side of the story.