Born in 1963, he is one of the most
famous American crackers to serve time in prison. He is now a security
consultant and author of security books, including the popular The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human
Element of Security. In 2003, at the DefCon
hacker convention in Las Vegas, Mitnick networked with the young hacker
community and wound up winning the Hacker
Jeopardy contest. In July, 2004, Mitnick signed books at the HOPE 5 hacker convention in New York
City and at the Black Hat Briefings and Training in Las Vegas.
Mitnick is a cult figure in the Computer
Underground. Whenever he is scheduled to speak on various computer
security issues at hacker conventions, he usually draws a large crowd and much
publicity.
Once on the FBIÂ’s
most-wanted criminal list and a past cyber colleague of cracker Susan Thunder, Mitnick was imprisoned in
February 1995 on charges of wire fraud and possessing computer files stolen
from Nokia, Motorola, and Sun Microsystems. His capture was detailed in the
book and movie Takedown
(described in more detail in the Schell, Dodge with Moutsatsos book The Hacking of America).
See Also:
Black Hat Briefings; Cracker; Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); HOPE
(Hackers On Planet Earth); Security; Shimomura, Tsutomu; Thunder, Susan and
Kevin Mitnick Case.
Schell, B.H., Dodge, J.L., with S.S. Moutsatsos. The
Hacking of America: WhoÂ’s Doing It, Why, and How. Westport, CT: Quorum
Books, 2002.