From “prankster” to the hacker, or how Kevin Mitnick started

Written by Mitnick Security | Oct 18, 2018 12:00:00 AM

Kevin Mitnick is the most famous hacker in the world. For years, however, has been working on the side of "the good ones". Companies hire Mitnick to help protect their valuable data.

During the Business Insider Inside Trends conference, Kevin Mitnick told about the beginnings of his stormy career with computers in the background - he finally spent five years in prison.

Telephone tips

Mitnicka's adventure with hacking began because he was fascinated by tricks as a young boy . At school, friends showed him, among others telephone tricks. A telephone to a special number made it possible to find out what number the connection was previously received from. Tapping the secret code allowed you to make a connection to anywhere in the world for free. - I was a bachelor . I wanted to learn these techniques to make jokes - said Mitnick during the Business Insider Inside Trends conference.

This is the so-called "phreaking" (from the English words "freak" and "phone"). Similar "games" were dealt with, among others, Steve Wozniak, one of the founders of Apple . He constructed so-called blue boxes , or devices that allow hacking analog phones to make free calls from them.Also, the money from the sale of such devices was to be used to partially finance work on the company's computers, and Wozniak also said that he even made a connection to the Pope and gave up for Henry Kissinger.

Information technology at school

Interestingly, Mitnick remarked that initially he was not too interested in IT at school. - Writing programs at school was boring. I wanted to do something cool - said Mitnick.

 

Young Kevin Mitnick did not do one of the homework, which was to rely on the representation of the Fibonacci sequence. Instead, he created a program that ... stole the IT teacher's password. He would react to the program shown with a big smile and say: "this is great."

Mitnick remarked that now his IT teacher may regret his words of encouragement to further develop computer skills.

Kevin Mitnick won global fame in the early 90s when he was wanted by the FBI. For over a dozen years, it helps companies to check their security. He repeatedly proved that it is "social engineering" , that is, proper manipulation of people and drawing information from them, is crucial in acquiring other people's data or access to information systems - even in the case of global corporations.

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Source: BUSINESS INSIDER POLSKA