hacker Archives - Don Kasprzak

Kevin Mitnick is one of the most famous hackers. His story, Ghost in the Wires is wonderful to read. His book is very similar to the story of Frank Abagnale Jr. from the movie Catch Me if You Can. Mitnick’s arrest for hacking into DEC and Pacific Bell made international headlines.

I found his story a common story of addiction. His innocent position is difficult to support after repeated high level corporate hacking continued to grow. Kevin met with international computer criminals and began sharing documents.

Many will enjoy this story. Only briefly is there a deep dive on telephone switch technology. Mitnick actually began ‘hacking’ the LA bus system at age 12. His computer and telephone crimes starting at just 16 years of age.

There is little doubt that from a young age Mitnick was very intelligent. It was Kevin’s interest in ham radios that served has his source for playing with technology.

Ghost in the Wires moves from chapter to chapter with each hack seemingly growing in sophistication and risk. Mitnick lived as a fugitive on the run from FBI. Yet the story of Kevin’s hack of Tsutomu Shimomura, who worked at Sun Microsystems proved his undoing. Sun was acquired by Oracle.

Mitnick is able to deliver impressive details for each company he hacked. These remain very accomplished tasks. Maybe the best reason to read Ghost in the Wires is to learn how social engineering gave Mitnick easy access to systems.

In 2020 the lessons of Mitnick’s story should serve as a legacy view of penalties of computer hacking. The broad law gave the FBI a large brush. Here again Mitnick takes a position of innocence. He stood firm his actions resulted in no sale of stolen data.

His choice to continue hacking throughout his probation reveals he could not control (to some extent) his addiction.

Latest read: Who Controls the Internet?

Think the internet is still the wild west? Think again. In a new update of Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World law professors Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu share how the long arm of foreign governments still can stretch the illusion that the internet (and thereby globalization) are shrinking the world.

On the surface you may believe — even in 2009 that you can still say anything, do anything or hack any computer around the globe without impunity because you can hide inside the internet.

Goldsmith and Wu challenge Tom Friedman’s (The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century) position that globalization is opening up communication in countries that have long suppressed their citizen’s ability to speak freely.

China for example. Or think about the European Union. Is the EU able to dictate how Microsoft releases software? Think again. When Microsoft published it’s passport technology it was rejected by the EU. Rather than pay a fine Microsoft added the tougher security standards dictated by the EU for all customers worldwide. Those standards are even tougher than those used in America.

Can France tell Yahoo or eBay what products to sell? They can and they already do. This book is written from a legal standpoint since both teach at the Law Schools of Harvard and Columbia respectively. Is it strange to see government control over the internet? Would this be different if today was September 10 2001? Goldsmith and Wu share their insight to the way Law helps and hinders the internet. From simply selling memorabilia to cybercrime you learn gaping holes exist even today to prosecute offenders and criminals.

The “I Love You” virus that cost US companies millions of dollars originated in The Philippines, but since there is no law against this type of crime in the The Philippines the US was unable to arrest the known hacker. Similar rules apply in Russia. When the FBI arrested a hacker who extorted millions from US companies, Russia did not acknowledge this type of crime and did not agree to extradite, so the FBI was forced to release the criminal.

Goldsmith and Wu share the legal case between Yahoo and the country of France that forced Yahoo’s online store to pull Nazi related memorabilia even though Yahoo is an American based company. But Yahoo’s remote offices in France proved to the key error Jerry Yang overlooked. Yahoo has stumbled a lot lately.