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.