Hacking refers to the act of gaining unauthorized access into a computer system by identifying and exploiting system networks and vulnerabilities. An individual who engages in hacking activities is referred as a hacker. In most cases the objectives of hackers is malicious which end up in criminal activities such as money fraud, black mail, theft of confidential data amongst other evils. In addition, there is another group of hackers known as white hat hackers whose intentions are ethical and in most cases they are certified and credited to protect companies and governments against malicious hacking. This paper seeks to explore the life of the world most wanted hacker Kevin Mitnick. In the paper, I will discuss Kevin Mitnick’s beginnings as a hacker, his associations and descriptions of cybercrimes and I will conclude with his new life as an ethical hacker.
Kevin Mitnick was born in August 1963 in Los Angeles, California. At a very early age of just 12 years old Mitnick ventured into hacking. With help of social engineering and dumpster diving, he was able to manipulate the punch card system used in Los Angeles bus system and could be able to board buses for free across the breadth of Los Angeles. It is through the social engineering skills that he learnt to obtain confidential information such as people’s user names, phone contacts among others. In 1979 at the age of 16 years old, Mitnick gained his first unauthorized computer access. With the aid of a friend, Mitnick hacked into Digital Equipment Corporation computer system and copied the company’s software ( Hafner,1995) . Following the crime he was arrested, prosecuted and convicted to 12 months in prison in the year 1988. In addition, upon his release he was to undergo a state-supervised computer use. Even before his supervised release elapsed, Mitnick hacked Pacific Bell voice mail prompting a warrant of arrest to be issued against him. He fled Los Angeles and was on the run for over two and half years. While on the run, it is believed that he committed a lot of cybercrimes that included altering computer networks, cloning cellular phones, hackled into confidential data from emails among others.
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The chase of Mitnick came to an end in February 1995 when he was arrested by FBI while hiding at an apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina with allegation of cloning cellular phones, false identity and computer hacking fraud. He was charged and sentenced to 46 months and a further addition of 22 months in prison as a result of violating his supervised release of the 1989 when he hacked into Pacific Bell Voice email ( Shimomura & Markoff, 1996) . After serving is term in prison, Mitnick was released in January of 2000 on a one year supervised release. After the completion of the supervised release he was banned from using any communication technology apart from a telephone landline. He was against the ruling against his ban and challenged it in court which ruled in his favor by allowing him to access the internet but forbade him from profiteering from sell of movies, books or interviews that revolved around his past cybercrime activities. After completing a year of supervised release, a judge with the Family Case Conference ruled that David Mitnick was now sufficiently rehabilitated in 2001.
Today, Mitnick is a well ranking security consultant with his own cyber security company called Mitnick Security that is involved with training people on the necessary skills on data protection and methods of combating cyber hackers ( Hafner, 1995) . The cyber security firm currently has clients in Fortune 500 companies and also government agencies such as the FBI, banks, insurance firms and others. The company also provides lessons on social engineering. Mitnick is also a celebrated public speaker and he has featured in renown public talk shows such as The Colbert Report where he had gone to publicize his book called the Ghost in the Wires. He has also featured in very many documentaries that discuss his life in crime and his works as a reformed member of the society. Further, Mitnick is an author several books on cyber security and motivational works. His books include; The Art of Invisibility published in 2003 amongst others.
As an advocate of privacy in online platforms, Kevin Mitnick advises that emails should be encrypted end-to-end, he warns that if an application lacks the end-to-end encryption the, user should consider venturing into other platforms or apps that provide the service in order to ensure that data in your emails are safe from hacking. He also advises that online users should make sure to defend their anonymity by hiding their IP address ( Lindup,1995) . He proposes that the only way of achieving that one hides their identity is by using a certain unique service called remailer. With the use of a remailer, an individual can mask their identity online sine the remailer keeps switching the path between your email and that of the target website with malicious intention. He further advises that individuals should be careful with their passwords. He suggests that passwords should be held very confidential and in most cases users should consider have long and unpredictable passwords that cannot be easily be predictable. For those who use Tor, Kevin Mitnick warns that Tor should not be run with the same physical devices that an individual is using to browse. In a nutshell, there should be always be two devices when one is using Tor, one laptop for instance for browsing another device to handle Tor.
References
Hafner, K. (1995). A superhacker meets his match. Newsweek , 125 (9), 61-62.
Lindup, K. (1995). The arrest of Kevin Mitnick. Network Security , 3 (1995), 16-19.
Shimomura, T., & Markoff, J. (1996). Catching Kevin. WIRED .
