Kevin Mitnick

Kevin Mitnick is infamous because of his reputation as one of the world's greatest hackers. Mitnick Security Consulting is a professional service company where we review assessments and training. Mitnick now goes around the world lecturing on information security. Mitnick's focus today on security assessments, which is also called ethical hacking and penetration testing.

Kevin Mitnick began his career as a hacker at age 16; when he hacked into Digital Equipment Corp. by phoning the company and claiming to be the lead developer of a new product. DEC then proceed to give him the passwords needed to hack into their system.

Kevin Mitnick began with little pranks such as stealing computer passwords and cracking into phone lines so he could make free phone calls. Mitnick didn't care for the bigger crimes of sending viruses or stealing money, he hacked more for the pure enjoyment. "It was about the intrigue, the adventure, the pursuit of knowledge," said Mitnick.

As A teenager Mitnick hooked his computer up to a modem and tapped into a North American Air Defense Command computer. Also, he gained control of three telephone company central offices in Manhattan and all the phone switching centers located in California, and was able to listen in on calls. Plus, he secretly read the electronic mail of computer security experts working for MCI Communications and Digital Equipment. This gave him valuable insight on how the companies' computers and phone equipment were protected. These illegal activities climaxed when, at the age of 17, Mitnick successfully cracked Pacific Bell's computer system. Using a computer hooked up to a pay phone in San Fernando Valley, he was able to change telephone bills, access other computers, and siphon out $200,000 in information and services. Unfortunately, Susan Thunder, one of the leaders of the Roscoe Gang an underground hacking gang Mitnick was a part of, gave information to officials about Mitnick's PacBell hack, and Mitnick was arrested. Mitnick was sentenced to a ninety day diagnostic study by the juvenile justice system plus year probation.

The year following his PacBell hack, Mitnick became friends with a man named Lenny DiCicco. They entered the University of Southern California, and soon began hacking using the student computers on campus. Again, Mitnick got himself into trouble because of his computer activities. Using the university computers, he was able to gain illegal access to the ARPAnet. Campus police caught him in the act in a campus terminal room breaking into a Pentagon computer using ARPAnet. For violating his probation, he was sentenced to six months at the California Youth Authority's Karl Holton Training School, which was a juvenile prison in California.

In 1988 Mitnick teamed up with his friend Lenny DiCicco again and they began electronically attacking Digital Equipment's Palo Alto research laboratory. Mitnick had his eyes set on obtaining a version of Digital's VMS minicomputer operating system and was trying to access it via the company's corporate