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Mitnick Calls for Hacker Stories
ram writes "Famed hacker and master social engineer Kevin Mitnick has been commissioned to write a new book following the success of his first text The Art of Deception. The new book, tentatively titled 'The Art of Intrusion' will tell the stories of real hacks, with the names of attackers obscured to protect them from the authorities and their victims. Mitnick has called on retired hackers to come forward with their stories, offering a $500 (283) prize for the best story that makes it into the book, and a $200 payment for all stories that make the final draft."
But i'm afraid to talk about them. Statute of limitations and all that ;-)
- not logging in for this one sorry.
He is a famous hacker because he got caught. There are thousands of hackers much better (if that's the right word), so why does he get all the attention?
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Obviously this is not in the same league as the recent RIAA "amnesty".
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
he will take care to protect the identities of the targets too. I can see no end of trouble when "A Big Co." finds out they were completely rooted and had no idea..
IANAL - lets say for the sake of argument I was an ex-hacker with a story to tell that ended up in print. Even with this much vaunted anonymity I would still be worried about publically confessing my misdeeds. Especially in the UK where hacking offences can be covered with anti-terrorist legislation these days.
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
1. Get others to produce the content of your book
2. Publish
3. ???
4. Profit!
IT people and security-concerned people will hopefully learn a lot from this book.
good to see security improving as the time passess....
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
How does he intend to confirm the stories are true? If he is trying to keep indentities quiet, he is going to have problems confirming them.
Let's see...I'll give away a few hundred dollars for some stories of hacks, put them in a book and make thousands of dollars from it. I think he's still a damn good social engineer.
1. Perform illicit activity (crime: 'hacking' or 'cracking' for those who prefer that term)
2. Get away with it.
3. Get paid for story publishing.
4. Profit!!!
Seriously though, as I'm sure many of these hackers/crackers will be heralded as (demi-)heroes by many visitors of Slashdot, and I understand that often the sentences for those caught are ridiculous, it should not be forgotten that they -did- commit a crime.
Now, they were 'smart' enough to not get caught for that crime, too. Which means they can gloat about their hack/crack in private of with tight friends or do whatever the heck they want with it already.
But now they're getting paid to talk about those hacks/cracks - and retain their anonimity ?
There's something very wrong with that picture, in my humble opinion.
Personally, I could see this turn of events coming. Having read books such as Cyberpunk and Takedown and watched that doco "Freedom Downtime" I've drawn the conclusion that Kevin appears to be more "misguided" than dangerous and also more "attention seeking" than a model hacker for script kiddies to chase after.
:)
I must admit though, I would be _very_ interested to read this book when it hits the press
...and I'll be happy to give to you some kinda fish story. Yea, there was that time back in '83 where some buddies and I were sitting 'round our dorm room and thought, "Hey, how long's it been since someone's busted into Langley's database?" And so, we all tossed five bucks in a pot for the first to break in and find the SS# of the Director of the CIA...
Really, how are you gonna know that these stories are actually real?
The cell phone listed to be redirected to some middle age cattle rancher by the end of the day.
kthxcellhack
Even if the book includes as many as 100 stories, that's only $20,000. We can be sure that Mitnick will be making a lot more than that, and the publisher will be making much, much more.
Don't most honest, law-abiding people nowadays disapprove of criminals profiting from their crimes? Well it sure seems like Mitnick is profiting from his crimes with this book because the publisher is using his name to sell it.
Kinda cheap and sleazy if you ask me, which you didn't.
Welcome to Slashdot, chief . . .
For what it's worth, I have a good story involving some (requested, of course) intrusion testing on a senior security worker at Microsoft's personal web server that came about because of a Apache vs. IIS argument on IRC. Pity it was just a simple application of RainForestPuppy's modified UNICODE exploit (read: a script-kiddie hack), or I'd submit it . . .
was a typical social engineering story.
Some hacker wanted to haxor some local republican servers. But these things turn out well secured, so he needed some physical access to the boxes. So he claimed to be a fundamentalist protestant (well, he didn't put it this way obviously) and asked the local repubs for some help for anti-abortion protests. He convinced the people to paint transparents in the server room. Ownage occured mysteriously. Well, not so mysteriously, 'cos the FBI got him in the end.
To save his honour, it must be said that he indeed turned up at the anti-abortion protest, even throwing some tomatoes.
Well, he was a crazy Nader follower. Quite funny , when you think about it - the hacker helped in the repubs due to the bad press in the end. And even Nader helped Bush by sucking votes away from Gore. These ecos can be very strange some times.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Holy cow, is this serious ?
But, just imagine if J. Reno could come up with the Nuclear War stuff for Mitnick, what a field day J. Ashcroft would have had if he had a chance ... Or maybe Ashcroft is already having a S&M ball. It is all so secretive nowadays.
Lucky Mitnick...
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
An anonymous coward sends him detailed information about how his own computer was hacked and information sent to Tsutomu Shimomura, causing his capture.
Sanity is a majority vote.
Well d00d I got this l33t tool called t3ln3t. I connected to other people computers and got things like "SSH-1.99-OpenSSH_3.7.1p2". The 0th3r kidi33s were like. "D00D!!". I was like w0ah. I am so l33t
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
So, if someone breaks the law, and then tells you about it afterwards (but before they're brought to justice) doesn't that make you (in legal terms) an accessory after the fact?
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
including the missing chapter.
Mitnick's 'Lost Chapter' FoundWhile there are always two sides to a story, from what Kevin says, it sounds like Markoff and Shimomura exploited the situation for all the $$$ they could get.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Setup a Machine and they can hack into it to submit their stories.
;P
This way if they are good enough not to be traced, the chances are good they actually did something real. It also removes most of the possible "script kiddies" submittions
Sanity is a majority vote.
And as far as Kevin goes, he's had a hard time so I forgive him for it. But I am not going to give stories so these corporate bastards can figure out how to keep people out. I am totally down with the grey-hat backlash that has started - people who are connected with the hacker scene and then go work for ISS or @stake or wherever, and make money off of it. Selling out is bad enough, worse is people who were with the hacker community, start working for security companies, and maintain contact with the active hacker community on an active and "professional" basis.
I am totally down the grey-hat backlash. I see there being two classes - workers and idle heirs. Idle heirs own the majority shares of corporations, thus they control the corporations, thus they control the means of production. I think they have no right to this, and thus I as a worker hacking into a corporate computer am more justified being on there than even another worker following orders from the heir (e.g. working at the company).
I think the fact that hacking machines is a crime is as much bullshit as the fact that more black men in the US go to prison than go to college. Yes, I DO think I have the right to hack anything I want, even if isn't mine - if you look at say bond ownership in the US, about half is owned by 0.5% of the population, and 90% is owned by the poorest 90% of Americans. I could give a flying fuck about these heirs and what they own. I am for anarchy and anarchism - fuck all authority, workers control the means of production. Parasitism like profits, interest, dividends, rent at an end. Up against the wall motherfuckers, this is a stickup!
There used to be a good web page on the hacker backlash against security BS, but it shut down. Here are some links, maybe the page will pop back up. Or maybe YOU can join the movement.
Speech at H2k2
post to full disclosure
post to indymedia
This is good shit
And here are some links about other topics
Chomsky rules
Learn about anarchism
And there's lots of good books on how the working class is regularly ripped off by the man. Just remember - people like Paul Krugman are good, but light. Check out the more radical analysis as well. Workers of the world unite! No gods, no masters!
... is here
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
a real hacker doesn't remeber he hacked in
:)
to a major Company.
this is the ultimate personal security solution!
a real hacker "dreams" his hacks and wakes up
the nex day without knowing what he did.
it's called "dreamwalk hacking"
- 1 Perform Illicit Activity
- 2 Get Caught
- 3 Plea Bargain/Turn States Evidence
- 4 Get let off lightly (and I use that term loosely)
- 5 Write book detailing the exciting life you've led
- 6 Write second book, detailing others who've had similar lives
... Public speaking engagements, TV Shows, etc ad-infinitum ...
Although in this particular case, I believe he skipped 3 entirely and did not do spectacularly well on item 4 either.Remember people, don't take shortcuts!!!
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
At our university, the Ethics Committee will not allow research to be conducted where the subject may divulge self-incriminating information. I'm not sure how this would sit in that context.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Just send your story, along with your bank account info & PIN to Kevin. He'll take care of the rest...
We all know Mitnick is in quite a bit of trouble, but the fact that he's a good social engineer still persists. He was traumatized in jail, and most of what he was severely punished for was probably due to non-cooperation, in that "hacker" attitude, with very influential people. Most likely, he got out of such things by giving in and cutting deals.
Before you send in any good stories, be they fact or fiction, think of this: what if FBI / Homeland Security agents are on the case working with Mitnick, reading those letters that will supposedly go into the book and tracing who sent them? They've been known to do similar things to get people to brag before, which is the easiest way to catch people, or at least make it seem that way. With John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge in the government, they will stoop to any low to put hackers, whom they view as terrorists, behind bars.
Wow! A free motorboat!
use Social Engineering to get "hackers" to publicly brag about their illicit activities, in exchange for modest "prizes."
collect reward money AND complete parole obligations.
retire.
Famed hacker and master social engineer Kevin Mitnick has been commissioned to write a new book following the success of his first text The Art of Deception.
Famed doctor and master of friendship Charlie Manson has been commisioned to write a new book following the success of his first text Medicine for Beginners.
I'm an active penetration tester, have been for some years. I can tell you now that from all the testing i've completed (including lots of clients in the financial sector and govt.) I wouldnt even be entertaining the idea of remotely telling anonymous tale stories. The risk is just too great. And for a measily $200?
Give me a break.
When you've proven to a client that millions could potentially be stolen, the last thing you'd want to do is discuss it in a book, anonymously or not.
I think he needs the anonymous hacker contributions as a smokescreen for some of his old unknown hacks.
//Pingo
This guy has probably done more than he is accused for and has got an urge to brag about all his hacks. Doing so might get him into more legal trouble and he needs some anonymous hackers as legal frontends.
--- Linux or FreeBSD, it's like blondes or brunettes. I like both. ---
http://www.underground-book.com/ this style of book has been done before (in australia anyway) and with relative success. The best part about that book was how the author made it available for the public to d/l. an interesting read ...
Mitnick has called on retired hackers to come forward with their stories, offering a $500 (283) prize for the best story that makes it into the book, and a $200 payment for all stories that make the final draft.
Meanwhile, he makes $500k off book sales.
...he's got a job with the FBI now.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
Hackers aren't heroes. They're the computer age equivalent of teenagers with spray paint. True, some of them only do 'good' things, but the vast majority are in it for the mischief they can cause and the notoriety thay might gain from their peers. These people are criminals. Mod me down to -10 if you like, but those are the facts.
Running from the authorities using his advanced level of hacking skill, creating new IDs and such as he went, having stolen the data for the intellectual thrill of it, not for financial gain, then improperly held by a vengeful government... That's a classic tale. I don't know if it's a true story, but that was the popular perception at one point.
In the 18th century, there was, in England, an absolute adoration of the highwayman. There were courteous highwaymen like Dick Turpin, whose victims had only this regret: that they could not have met him under other circumstances and been friends. There were brutal highwaymen, like Jack Sheppard, who was noted for his violence and for escaping Newgate with fetters on his limbs. There were gallant highwaymen, like Claude Duval, whose arrest was supposedly mourned by women across the country.
Other countries and that and other times have had the same respect for any bold thief. John Dillinger is the best modern example.
And as for getting caught, the populace believes that if you live bravely enough as a criminal, you WILL eventually get caught. That's really the basis of the admiration. If you could simply escape the government by being strong enough, as in the 1200s, you'd only be feared as a danger to all. It's the assurance of eventual capture that gives living on the edge its glamour. This, in particular, applies to Mitnick where it wouldn't to a mere modern carjacker, because we know the carjackers aren't caught. There are so many muggers and rapist and straight-up burglars who prey on the populace directly and succeed that we can't respect them. We fear them. A bank robber or a hacker can go after the big score, the wealth of the very rich, and leave us entertained participants.
There are, of course, plenty of major criminal hackers who do get away with it, as with any other crime, hackers we never hear about because they stayed safe, played it smart all the way. Some of them may be reading this now. Hi boys... you're assumed to be mean of spirit, not to have aimed high enough to get caught, mere embezzling rats or at most a sort of criminal investment banker. How does that feel?
Eventually the statute of limitations will start to run out on modern hackers who have done some pretty cool things, and we'll start to read the full stories of the ones who did go for the big score and get away with it in the Net age, just as we now revere some of the early phreakers who dared and won. Until then, the successful hacker will remain the province of fiction.
It's also interesting to note that in the 19th century, it was felt that the effect of the poems and plays about thieves had the same deleterious effect that comic books, rock music and video games were later held to have.
This post is reacher for 600 words, though, and beyond this I might as well write a properly-researched article, so I'll leave it here.
... I can take money out of Kevin's bank account any time I like ;-)
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
So what happens if Kevin uses your story in his book but dosen't pay the agreed monies?
Who is gonna sue him?
If you don't like the thought of helping Mitnick make any more money why not help dr k with his hacker tales book
Not only is Dr K a dude but he is also a little more in touch with the hacker scene. I particulary like his fuck computers let's hack talk and brumcon
blog and junk
I assume he'll be paying us...I mean, these "hacker" folk in small, unmarked bills, right?
Send Kevin back to jail!
Hacking is wrong and evil. Look at the nimda worm and the blaster virus... all done by HACKERS! And now we are PRAISING Mr Mitnick? What next, give Kevin Poulsen a job writing about comp. security? Don't make me laugh. These guys were social leppers who destroyed thousands of lives with their needless hacking.
SEND KEVIN BACK TO JAIL WHERE HE BELONGS!
Hackers would get more money writing for SysAdmin.
Back in the BBS days my leet friend was a warez courier. To facilitate this a certain amount of phreaking was required. At the time there was no Computer Misuse Act. He was eventually arrested. The cops had a list of all the alleged phone calls. Each one constituted a separate criminal offence. They had to read him the entire list of calls and he had to answer 'yes' or 'no' to whether he agreed he had made the call. It took them *ten* hours.
It turned out the only thing they could charge him with was 'theft of electricity' and when it went to court he got fined 80.
There was also the time another friend rigged the 'Stars In their Eyes' final when they included to new gee whizz internet voting as part of the viewer voting.
How we laughed when Matthew Kelly (the child abuser!) said "we've had a phenominal response on our website".
They've got a bit cleverer these days with cookies and IP logging but thank goodness for anonymizing proxies
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I may have posted this link some time ago, but I think it's worth a repost. "Underground" by Suelette Dreyfus is, to me, a very interesting book looking at the hacking/cracking culture of the mid 1980's.
It follows the stories of several hackers/crackers in Australia, Germany, and the United States. To me, it really reads more like an ethnographic anthropological study, than about hacks per se. But I found it very interesting. And best of all, the entire book is available for free:
http://www.underground-book.com/
in a download version.
jeff
I was not expecting much from the first book, but I must say the first book is a beautiful piece of corporation crap. It's not computer oriented, it's more like "buy my book, make your company better".
"The Art Of Deception", I know what you mean, Mitnick.
I shot the sheriff
0nc3 up0n 4 71m3...
Now, I know Mitnick's explicitly asking for tales from retired hackers but what if...
...Retired hacker sees potential for making a few $s. Decides to come out of retirement. Hacks. Retires again. Sells story to Mitnick as a, now retired, hacker.
IANAL but does this then amount to incitement to perform a criminal act?
--This isn't a man who is leaving with his head between his legs.
One time I hacked the Slashdot moderation system and gave myself a +5 Funny.
So this windoze box is just staring me in the face, begging to be hacked, so I tried CraKit.exe, but that didn't work. But being a resourceful hacker, I didn't give up. I ran CraKit2.exe. But that didn't work either! Man this stupid box was resisting all my hacker powers. So I was like "Dude, what's your password??" and he told me.
If this book ever sees the light of day it may just shatter a few myths about how exciting or otherwise 'hacking' really is.
I wonder whether Mitnick will have to edit and typeset some of his work on a typewriter, since he can't touch a computer...
But watching CNN I don't know what crime is. Is it crime to do things or is it crime to report about them like CNN does?
article?
.converted into corepirate nazi clones/puppets, & have joined fuddle's phonIE ?pr? ?firm? bouNTy hunter (screw your 'frIEnds' for monIE) program?
there's a rumour that both he, & robbIE have been
has anywon tried robbIE's gnu 'dating' service yet? is the girl in the ad really a lonely geeky chick?
Because those thousands of hackers much better than him want it that way.
That's the model that Scott Adams has been using for about 15 years with Dilbert. He ran out of ideas after the first two years but at that point he was popular enough that people sent him screwy stuff that was happening in cube-farms. Now I admit he is brilliant at putting them in a humorous context, but they're not necessarily all his ideas.
This sig best viewed in a drunken stupor.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
Does our friend Kevin have a PGP/GPG key that he would like used for these stories? I'm assuming many FBI resources will be concentrated on his ISP's chain of routers to the Internet to compromise the identities of any 'good' hackers that write in.
I'd hate to stifle the book, and can almost guarantee that I'll buy it, but I'd like to make sure that people are able to protect their identities and not unwittingly reveal incriminating information about themselves.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Kevin has no spotlight any longer... time to actually make money? Ha! Welcome to reality.
Can someone say, "Captain Crunch"?
"I'm not ashamed I can't function in society like I'm supposed to." - Paul Westerberg
wget http://nero-online.org/norway.jpg Note: This is not a picture in his sig, but a html file with lots of vbscripts in it. Dunno what it does, but since he is disguising it as a .jpg it can't be anything good.
He was pwned, it was freaking hilari -- Kevin, where are you going? Kevin?
Does this mean I won't get $500?
$200..he's going to make a lot more than that on this book. The man should still be in prison and he should NOT be profitting from what he did. Why all the morons rallied behind this criminal is beyond me. He is no better than any OTHER spammer or hacker. People like him are what is slowly destroying the internet.
For people like us (slashdotters) these books are mostly tales and overly obvious statements. Interesting and sometimes fun to read. That's about it.
To people NOT like us (read: small/mid company admins and even some larger company admins) alot of this is actually an eye opener. Case in point: Some of you may know that I work for a smaller, privatly owned ISP. Because of this, we cater to a bunch of mid/small businesses. I have suggested his first book for them to read. I have gotten no less than 20 call backs after they read the book with statements like "Wow, I never even thought of that!" and "Thanks for the book tip! Helped me out alot and we have tightned up security with our staff." You're lucky to find a semi-competent admin in companies this small (or an admin at all) let alone one who understand or has even heard of social engineering or any type of specific attack out side of what the main stream media reports.
Keep in mind that alot of admin in these companies have heard DoS and DDoS before, maybe even the names of a few well know worms but they don't even know what they stand for or what they do. They are nothing more than the catch phrase of the week. Books like this are pretty invaluable to them as they are not written from a tech stand point (Hardening Cisco comes to mind) and are eaisly understood and easy to put into practice by someone who is the admin because they know what HDD stands for or were hired on the lowest possible salary.
Don't get me wrong here, these are not the end all be all security books but they are a great boon to the customers that I service.
>Actually your batting average would be 1.000. 1 at bat >divided by 1 hit = 1 Totally offtopic. Bill James would slap you in the head. The original poster referred to "slugging" average, not "batting" average. If you were up once and hit a home run, your SLG would be 4.000 and your BA would be 1.000. Batting Average = H/AB Slugging Percentage/Average (SLG) = (H+2B+2*3B+3*HR)/AB Sports may be anathema to most Slashdotters, but sabermetrics oughta be geeky enough for anybody. [oddly, this is my first post ever...]
People are getting all righteously indignant and aren't seeing the real purpose of this offer. By appearing to anonymously post OTHER'S stories, he will be free to publish HIS OWN stories under some cover. He will be able to use the journalist's right to conceal the names of his sources to protect himself - and yet still tell his stories. I'm sure he will still use a few others, but the only ones that he can know really happened for sure are those HE performed.
Curious George
***General Consultant to the Human Race*** My opinions are free. You get what you pay for.
As I see it Mitnick remains of the same mindset as when he first showed off his cracking skills to a group of peers and was surprised when they turned him in.
Among his various complaints about his treatment by the Feds are that he was held without bail (gee, can you say 'established flight-risk'?), and that they held onto all of his computers (gee, after he declined to provide the encryption keys needed to access them as evidence?).
He's also clear about being bitter toward the author of 'Takedown' (advice, "never get in an argument with someone who buys ink by the barrel and paper by the train-car") and Shimomura(sp?) (Let's see, you break into lots of machines, eventually you come up against someone better'n you and now you complain that they exact some revenge?)
His notoriety seemingly guarantees a certain audience for he and his publisher to profit.
Personally I've got no desire to help this guy along. In the excerpts from his book he has the brass to include himself in the 'hacker' ethic of places like LCS, Berkeley, JPL. Sorry, that image doesn't pass.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
I would have assumed most blackhats wouldnt need a cash incentive to propagate their infamy. More than that though, I'm not so sure this is a good move at all to pen a book of this sort. While i am of the opinion that security through obscurity is no security at all and that most arguments will support this; Mitnick may feel inclined to glorify some of these cracking stories. This might surely encourage budding crackers to continue with their attempts. Not big and not clever.
my other sig is written in brainfuck
Nor 5. It's illegal for one to profit from their crimes, Son of Sam law. He can't write his own story, at least not for several more years, which is why he needs stories from other people.
Chicken Soup for the Hacker's Soul.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Have no trust that yer asses are covered by such limitations. until death
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
You know, once I got a hold of this thing called the Legacy Key, which let me into any door in my high school. Me and my freshman buddy decided we would break into the school's computer and change our grades. We called the computer maintenance people to get the passwords to the computers. Then we broke into our high school using the key, got to the principals office, and started changing grades. But we got locked out of the computer midway, and we had to bail. Oh wait - that was just an episode of 90210.
It sounds like this book is going to be about crackers and cracking and not hackers and hacking.
Common usage tends to blur the meaning between the two concepts but I thought here on slashdot at least there was some instance that the two not get confused.
Seriously. There's no way somebody able to handle the task of organizing such a large force would be idiotic enough to give nukes phone lines. Then again, we are talking about the United States government...
"Screw slashdot." -- Linus Torvalds
Screw the money bit. Just tell stories here.
Here's one from around 1992. I was in Houston, talking to a friend just outside the city limits. While we were talking, my scanner landed on a cordless phone nearby. It was loud enough for him to hear, and we started hearing digits.
I had a modem that would decode DTMF, so I patched it into the call and told it to start decoding. We continued listening, and sure enough, the chick on the other end made more calls. At some point she called a pager, so we got that number. Then she put in the number to call, which of course was hers. So now we had both of those.
So a minute or two later her phone rings, and it's the guy she paged. They start talking about stuff, and meanwhile my friend has grabbed his second phone line and has started paging this guy. He's plugging in all kinds of wild stuff, and we can hear it going off over the phone. "Damn baby, my pager is blowing up!"
Then he starts in on the actual chick. She has call waiting, so we hear it when she clicks over. She'd say something about going out for some burgers, and he'd ring up and say "don't eat burgers, eat chicken", or something like that.
The best part is that she tried to use *69 (swbell having recently added the CLASS stuff), but it failed since he was on another telco. Those two companies didn't have the interconnects working for that yet, so he was unaffected by any of it.
He didn't harass her for very long, but it was particularly amusing to me at the time. All it took was a scanner and a way to elude the most basic of call return services. Obviously I didn't do any of the calling, since my numbers would have been returnable. I just sat back and listened.
Mitnick's not a hacker. We keep bitching about people who use 'hacker' when they mean 'cracker' and yet we ourselves don't use the right term?
Mitnick's a cracker, pure and simple. If he didn't make his living back then off of crime, he sure as hell is did it later by writing a book about it.
I don't see much of a difference between this book and "send me your stories of how you robbed some people in an alley and I'll give you $500." Except, of ocurse, that a bunch of immature of hypocritical punks will now scream how clearly, cracking is nothing like a real crime. I mean, information wants to be free! And, umm, we're doing these companies a favor!
I haxx0red the GIBSON. Ph33r m3, I AM 31337.
The more you know, the less you understand.
Those who are convinced that the $200 is a rip-off need not submit their stories and try to find a better price elsewhere. I would be quite surprised to see very many published outside of Kevin's book, let alone published for more money than Kevin is offering.
Gee... think a cheap trick, written in VAX command line script, to emulate logons and steal passwords will win me anything? :-)
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
How many of the authors submitting stories could actually get them published somewhere else for more money than Mitnick is offering?
There are a good many publishing houses that routinely produce books in this format and pay authors about the same amount ($200) per piece.
This is clever...
Uhm, I rooted the primary node on the carnivore system... here's the complete process I used. Yeah, I am l33t.
Now, please send check to:
Name B. Real
123 Myhome St.
Normal, IL
Might as well tell them what time you're going to be home too.
Don't click on the users www URL. Her (his) url is nothing more than a fancy vbscript goatse link.
kevin mitnick is a washed up cracker in dire need of money.. any real "hacker" with a mind of their own would not participate in this or exposing themself in any public domain. Mitnick is the fucking britney spears of the cracking world..
go penetrate this.
That would be hard to argue, as he's specifically asking for "bad things you've done in the past so that I can educate people how to not have them happen again".
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Who is going to risk incriminating him or herself for a mere 200 bucks? I wouldn't even walk across the street for that. That notwithstanding, who would want to tell their story to a hacker that's been compromised already? Were I one who "hacks", I would not even give the time of day to a hacker who has gotten pinched by the feds.
My plea agreement restricts me from telling stories of my own hacks until January 2010, which is why I'm looking for stories from people like you.
Heh, smart way to get around that plea agreement. Write a book of stories about "other people's" hacks, and, umm, don't say what their names are.
I don't understand how he is going to pay the contributors back anonymously. I sure as hell don't consider cashing a $500 check from kevin mitnick at my local bank very secure.
Doesn't this sound like a sting operation?
So like, there I was in this Gibson, and it was like, leet d00dz! I was like, looking through these files and was like finding like this stuff, and these files taht were like really leet and I like downloaded them and stuff...
I dunno... on the one hand, script kiddies by the thousands sending in tales of hacking some other kids BBS back in the day... oh wait, most script kiddies arent old enough to know what a BBS is anyway... never mind.
But either way, I will probably pick up a copy when it is released, if for nothing other than the entertainment value.
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
The Terrorism Act 2000 has several requirements for a computer break-in to be considered a terrorist act. It must be "designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system" which would exclude some break-ins. For example, someone who just looked around would not be caught. DoS attacks are caught but the downloading of information may not be.
The act must also be "designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public" and be "for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause". This is going to exclude the huge majority of computer crimes. Even some political hacks will be excluded. For example, when al-Jazeera's website was hacked, it was for the purpose of advancing a political cause. It was not, however, for the purpose of influencing the government. It was for the purpose of influencing the public, but this is not enough; notice the different wording for acts aimed at the government, and acts aimed at the population.
The DDoS attack on spamhaus.org is an interesting case. It clearly satisfies the first part of the test, seriously disrupting an electronic system. It is probably intended to intimidate people who are involved in campaigning against spam. Is spam a political or ideological cause? I don't know; I suspect only the courts would be able to answer that.
Perhaps Mitnick made a deal with the Feds to nab more hackers and this is how they're getting their leads?
I wouldn't contribute anything with too many real details.
I just don't trust Asscraft and Ronald Dumsfeld and the whole "Patriot Act" gestapo setup. Crime Pays, and They Know It.
President Bush to Liberate Alaska
Good lord, "Sir Haxalot", do you ever stop being an idiot?
Anonomous stories. Unverifiable, anonymous stories. Hrm, and who should I make the check out to, mr.....? Sounds silly to me.
"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. " - Revolution Books, NY
When I was going to school, I worked at Kinko's. I worked at the branch in Thousand Oaks/Westlake California, which happens to be a more upscale community. We used to get all sorts of notable people coming in to get copies. While most of my co-workers were always freaking out when the more mainstream celebrities would come in (Tom Selleck, Hulk Hogan, Heather Locklear, Will Smith, and Martin Lawrence are a few that spring in to mind), I was always more impressed by some of the more obscure personailities that would come in, including my personal favorite Bas Rutten - who, incendentally, is such a nice guy that none of my co-workers would believe me when I told them what he did for a living.
However, the one "customer" that was the most interesting was Kevin Mitnick. For those of you who do not know, Kevin lives in Thousand Oaks. At the time, he lived about a quarter mile from Kinko's. He came in just about every day over a three month span. Myself and one of the graveyard guys were the only ones who even knew who Kevin Mitnick was. He used to come in, with a laptop, and set up over in one of the corners. He would never plug into our network, which was kind of odd, so everyone just assumed that he was coming in just to have a place to do some work.
One night, our cleaning crew discovered an 802.11b wireless internet hub hidden under a table. It was plugged into our network. The next morning, we unplugged it (FWIW, I believe the graveyard guy ended up taking it home). That day, Kevin came in, went to his normal spot, and started up his laptop. He started looking around, real confused, and walked over to where we had found the hub. When he saw that it was gone, he started looking really panicked. He went and picked up his laptop and left, all the time holding a piece of paper up to hide his face from the cameras. That was the last time he ever came in.
For example, I'm sure Gates is quite happy with his money and power... but I wonder how he feels about being cursed by hundreds of thousands of people every day.
So the question remains... how does it feel to be feared and reviled by so many?