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Mitnick Helps Bust Bomb Hoaxer
PhrostyMcByte writes "According to The Register/SecurityFocus: 'Ex-hacker Kevin Mitnick is a hero to the small town of River Rouge, Michigan, after using his tech skills to help officials nab the culprit behind a harrowing series of bomb threats.'" According to the piece, Detective Lt. John Keck "began searching the Internet for technical guidance, which led him to Kevin Mitnick, who'd earlier demonstrated a technique for spoofing Caller ID on the specialty cable network TechTV." Mitnick's comment on the bomb hoaxer? "He wasn't really hacking... he was really just being a jerk."
...the hoaxes unnerved some residents of the Detroit suburb, which boasts a population in the high four digits.
"It is kind of funny, I'll admit, but this is not the time for these kinds of games," says Keck.
No, it wasn't kind of funny. It was stupid... Really stupid. It wasted a lot of people's time. The bomb threat is one thing. Diverting police cars, forcing evacuations, searching for false bombs, making someone research how to track telephone calls, and having a writer tell a sensationalized story was a huge waste of time.
This had nothing to do with phone phreaking, hacking, or anything. It was a dumbass kid who made a call from a cell phone and someone doing their job and finding Mitnick (who of course was willing to look like the good-guy) to solve the problem.
For once I don't recommend that you RTFA.
I guess some criminals _can_ be rehabilitated. Nice to see our system isn't _totally_ broken.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
To the media, what's the difference? Anyone who commits a crime involving a computer is considered a hacker to them...
You can make a difference by doing good hackerly things and at the same time denouncing the draconian measures.
Kevin was hacking, but he was also being a jerk. The two are not mutually exclusive.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
The dead-end led Keck to suspect that the caller was employing some hi-tech means to cover his tracks. *67?
Wether people like it or not, there will always be someone that will misuse technology and its loopholes.
Isn't it nice that there are some people that KNOW those loopholes and that don't misuse them? How can we defend ourselves against something we don't know?
These kinds of actions bring the focus right to the differences between hacking and cracking most society is led to believe don't exist. Let me add that the good publicity comes in handy :)
I don't think this is an issue of technology as much as it is an issue of teachers needing to pay attention to their damn students.
Sure, set a jerk to catch a jerk. Jerks who repent often spend their time in attonement.
That doesn't mean we should ignore his having been a jerk, but neither should we hold that against his works of attonement.
KFG
What happened: Officer: I need this TelCo: Searching... Nothing.. Try Again...
instead of what should have happened: Officer: We need to catch this haxor TelCo: Ok, ..., there it is!
More likely explanation, this is a small town, (article says about 4 digit population) and they don't want to send a kid to jail for being stupid. If he does it again though I'm sure that he'll be deported or maybe even defenistratred.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Evidently Kevin learned his lesson - he openly admits to having been a criminal it seems, and besides, what better to catch a criminal than with somebody who really knows how they think?
This sig no verb.
"Armed with Mitnick's advice, Keck went back to SBC and demanded a "terminating number search" for any calls made to the high school's lines on the dates of the bomb threats."
So really all Kevin did was point out how unhelpful SBC is to law enforcement? SBC could help but wasn't asked in the right way. How is our government expected to tackle matters of national security when the major communications companies are unwilling to help unless you say the "magic words."
Borrowing a laptop without proper authorisation is a worse crime than rape in School Land.
The more I hear of the insane bureaucratic messups that are happening in schools, the more I realise that kids today who say "There's no use learning nuffing in school cos it don't apply to da real world" aren't being young naive and stupid... but damned insightful.
Leave adulthood for kids to become jaded & cynical dammit, don't make them that at 15!
The sad part of this is that the detective couldn't figure out what to ask for, or that SBC refused to cooperate fully. I think it's great that Mitnick gets some positive press and furthers the idea of white hat operations, but the more disturbing thing this story illuminates is how totally inept law enforcement is when it comes to tech issues.
The boy didn't even employ anything creative or hacker-like. He just dialed a number on his phone, and the authorities needed an ex-con hacker to help them with this?
I think stories like this call attention to the fact that there is a *desperate* need for more training of law enforcement people in tech issues.
First the detective tries this: "When the detective served a search warrant on SBC Ameritech for the source of the calls, the phone company came up dry."
Then after he talks to Mitnick and gives a more specific request: "This time, SBC tracked the calls as far as cell phone carrier Sprint PCS, and identified the specific trunks on which the calls entered the local phone network."
Why does SBC need the help of an ex-hacker to come up with the right terminology to search its own system for evidence of crime? Do phone companies treat law enforcement with the same dull contempt that they do their regular customers?
I can just imagine: "Thank you for calling SBC Ameritech's search warrant compliance department. Please listen carefully to the following options, as they have recently changed. Press 1 if you are tracking an obscene phone caller. Press 2 if you are tracking a bomber. beep Thank you. Please press 1 if the bomber is threatening a commercial address. Press 2 if the bomber is threatening a residential address. beep...."
Kevin may have gained a lot of fame for being so successful, but it's not as if he's the most technically proficient hacker of all time.
I wouldn't run away and hide, or anything like that, I'd just be very paranoid when my bank phones me up and says they need my SS# and CC# because their records have been lost...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
What I find particularly disturbing is why the TelCo people weren't more involved. I mean:
..., there it is!
What happened: Officer: I need this TelCo: Searching... Nothing.. Try Again...
Instead of what should have happened: Officer: We need to catch this haxor TelCo: Ok,
I, on the other hand, am glad that the telephone company is not being randomly helpful, but insisting that the police go through proper channels before handing out call trace information.
Perhaps they could have told him what to ask for. But I prefer that they err on the side of citizen privacy and let the police learn to do their job through their own methods (as this officer did), rather than spending their resources (and raising customer bills) leading every nosy cop through the procedure by hand, thus encouraging its constant use for ever smaller issues and possibly giving them incorrect legal advice in the process.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
No, Mitnick never caused harm or did anything destructive like this. Bomb threats are MUCH worse than being a jerk.
Lindows Steals Copyrighted Art and Promotes Porn
Reminds me of the movie, "Catch me if You Can" (based on a true story). I thought it would be a horrible movie because of Leonardo DeCaprio, but his acting was great. Tom Hanks was not slouch either.
Anyways, the basic plot of the movie is that Leo is the world's most infamous check counterfeiter. Eventually he turns over to the "good guys" and joins Tom Hanks at the end of the movie. Today he provides most of the security to checks.
So you think you know a situation that you obviously know nothing about, based on this guy not knowing anything about the situation?
I'm so fucking sick of people dismissing rape claims because there are those who cry wolf.
(And here's a fucking novel idea - how about guys treat girls with respect and not as pieces of meat? Or how about girls get taught to respect themselves and not GO to frat parties and get trashed while wearing as little as possible?)
Ugh.
Cue Websters:
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Main Entry: 1funny
Pronunciation: 'f&-nE
Function: adjective
Inflected Form(s): funnier; -est
1 a : affording light mirth and laughter : AMUSING b : seeking or intended to amuse : FACETIOUS
2 : differing from the ordinary in a suspicious, perplexing, quaint, or eccentric way : PECULIAR -- often used as a sentence modifier (funny, things didn't turn out the way we planned)
3 : involving trickery or deception (told his prisoner not to try anything funny)
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It was funny.
Or how about girls get taught to respect themselves and not GO to frat parties and get trashed while wearing as little as possible
Speaking as a guy, girls should be able to wear as little as they want to the frat party, and still beat the guys off with nothing more than saying "no": how they dress is NO excuse for a guy acting as anything other than a gentleman. (Remember, even if she's wandering around naked, you have to ask politely "Do you mind if I grope your tits?" before trying it.)
On the other hand, if they choose to drink or do drugs, they should do so willing to accept responsibility for anything they do while under the influence, whether it's spraypainting their name on a wall, driving their car into a wall, or screwing some random stranger.
How about guys treat girls with respect and not as pieces of meat?
Assholes get attention; they may be slapped more often, but if they don't have a specific target for their pickup attempts, they have good chance of getting laid, too.
Nice guys don't get slapped, but they not only don't get laid, they also don't get much in the way of moderate freindly attention from either specific or general targets as encouragement either-- they mostly get ignored.
Ergo, agressive behavior by guys is more socially rewarding in the near term, and civilized behavior is extensively under-rewarded.
Behavior that is rewarded is more often repeated; behavior that is unrewarded is less often repeated. Do the math, and you get both the "nice guys finish last" and the "guys treat girls like pieces of meat" conditions. The corollaries of how this can be changed are left as an exercise for the student.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.