Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick was born in 1963 in Los Angeles California. His parents divorced when he was young so he had a lonely life while his mother worked as a waitress to support them. He was unpopular until he discovered his aptitude for computer programming. His “career” began as a teenager when he learned to get free bus tickets, then progressed to a telephone phreaker, and ultimately to a notorious and elusive computer hacker.
In his teens, he joined a local phone phreak gang who met regularly and planned pranks. As a telephone phreak he was able to overtake a phone a company switch to make personal calls and to eavesdrop on phone calls. In 1981, Mitnick was among a group of telephone phreakers who physically broke into Pacific Bell’s phone center; and they stole operating manuals for the phone company’s mainframe system, lists of computer passwords, and door lock combinations. Luckily for Mitnick, he was just 17 when he was arrested and only sentenced to three months in juvenile detention and one year of probation.
In 1983, Mitnick used a computer at the University of Southern California to access ARPanet. ARPanet was the one of the first networks that used packet switching networks, the first network to implement TCP/IP and was the predecessor for what we now know as the Internet. Through his ARPanet access he was able to break into the Pentagon. Though he was legally an adult, for this offense, Mitnick received another light sentence of just six months at another juvenile prison.
In 1987, Mitnick is again arrested and convicted for stealing software from the Santa Cruz Operation. He was sentenced to three years of probation without any jail time. Perhaps because Mitnick’s punishments were never severe, hi...
... middle of paper ...
...how the combination of social engineering and social networking have made hacking, or in these cases, cracking, easier, “I can go into LinkedIn and search for network engineers and come up with a list of great spear-phishing targets because they usually have administrator rights over the network. Then I go onto Twitter or Facebook and trick them into doing something, and I have privileged access. If I know you love Angry Birds, maybe I would send you an e-mail purporting to be from Angry Birds with a new pro version. Once you download it, I could have complete access to everything on your phone.” (1)
Mitnick’s crime’s may have seemed exceptional at the time, but the evolution of technology and social media since his 1999 conviction has increased the opportunities for more less skilled crackers with malicious intent to cause far more harm than Kevin Mitnick ever did.
James T. Johnson was a young man who had a good job working as a construction worker. Although, he had a job and worked every day he still lived at home with his mother. Furthermore, he was the type of young man who went to work on time and after work he would come home. Unfortunately, there were occasions where he would go out with a few of his co-workers on a Friday he still came home afterwards. Nevertheless, he was hiding a secret from his mother that later led to him being arrested. Now, rather than James uses his money he had earned from working, he burglarized homes and garages in the communities in his area. After burglarizing these homes he would then sell the items he had stolen via the internet or a pawn shop in two different counties.
A question all parents, and some elder siblings, ask at some point is, “when should I let Jr. stand on his own?” and while it was only a case of bureaucracy not being equipped to quickly respond to a situation, this lack of response forced a man out of his comfort zone, gave him something to care about, and eventually made for an interesting book. It could even be hypothesized that Cliff’s decision to marry was aided by the paradigm shift he experienced during the course of his hacker chase (Stoll 356). The delay of intervention on the part of the government agencies forced Cliff Stoll to leave the sidelines of his life, take responsibility, and become "pro-active–almost rabid–about computer security” (370).
Kevin Mitnick has led a life of crime since a very young age. At age 12, Mitnick figured out how to hack into and change the L.A. Bus System’s punch cards. While Mitnick was hacked into the L.A.’s bus system he reverse-engineered the system allowing him to cheat the bus system and ride for free (Brown). That wasn’t enough for the young Mitnick though. With the age of growing technology, computers started becoming more popular. At age 16 Mitnick started hanging out with a group of adolescences that were involved in tapping into different systems, rerouting numbers, and high tech phone pranks (Brown). One prank that Mitnick and his friends use to pull on a regular basis was hacking into the phone directory (411), and when people would call they would come up with a bogus or fake number to tell the callers. Although this was a “harmless” prank it was still illegal. “Mitnick continually worked on perfecting his hacking techniques. “Mitnick pioneered the art of "Social Engineering," a technique that involves using "...
Hill, a 32-year-old resident of Benton, Arkansas, stands accused by a federal court of ‘attempted trafficking of access devices,’ which is a legal way of saying he was caught attempting to sell Social Security numbers and other similar identifying information. He did this with the use of s server he stole, and with access to the network that the server worked on. In a news release, Cody Hiland,
In this book Sterling discusses three cyberspace subcultures known as the hacker underworld, the realm of the cyber cops, and the idealistic culture for the cyber civil libertarians. At the beginning of the story Sterling starts out with discussing the birth of cyberspace and how it came about. The Hacker Crackdown informs the readers of the issues surrounding computer crime and the people on all sides of those problems. Sterling gives a brief summary of what cyberspace meant back then and how it impacted society, and he investigates the past, present and future of computer crimes. For instance he explains how the invention of the telephone led to a world that people were scared of because the telephone was something that was able to let people talk to one another without actually being in the same area. People thought that it was so strange and so different because they didn’t understand all of the information behind it. Back then people thought of the telephone as a tool that allowed others to talk to them in a way that was so personal yet impersonal. Sterling then goes on to explain how “phone phreaks” played such an important part in relating the telephones to computer crimes and how they were so closely related back then.
The documentary Rise of the Hackers, focuses on the rising criminal use of hacking and how it is effecting multiple areas of technology. The documentary describes simple and complicated situations concerning hacking, but there still questions that must be answered when it comes to hacking and crime. The main question is in trying to determine why a person would choose to commit computer hacking. There are various theories already present within the criminal justice system that may explain at a micro-level and macro-level. These theories would explain why offenders would commit the crimes, but it may not answer the full scope of the question. The Routine Activities Theory would help to explain why offenders offend, why victims are victimized,
Naidu, Prasant. "Are Social Networks Exploiting Our Security?" Lighthouse Insights. Lighthouse Insights, 7 June 2012. Web. 3 Nov. 2015.
Social Engineering: What It Is and How to Help Protect Yourself. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.microsoft.com/security/resources/socialengineering-whatis.aspx
Also the fact that Kevin Mitnick hacked into computer systems, but never did anything for personal gain, is not sufficient to say that he is innocent. Every time that he was apprehended by the FBI, he pleaded guilty and was prosecuted accordingly, but this did not prevent him from committing the crime over and over again.
Steve Wozniak's childhood had a big effect on his revolutionary developments in the computer world. Wozniak grew up in Sunnyvale California. His family lived in a development built for Lockheed engineers like his father. (Rose, 26) As a teenager he w During his high school years, Wozniak was a prankster and was once suspended for placing a metronome disguised as a bomb in a friends locker. (Brodhagen, 1) The more serious side of Wozniak loved electronics and spent one day a week working at Sylvania Electronics, where Wozniak's love for computers grew. Wozniak was working with electronics from an early age.
In the text the character named Bobby Quine is a specialist in software, but before he retires from hacking, he has been looking for one last big job.Which is why he uses his software abilities to steal from the big crime boss, Chrome. Another character within t...
Kevin Mitnick, a hacker who has yet to have a harsh punishment when caught, can somehow lower his punishment for his hacking crimes down to a couple months probation. When Kevin was seventeen, he was caught for breaking into a phone center in Los Angeles. He was tried and sentenced to three months stay in a juvenile detention center and a year probation.
One of the things though is that we don’t only see schemes on social networks it could happen on any site that requires you to share information. Things like online shopping require you to share some of your personal information along with your bank information so if the site doesn’t have a strong security system it can have consequences. There are intelligent hacker1s and scammers that can breach the security system and steal your bank information. Three simple steps such as typing your name, birthdate, and zip code is more than enough for someone to try and steal your identity or use your information to their advantage. Theodore Claypoole in “Privacy and Social Media” said how the United States is trying its best to pass laws and keep up to date with new software in order to help protect people from falling into the realms of cyber criminals (Privacy and Social Media). As time passes technology is advancing and sharing our information is becoming easier, so it’s necessary for our security software to be up to
The Art of exploring various security breaches is termed as Hacking.Computer Hackers have been around for so many years. Since the Internet became widely used in the World, We have started to hear more and more about hacking. Only a few Hackers, such as Kevin Mitnick, are well known.In a world of Black and White, it’s easy to describe the typical Hacker. A general outline of a typical Hacker is an Antisocial, Pimple-faced Teenage boy. But the Digital world has many types of Hackers.Hackers are human like the rest of us and are, therefore, unique individuals, so an exact profile is hard to outline.The best broad description of Hackers is that all Hackers aren’t equal. Each Hacker has Motives, Methods and Skills. But some general characteristics can help you understand them. Not all Hackers are Antisocial, PimplefacedTeenagers. Regardless, Hackers are curious about Knowing new things, Brave to take steps and they areoften very Sharp Minded..
This project was originally conducted under the Advanced Research Projects Agency to counteract the USSR’s launch of the Sputnik. After the creation it had been called the Arpanet, and would be used specifically for government networks until the early 90’s. In 1990 the World Wide Web had been created as an online public network for everyday civilians to use.