Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [170]
The email message noted that the conference’s account was taking up more than 150 megabytes on the Well’s servers. Koball checked the account and discovered that none of the files belonged to CFP. Looking at files that contained emails, he saw that all were addressed to tsutomu@sdsc.com.
That night Koball looked at his next-day edition of the New York Times and saw a page-one story in the Business section by John Markoff, under the headline “Taking a Computer Crime to Heart.” The story included this:
It was as if the thieves, to prove their prowess, had burglarized the locksmith. Which was why Tsutomu Shimomura, the keeper of the keys in this case, was taking the break-in as a personal affront—and why he considers solving the crime a matter of honor.
Mr. Shimomura, one of the country’s most skilled computer security experts, was the person who prompted a Government computer agency to issue a chilling warning on Monday. Unknown intruders, the agency warned, had used a sophisticated break-in technique to steal files from Mr. Shimomura’s own well-guarded computer in his home near San Diego.
The next day, Koball phoned Markoff, who put him in touch with Shimmy. It didn’t take long to confirm that most of the mysterious files stored in the CFP account were from the Christmas Day attack on Shimmy’s computers. This was his first big break. Now he had a lead to follow.
Around this same time, my cousin Mark Mitnick, whom I had become close to, was going to be vacationing at Hilton Head, South Carolina, with his father. Mark invited me to join them.
Mark was running a company in Sacramento called Ad Works, and had offered to help me get set up on the East Coast using the same business model. He provided businesses like major supermarkets with free cash-register tape, which was printed on the back with ads; Mark earned his money by finding companies that would pay to have their ads on the back of the tape. I needed a steady income, and the idea of having my cousin Mark help me get started in my own business sounded very attractive, even though it wasn’t computer-related.
We met in Raleigh and drove through several cities on our way to Hilton Head so he could make a number of sales calls. He invited me along to teach me the business. I liked the idea of always being on the move because it would make me harder to find.
I would have enjoyed our trip more if it hadn’t been for an item that turned up during one of my routine online checks for any indication that the Feds were getting closer to me. There were stories all over the media about a press release just issued by the U.S. Department of Justice. The title of one story was, “U.S. Hunts Master Computer Cracker.” In part, it read:
WASHINGTON, DC, U.S.A., 1995 JAN 26 (NB)—The U.S. Marshals Service is on the trail of a computer hacker who disappeared after being convicted of one electronic crime and charged with another. Authorities say they are trying to locate Kevin David Mitnick, 31, originally from Sepulveda, California. Deputy U.S. Marshal Kathleen Cunningham told Newsbytes the Marshals Service had a probation violation warrant for Mitnick since November 1992, and almost caught up with him in Seattle last October. Cunningham said Mitnick is a ham radio enthusiast and is believed to use a scanner to keep track of police in the area where he is hiding. “[Local police] didn’t use radio security so as soon as his address was mentioned he was out of there. He just left everything.” Mitnick is considered an expert at gaining control of computers to monitor or use communications systems and knows how to manufacture false identities using computers.
This hit me like a ton of bricks. I was surprised, shocked, and in near panic. The Feds and the media had