Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [195]
One of the landmark moments in my life after prison had to be the day when I was finally allowed to use computers again, eight years after I was first arrested. It was a festive day filled with family and friends from all over the world.
A live cable TV show called The Screen Savers, with Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton, asked to televise my first interaction with the Internet.
On the show with me were Eric Corley, who had headed up the “Free Kevin” movement and repeatedly proved himself to be my staunchest supporter, and Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple, who had become one of my closest friends. They both came on to “help” me navigate online after so many years away.
As a surprise, the Woz presented me with a brand-new Apple PowerBook G4 wrapped in paper covered with a funny cartoon of a guy trying to reach a computer with a stick through the bars of his jail cell. In many ways, getting that laptop from the father of the personal computer was the moment I knew my life was finally starting to turn around.
It has now been eleven years since I walked out of prison. I’ve built a consulting practice that provides a steady flow of business. It has taken me to every part of the United States and every continent except Antarctica.
My work today is, to me, nothing short of a miracle. Try to name some illegal activity that, with permission, can be carried out legitimately and benefit everyone. Only one comes to mind: ethical hacking.
I went to prison for my hacking. Now people hire me to do the same things I went to prison for, but in a legal and beneficial way.
I would never have expected it, but in the years since my release, I’ve served as a keynote speaker at countless industry events and corporate meetings, written for the Harvard Business Review, and addressed students and faculty at the Harvard Law School. Whenever some hacker makes the news, I’m asked to comment on Fox, CNN, or other news media. I’ve appeared on 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, and many, many other programs. I’ve even been hired by government agencies like the FAA, the Social Security Administration, and—despite my criminal history—an FBI organization, InfraGard.
People often ask if I’ve completely kicked the hacking habit.
Often I still keep hackers’ hours—up late, eating breakfast when everyone else has already finished lunch, busy on my computer until three or four in the morning.
And I am hacking again… but in a different way. For Mitnick Security Consulting LLC, I do ethical hacking—using my hacking skills to test companies’ security defenses by identifying weaknesses in their physical, technical, and human-based security controls so they can shore up their defenses before the bad guys exploit them. I do this for companies around the globe, and have been giving some fifteen to twenty corporate keynotes a year. My firm also vets security products for companies before new items are released to the market, to see if they live up to the claims being made for them. My company also provides security awareness training primarily focusing on mitigating the threat of social-engineering attacks.
What I do now fuels the same passion for hacking I felt during all those years of unauthorized access. The difference can be summed up in one word: authorization.
I don’t need authorization to get in.
It’s the word that instantly transforms me from the World’s Most Wanted Hacker to one of the Most Wanted Security Experts in the world. Just like magic.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
From Kevin Mitnick
This book is dedicated to my loving mother, Shelly Jaffe, and my grandmother Reba Vartanian, who both sacrificed a great deal for me all my life. No matter what situation I got myself into,