Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [32]
Ariel and I eventually became friends.
The Computer Learning Center had an inducement it used for signing up students: a number of high-profile companies made a practice of hiring its graduates. And one of them was Bonnie’s employer, GTE, my hacking target for so many years. How fantastic was that!?
After interviewing with GTE’s IT Department, I was brought back for an interview with three people from Human Resources, then offered a job as a programmer. Dreams really did come true! No more hacking for me—I wouldn’t need it. I’d be getting paid for doing what I loved, at the place I loved doing it.
The job began with employee orientation to teach new hires about the names and functions of all the different GTE computer systems. Hello! It was a telephone company: I could have been teaching the classes. But of course I sat there taking notes like everyone else.
Cool new job, a daily quick stroll to the cafeteria for lunch with my girlfriend, a legitimate paycheck—I had it made. Walking through the offices, I’d smile at the hundreds of usernames and passwords that were right in front of my nose, written out on Post-it notes. I was like a reformed drunk on a Jack Daniel’s distillery tour, confident but nearly dizzy from imagining “What if?”
Bonnie and I would regularly have lunch with a friend of hers, a guy from their Security Department. I was always careful to turn my ID badge around; he obviously hadn’t caught my full name when we were introduced, so why let him read it on my badge like a billboard flashing “Phone Company Public Enemy #1”?
Altogether, this was one of the coolest times of my whole life—who needed hacking?
But only a week after I started, my new boss dropped a bomb on me. He handed me a security form for an all-access badge that would grant me entry to the data center twenty-four/seven, since I would be on call for emergencies. Immediately, I knew I was going to get canned; as soon as staff from GTE Security looked at my form, they’d recognize my name and wonder how I had bypassed all of their security checks and actually been hired—as a programmer, no less.
A couple of days later, I went to work with a bad gut feeling. Later that morning, my supervisor sent for me, and his boss, Russ Trombley, handed me my paycheck plus severance pay, saying he had to let me go because my references had not checked out. An obvious ruse. I had provided the names only of people who would say good things about me.
I was escorted back to my desk to gather my personal effects. Within minutes, a posse from Security showed up, including the guy who had been having lunch with Bonnie and me. A couple of them started searching my box of floppies for any company property. Whatever. There was none, just legitimate software. The whole posse walked me to the door and all the way to my car. As I drove off into the distance, I glanced in my rearview mirror. They were all waving good-bye.
My career at GTE had lasted a total of nine days.
I heard later that the guys from Pacific Bell Security razzed the hell out of their buddies at GTE, thinking it was hilarious that any company could be stupid enough to hire the notorious phone phreaker Kevin Mitnick—whom Pacific Bell had been keeping a file on for years.
One step back and one step forward. A Computer Learning Center instructor who also worked at Security Pacific National Bank as an Information Security Specialist suggested I apply for a job there. Over a period of weeks, I had three sets of interviews, the last one with a vice president of the bank. Then a fairly lengthy wait. Finally the phone call came: “One of the other candidates has a college degree, but we’ve decided you’re the person we want.