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Social engineering is using deception, manipulation and influence to convince a human who has access to a computer system to do something, like click on an attachment in an e-mail.

Kevin Mitnick

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Kevin Mitnick
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: August 6
Computer Scientist
Computer Security Consultant
Consultant
Security Hacker
Van Nuys
California
Marty
Kevin David Mitnick
The Condor
The Darkside Hacker
Kevin D. Mitnick
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Using
Clicks
Computer
Manipulation
Influence
Deception
System
Engineering
Social
Attachment
Human
Mail
Humans
Convince
Something
Access
Click

More quotes by Kevin Mitnick

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My argument is not that I shouldn't have been punished, but that the punishment didn't fit the crime.
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I think it goes back to my high school days. In computer class, the first assignment was to write a program to print the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead, I wrote a program that would steal passwords of students. My teacher gave me an A.
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Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls and secure access devices, and it's money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain: the people who use, administer and operate computer systems
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As a young boy, I was taught in high school that hacking was cool.
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Hackers are breaking the systems for profit. Before, it was about intellectual curiosity and pursuit of knowledge and thrill, and now hacking is big business.
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The human. Now you know all about your target
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I obtained confidential information in the same way government employees did, and I did it all without even touching a computer. ... I was so successful with this line of attack that I rarely had to go towards a technical attack.
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It’s actually a smarter crime because imagine if you rob a bank, or you’re dealing drugs. If you get caught you’re going to spend a lot of time in custody. But with hacking, it’s much easier to commit the crime and the risk of punishment is slim to none.
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For the average home-user, anti-virus software is a must.
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Social engineers veil themselves in a cloak of believability.
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Are hackers a threat? The degree of threat presented by any conduct, whether legal or illegal, depends on the actions and intent of the individual and the harm they cause.
Kevin Mitnick
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When I was in prison, a Colombian drug lord, offered me $5 million in cash to manipulate a computer system so that he would be released. I turned him down.
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My actions constituted pure hacking that resulted in relatively trivial expenses for the companies involved, despite the government's false claims.
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It's true, I had hacked into a lot of companies, and took copies of the source code to analyze it for security bugs. If I could locate security bugs, I could become better at hacking into their systems. It was all towards becoming a better hacker.
Kevin Mitnick
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A hacker doesnt deliberately destroy data or profit from his activities.
Kevin Mitnick
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I was addicted to hacking, more for the intellectual challenge, the curiosity, the seduction of adventure not for stealing, or causing damage or writing computer viruses.
Kevin Mitnick
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I made stupid decisions as a kid, or as a young adult, but I'm trying to be now, I'm trying to take this lemon and make lemonade.
Kevin Mitnick
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I could have evaded the FBI a lot longer if I had been able to control my passion for hacking.
Kevin Mitnick
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Social engineering is using manipulation, influence and deception to get a person, a trusted insider within an organization, to comply with a request, and the request is usually to release information or to perform some sort of action item that benefits that attacker.
Kevin Mitnick
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I use Mac. Not because it's more secure than everything else - because it is actually less secure than Windows - but I use it because it is still under the radar. People who write malicious code want the greatest return on their investment, so they target Windows systems. I still work with Windows in virtual machines.
Kevin Mitnick