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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.

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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More quotes by Kevin Mitnick

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But a lot of businesses out there don't see the return on investment, they look at it as a liability, and until they can understand that proactive security actually returns, gives them a return on investment, it's still a hard sell for people.
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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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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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.
Kevin Mitnick
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The key to social engineering is influencing a person to do something that allows the hacker to gain access to information or your network.
Kevin Mitnick
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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
Kevin Mitnick
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The Americans are the most gullible, because they don't like to deny co-workers' requests.
Kevin Mitnick
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Social engineers veil themselves in a cloak of believability.
Kevin Mitnick
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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.
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.
Kevin Mitnick
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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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I got so passionate about technology. Hacking to me was like a video game. It was about getting trophies. I just kept going on and on, despite all the trouble I was getting into, because I was hooked.
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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The hacker mindset doesn't actually see what happens on the other side, to the victim.
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.
Kevin Mitnick
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I trust online banking. You know why? Because if somebody hacks into my account and defrauds my credit card company, or my online bank account, guess who takes the loss? The bank, not me.
Kevin Mitnick
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Oracle, for example, has even hired people to dumpster dive for information about its competitor, Microsoft. It's not even illegal, because trash isn't covered by data secrecy laws.
Kevin Mitnick
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You can never protect yourself 100%. What you do is protect your self as much as possible and mitigate risk to an acceptable degree. You can never remove all risk.
Kevin Mitnick
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Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple Inc, which set the computing world on its ear with the Macintosh in 1984.
Kevin Mitnick
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New security loopholes are constantly popping up because of wireless networking. The cat-and-mouse game between hackers and system administrators is still in full swing.
Kevin Mitnick