Kevin David Mitnick: Who is the World No 1 hacker in the world?

Kevin David Mitnick is someone who had family troubles as a child. His parents separated when he was very young and he had a very poor relationship with his father. It can not be said that they have a regular life, as their mother makes a living by working as a waitress in restaurants and they change places frequently. Of course, these changes caused Kevin's environment to change constantly. With the conditions brought by this, Mitnick has started to communicate too much on the phone. This being the case, Kevin David Mitnick has learned phone systems much better.

It's 1978 when Kevin Mitnick was dealing with amateur radio, he was also dealing with telephone systems. Meanwhile, he met three other people who were interested in telephone systems and formed a team: Roscue, Roscue's girlfriend Susan, Steven and Kevin.

This team knew a lot about telephone systems, even better than telecom technicians. After this system part of the work we talked about, social engineering comes into play. Social engineering itself is another matter. Those who are curious can see more or less what happened by watching the movie "Who Am I" or reading Kevin David Mitnick's book Deception.

The team did not use the information they obtained for money, they were content with breaking into systems and collecting people's information. The weird part was that they were having fun with them. But after a while, his interests gradually shifted from phones to computers.

It didn't take long for the cracks to start when the team was crowded and when there were bilateral relations involved. When Roscue and Susan broke up, Susan wanted revenge and turned things upside down. He even pushed it even harder, reporting Roscue to the workplace, causing him to be fired. Of course, Kevin Mitnick was also affected by all this. Susan began tapping on Kevin and Roscue's phones. It was not at all difficult for him to do this to try to gather evidence against them. When Kevin realized that he was being listened to, he entered the exchange and prevented his own phone from being found. Susan was not content to tell the police what Kevin and Roscue had done and demanded protection.

In 1981, Kevin and his team targeted the COSMOS headquarters, a database application used by telephone companies of Pacific Bell, which has many systems installed around the country. They took things even further and stole several COSMOS manuals from a manager's office. Realizing the situation, the authorities immediately informed the police, and it did not take long for the police to find the culprits, according to Susan's statement. Following this situation, an arrest warrant was issued for Kevin and Roscue. After being caught, Mitnick pleaded guilty to both crimes and was given a 90-day review and 1-year probation.

Kevin was continuing to hack into phone and computer systems where he left off with a friend named Lenny. The two most enjoyed accessing university computers. They were even caught one day trying to hack into university computers. Kevin was released in 1983 after 6 months in a correctional facility.

After Mitnick got out, he did a big job gaining access to NSA (National Security Agency) computers. Thus, he gathered a lot of information about the people of Los Angeles with the data he obtained.

Kevin wanted to do bigger and bigger things day by day, but Lenny didn't want to go on with it any longer so he went to the police. He told the police everything he did with Kevin, and they set up Kevin with the police. In 1988, Kevin Mitnick was arrested again and again in court, pleading guilty to several crimes and apologizing, promising not to do it again. Considering his good behavior, he was released in 1990 before the end of his sentence.

The FBI did not believe these apologies and promises and hired another hacker, Justin Petersan, to follow Mitnick. Justin befriended Kevin and Roscue, who started a regular life. Together, the three of them gained access to many computers, establishing trust in each other. Kevin realized Justin's situation (he was an FBI guy) a little late. That's why Kevin Mitnick faced a re-arrest warrant for violating his parole. This time, rather than going to jail, he started to escape in an interesting way. He was constantly changing cities and credit cards, but he never stopped hacking into computers.

Kevin did a lot of work while touring the town and again an arrest warrant was issued for him. This time he thought of saving himself by escaping to the city of Raleigh (USA, North Carolina).

Kevin hit rough weather: Tsutomu Shimomura, an astrophysicist. Overly fond of computers and a real expert in security, Shimomura got so angry that his computer had been accessed and started investigating who had done it. He had suspected Kevin before but later became completely sure it was him. Finally, he wanted to put an end to this by reporting Kevin to the police and getting him arrested.

Kevin Mitnick in 1995; was found guilty of intruding into the computer networks of companies such as Fujitsu, Motorola, and Sun Microsystems. As a result, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison. In 2000, he was released on the condition of not touching the computer and the phone. In 2003, this ban was completely lifted.

Kevin David Mitnick, also known as the lost child of the virtual world, is currently an information technology consultant. He has also written several books:

General source for the above information: Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hacker on the Computer Frontier, Revised by Katie Hafner and John Markoff.