Andy
Stoneberg
EDP
180, Fall, 2001
Individual
Presentation: Kevin Mitnick
Introduction
Originally, I had
planned on researching George Lucas as my creative genius. I am in love with the Star Wars saga,
but I really could not get interested in George Lucas. Then, late one night, I saw a movie
called Takedown. It was
based on a true story that dealt with the pursuit and capture of Kevin Mitnick,
one of the most infamous computer hackers of all time. I was instantly amazed. As soon as the movie was over, I began
scouring the internet looking for information concerning him. I am quite interested in computers, and
Mitnick’s mastery of them drew me towards him. I knew then that he was who I wanted to research.
His creativity
encompasses a wide range of skills.
Obviously, his mastery of computer and telephone systems deals with the
Mathematical/Logical domain. Also,
he is talented at acquiring information from people, which is an intrapersonal
skill. Plus, he is strongly
self-motivated and that deals with the interpersonal domain. This combination of skills elevated him
to be one of the best hackers the world has ever seen.
I have a great deal of
respect for Kevin Mitnick because he is able to use a computer creatively to
acquire whatever he wants to know.
In a way, I wish I could be like him. A computer is such a valuable asset, but many times it is
not close to being used to its full potential. Kevin Mitnick realized this, and put his computer to maximum
usage. However, it is unfortunate
that what he did was against the law.
Due to this, I really cannot consider him a role model. I have no desire to risk going to jail
over a computer-related crime.
Even so, there is still a great amount of potential within Mitnick. Since he knows so much about breaking
into computers, he could use that knowledge when he gets out of jail to design
security systems that would be almost impenetrable. He knows all the tricks of the trade on how to tap into
someone’s system. It is this insight that could enable him to design a
nearly full-proof security system.
Only time will tell what happens with Mitnick in the future. I can assure you he will still have an
impact on the computer world. Now,
it is time to take a look at Mitnick’s life, and how it relates to the
model with which Gardner presented us.
Life
and Times of Kevin Mitnick:
The
Beginning
Kevin David Mitnick was
born in 1964. At the age of three,
his parents divorced. His father
left and was never an influence in Kevin’s life. He lived with his mother, Shelly
Jaffee, while he was growing up.
This lack of a father figure is typical in most people who are computer
hackers. His mother worked at as a
waitress while Mitnick was growing up.
They lived in the Los Angeles suburb of Sepulveda. It was in the late 70’s that
Mitnick reached his adolescence.
At this time, the personal computing industry was exploding beyond its
simple hobbyist roots. Mitnick was
attending Monroe High School when he first discovered his love for
computers. He soon got into trouble
for tapping into the Los Angeles School District’s computer network. Shortly thereafter, Mitnick fell into a
group of underground “phone phreaks” who regularly met in a
dilapidated pizza parlor in Hollywood.
They were known as the Roscoe Gang and were even included in a cover
story for the LA Weekly. They
spent most of their time illegally mastering the inner workings of the
telephone switching system. It was
not long before Mitnick’s mastering of computer networks and telephone
systems got him into a great deal of trouble. His life would never be the same again.
The
Infamy Starts
As a teenager, Mitnick
hooked his computer up to a modem and tapped into a North American Air Defense
Command computer. This
foreshadowed the movie “War Games,” in 1983. Also, he gained control of three
telephone company central offices in Manhattan and all the phone switching
centers located in California, and was able to listen in on calls. Plus, he secretly read the electronic
mail of computer security experts working for MCI Communications and Digital
Equipment. This gave him valuable
insight on how the companies’ computers and phone equipment were
protected. Later on, these
companies claimed Mitnick caused them $4 million in damages and stole $1
million worth of software. These
illegal activities climaxed when, at the age of 17, Mitnick successfully
cracked Pacific Bell’s computer system. Using a computer hooked up to a pay phone in San Fernando
Valley, he was able to change telephone bills, access other computers, and
siphon out $200,000 in information and services. Unfortunately, Susan Thunder, one of the leaders of the
Roscoe Gang, squealed to officials about Mitnick’s PacBell hack, and
Mitnick was arrested. After the
trial, Mitnick, who was still a juvenile, was sentenced to get a ninety day
diagnostic study by the juvenile justice system plus a year probation. Most people at this point would be
deterred from further illegal activities, but this was not the case with
Mitnick. He adopted
“Condor” as his hacker ID, named after the Robert Redford movie Three
Days of the Condor. The movie
deals with a CIA researcher who uses his experiences as an Army signal corpsman
to control the phone systems and avoid capture. This is strikingly similar to Mitnick later on his in life
A
Life of Crime
The year following his
PacBell hack, Mitnick became friends with a man named Lenny DiCicco. They entered the University of Southern
California, and soon began hacking using the student computers on campus. Again, Mitnick got himself into trouble
because of his computer activities.
Using the university computers, he was able to gain illegal access to
the ARPAnet. Campus police caught
him red-handed in a campus terminal room breaking into a Pentagon computer
using ARPAnet. For violating his
probation, he was sentenced to six months at the California Youth
Authority’s Karl Holton Training School, which was a juvenile prison in
California. Showing his sense of
humor, on his release, he obtained license plate the read “X
HACKER” but that was far from the truth. He was still very much involved in the computer hacking
scene. After accusations that he
was involved in tampering with a TRW credit reference computer, he went
underground for over a year and was not heard from.
In 1987, Mitnick
resurfaced and appeared to try to get a grip on his life. He began seeing a woman. They enrolled
in a computer class at a local vocational school. He worked at various computer programming jobs to make ends
meet. However, his love for
hacking soon drew him back into unlawful actions. He began using illegal telephone credit card numbers, which
subsequently led police to the apartment he was sharing with his girlfriend in
Thousand Oaks, California. He was
found guilty for stealing software from the Santa Cruz Operation, a software
company, in December of 1987, and sentenced to 36 months probation. Once again, he had been caught by the
law only to get off with a slap on the wrist. This greatly increased his ego and his sense of invulnerability.
Shortly thereafter, in
1988, Mitnick was back at it again.
He teamed up with his friend Lenny DiCicco again and they began
electronically attacking Digital Equipment’s Palo Alto research
laboratory. Mitnick had his eyes
set on obtaining a version of Digital’s VMS minicomputer operating
system, and was trying to access it via the company’s corporate computer
network, Easynet. Every night,
Mitnick and DiCicco would launch modem-based attacks from a small Calabasas,
California company at which DiCicco was employed with a computer support
job. Security experts working for
Digital were immediately aware of the attacks, but Mitnick has mastered the
telephone operating system. He
manipulated the telephone network’s switching system to mislead authorities
as to his whereabouts. Mitnick
easily frustrated local police and the FBI. He routinely operated with two different computers - one to
hack into Digital Equipment, and one to monitor his trackers to see if they
were closing in on his location. On
one occasion, a squad of law enforcement agents and telephone security
officials believed to have pinpointed Mitnick’s hideout, only to discover
he had misled them to an apartment in Malibu.
Even so,
Mitnick’s plan was far from perfect. While he and DiCicco were trying to break into Digital,
Mitnick was harassing DiCicco by calling his employer and saying DiCicco was in
trouble concerning the Internal Revenue Service. Once DiCicco discovered Mitnick was behind this prank, he
became frustrated and confessed of Mitnick’s activities to his boss. His boss immediately alerted the FBI
and DEC, and soon Mitnick wound up in a federal court in Los Angeles. DEC claimed that Mitnick had stolen
several million dollars worth of software and cost the company $200,000 in
trying to keep him out of their computer systems. Once again, Mitnick was able to plead the charges down and
pled guilty to one count of computer fraud and one count of possessing illegal
long-distance access codes.
This marked the fifth
time Mitnick had been apprehended for a computer-related crime. The case attracted national attention
due to an unusual plea bargain.
Mitnick agreed to serve one year in prison, and then attend a six month
seminar to help him overcome his “computer addiction.” Mitnick’s lawyer convinced the
judge there was a psychological parallel between Mitnick’s obsession for
computers and a junkie’s craving for illegal substances.
Upon completing his
jail sentence and counseling program, Mitnick moved to Las Vegas and took a
position as a low-level computer programmer for a mailing list company. Then, in early 1992, Mitnick moved back
to the San Fernando Valley after his brother died of a heroine overdose. Briefly he met up with his father and worked
for him in construction. Then,
through a friend of his father’s, he took a job at the Tel Tec Detective
Agency. Almost immediately after
he began, someone was suspected of illegally using a commercial database system
on behalf of the company. Obviously,
Mitnick was thought to be behind this.
In September, Mitnick’s apartment was searched, as well as Susan
Thunder’s, an original member of the Roscoe Gang with whom Mitnick had
become reacquainted with. Two
months after the raid, a federal judge issued a warrant to arrest Mitnick for
violating his 1989 probation on two terms: illegally accessing a phone company
computer and associating with one of the people whom he had been originally
arrested in 1981. Some people
close to him claimed he was set up by the detective firm, but there was no hard
proof to this claim. However, when
the FBI came to arrest Mitnick, he had vanished. The same time Mitnick disappeared, the California Department
of Motor Vehicles issued a warrant for his arrest.
Using a valid law
enforcement requester code, someone attempted to have driver’s license
photographs of a police informer faxed to a studio near Los Angeles. The D.M.V. thought the request strange
and looked into it. They
discovered the fax number was really assigned to a Kinko’s copy shop
which they staked out. However,
the undercover agents didn’t see the suspect until he was going out the
door of the shop. They began
pursuit, and the person dropped the documents he had picked up and outran the
agents. Later, it was determined
that Kevin Mitnick’s fingerprints were all over the documents. Once again, Mitnick had evaded the
law. He was able to outsmart and
avoid the authorities for over one and a half years as they mounted a massive
manhunt. However, the next time
Mitnick resurfaced, it would be is downfall.
The
Downfall
Over Christmas in 1994,
Mitnick hacked into Tsutomu Shimomura’s computer system. At the time, Shimomura was a leading
security expert on computer systems.
His computer contained valuable information dealing with viruses and
weaknesses in existing operating systems.
However, Shimomura did not take this hack sitting down.
Before the break-in on
Shimomura’s computer, Mitnick was rumored to be in Seattle working as a
computer trouble-shooter. However,
he was soon on the move. This did
not deter Shimomura. In an
electronic cross-country pursuit that lasted two months, Tsutomu had tracked
him down to Raleigh, North Carolina.
On February 15, 1995, the FBI stormed Mitnick’s apartment to find
him on the computer searching for something.
Overall, Mitnick was
charged in North Carolina for 23 counts of access device fraud. He pled guilty to one count and had the
case consolidated to Los Angeles.
Once in California, he was charged with an additional 25 counts of
access device, wire, and computer fraud.
On March 16, 1999, Mitnick pled guilty to five of these counts, and two
additional counts from the Northern District of California. He was sentenced to serve 46 months of
imprisonment and serve three years probation, in addition to eight months
imprisonment for his North Carolina plea and 14 months for violating his
probation.
A
Free Man
On January
21, 2000, Mitnick, being eligible for early release, was released after serving
60 of his 68 month sentence.
Currently, he has 14 months left on his probation. Once his probationary period is over,
he will be released from the conditions of his supervised release that prohibit
him from using a computer and from acting as a consultant or advisor in any computer-related
subject.
Since his
release, Mitnick has had many new and magazine articles published about
him. He has participated in many
interviews dealing with issues concerning information security. He had also been featured in many
nationally broadcast television shows such as Court TV, Good Morning American,
60 Minutes, Headline News, Talkback Live, CNN’s Burden of Proof, and many
others. In addition, he has
written articles for Time Magazine, Newsweek, and 2600: The Hackers
Quarterly. Presently, Kevin
Mitnick is the host of Dark Side of the Internet, a radio program on KFI AM
640.
Relation to Gardner’s Model:
The Triad
Gardner
proposed a superstructure of three core elements needed to account for creative
activity. These elements are the relationship
between the child and the master, the relationship between the individual and
the work, and the relationship between the individual and other persons. Applying these to Mitnick, it is easy
to see why his creative genius strayed into the criminal world.
Much like
Einstein, Mitnick viewed the world through the eyes of a child. Even when he had mastered his domain,
he still loved to play pranks and yearned to learn more and push his limits. Also, he really didn’t have
anyone close to him that he could confide in and help him with his ideas. In addition, he was completely obsessed
with his work. He was always
scheming and planning his next course of action. The combination of his child-like mindset and his lack of
guidance makes it seem plausible that he could become involved in illegal
activities. He set no limitations
for himself, and had no one to hold him back. Plus, he was so driven with his work that he would take any
and all risks to accomplish his goals.
This is what made him possibly the best computer hacker the world has
ever seen.
Mastering His Domain
Kevin Mitnick
took that Logical/Mathematical field in a direction no one had firmly set foot
in. At the onset of the
“digital revolution” in the late 70’s, Mitnick used personal
computers and the telephone system as a way to enlighten himself to information
that was not readily available to the general public. He used this information to his personal gain. Primarily, it enabled him to outwit
authorities as they pursued him.
But also, he brought computer hacking into the mainstream of
America. His life story is
plastered all over the news and internet.
He stands as a role model for current computer hackers and the fame
which they can achieve. Kevin
Mitnick did to the world of computer hacking what Sigmund Freud did to
psychiatry.
Marginality
Kevin Mitnick
grew up and spent most of his adult life in or around Los Angeles,
California. California has always
been a diverse cultural setting in which many new ideas spring forth and grow. This can especially be said about the
computer industry. All major
computer companies sprang up around the West Coast, and can now be seen
centered in Silicon Valley. It is
hardly coincidental that the world’s most infamous computer hacker was
immersed in this atmosphere.
10 Year Creativity Rule
While Mitnick
has had many great personal accomplishments throughout his career, his two most
notable breakthroughs were the Pacific Bell and Tsutomu Shimomura hacks. The Pacific Bell hack occurred in 1981
and the Shimomura incident took place in 1994. Obviously, it can be seen these events were not 13 years
apart. However, Mitnick presents
an interesting perspective when looking at a creative genius. Gardner’s model does not properly
support the idea of a “criminally creative genius.” Mitnick was not a free man during the
whole 13 year period. For a
portion of that time, he was imprisoned and under probation. Legally, he was deterred from pursuing
his ideas. Taking this into
account, it can be postulated the his major accomplishments could have occurred
roughly within 10 years of each other if other factors had not prevented him.
Faustian Bargain
When
discussing how Gardner’s model applies to Mitnick, nothing is more
obvious than the Faustian Bargain struck by Mitnick. More than any other creative genius, Mitnick sacrificed much
for the gift he possessed. Because
what he believed in and excelled at was illegal, he had to give up his freedom
and hope for living a normal, successful life. He traded fame for infamy. Also, his drive made it nearly impossible to establish
healthy relationships with anyone.
Not many people could grasp what Mitnick understood, so it was hard for
him to communicate with anyone.
Plus, he was constantly on the run from authorities. He was unable to
set up a permanent residence in which to surround himself with a familiar
atmosphere and close friends.
Whether or not you agree with Mitnick’s practices, he should be
respected for pursuing his dreams and not letting anything stop him from
achieving his goals.
Conclusion
Kevin Mitnick
is not your traditional creative genius.
His unorthodox approach to applying his creative gift is unlike any of
the methods employed by the creators Gardner reviewed in his book. This only helps to strengthen the
argument Gardner makes about a pattern between creative geniuses. Gardner could never have perceived
using his model to evaluate a criminal mastermind, yet it still was able to
breakdown Mitnick’s life and find bonds shared between him and all other
creative geniuses Gardner researched.
Resources
Books
Shimomura,
Tsutomu. Markoff, John.
(1995). Takedown. New York: Hyperion.
Web Links
http://www.kfi640.com/darkside.html