How The FBI Caught The Hacker?

How The FBI Caught The Most Wanted Hacker?

How The FBI Caught The Most Wanted Hacker

Kevin Mitnick is considered one of the most wanted hackers of all time he toyed with society riding buses for free intercepting phone calls and manipulating McDonald's drive-thru speakers and of course gained unauthorized access to dozens of computer networks but he never hacked for money nor did anything malicious with the sensitive data he uncovered that’s why the FBI wanted to seek out him in order that they could bring him over to their side what percentage hacking tricks did he pull and did the FBI finally catch him let's determine from a young age you could tell that Kevin Mitnick had something special about him he'd found ways to manipulate the system and twist an arm here and there to get what he wanted at age 12back in 1975 while his schoolmates were paying for the bus he already found his first way to hack a society at the timeless Angeles Transit used a punch card system every time you wanted to ride the bus your ticket would get a very specific hole however he noticed that all of the bus drivers used the same hole puncher that was the only piece of information he needed with a smile on his face he managed to convince the bus driver that he was working on a school project and asked for a sample holepunch and the location of where he could buy his own puncher now with his very own hole puncher he went dumpster diving for unused transfer slips next to the bus company garage from then on the rode the bus for free the act of tricking the bus driver actually has a name it’s called social engineering and it's what psychologists used as a term to describe the manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information as it turns out Mitnick even in the tender preteen age was a master of it after he'd finished up making. 

The Los Angeles transit system his slave he migrated to a new form of social hacking phone phreaking with a pack before the internet was widely accessible telephones were one of the most commonly hacked technologies phone phreaking was particularly popular from the 60s through the 80s the hackers would learn how the phone operating systems worked and then find a way to exploit them phone freakery’s such as Kevin could collect sensitive phone numbers mask their own phone numbers and even charge the cost of their calls to complete strangers very sneaky Mitnick could take it one step further such an in-depth know-how of the phone systems that he could even imitate dial tones just by whistling so by making a few high-pitched squeaks he could make international phone calls without forking over a single penny even though he could use his societal and technological hacking abilities for all kinds of illegal activities in his teenage years he mostly used them for fun with the help of his friend Luis Kevin decided it would be a hoot to hack into a McDonald's drive-through speaker using a modified two-way radio he was able to override the system and instead of the drive-through speaker directing into the cashiers headset it directed into Kevin in the parked car across the street this meant that he could reply to the customers’ orders pretend to be the employees and play all kinds of pranks when the cashier realized that something fishy was going on he went out to investigate when peering into the speaker Kevin shouted through the radio what the hectare you looking at and as you'd expect the cashier got one mighty fright so as you’ve surely learned by now Kevin Mitnick was one talented youngster who had no problem taking plenty of pleasures by manipulating systems butler’s rewind for a second who was this guy where'd he come from and how did he learn about all these nifty hacks in the first place well we'll tell you he was born in Vannes which isn't too far from Hollywood he attended that James Monroe High School during which he became an amateur radio operator this first-hand experience in the radio room is what helped him to understand how electronic wavelengths and signals worked which correlated with the phone phreaking days the radio room would have also given him access to computer systems and software that the majority of teenagers in the world hadn't even heard of as technology advanced so did Mitnick skills it was1979 when he was just 16 years old that he gained his first unauthorized access to a computer network that network belonged to a company called Digital Equipment Corporation or Dec and he broke into their system and copied the company's software although this would come back to haunt him some nine years later when spoiler alert he was charged and convicted for it then in1981 the 17 year old Kevin and her friends named Lewis toupee hacked the mainframe cosmos computer system for Pacific Bell a phone company now owned by AT&T once Kevin had maneuvered into the mainframe he could divert the phonelines and intercept any of the calls going through the exchange regular folk who used Pacific Bell service quickly started to complain about what they thought were errors and pranks fair enough to cut Kevin would answer these calls himself and he wasn’t afraid to throw a few tasteless jokes around with an obvious interest in Pacific Bell one night Kevin snuck into the building where cosmos was housed he took manuals and documents containing a stack of passwords the plan was simple take the documents photocopied them overnight return everything exactly where he found them before morning what Kevin didn't count on however was that Luis was telling another friend and that friend ratted him out to the police this put Kevin on the watch list cops pulled him over the next day and he was sentenced to three months behind bars with a year’s probation ouch you'd think that after winding upon prison that Kevin would have learned his lesson but nope entirely the opposite once he was released on probation full of crazy ideas in his head he dopes straight back into the hacking pool his next project hacking the NSA and listening into conversations of the world's biggest wiretap errs but it was 1983 that was perhaps his greatest hacking achievement at the time he was studying at the University of South California using one of the machines at the University likely atrs-80 computer system Mitnick gained access to something called ARPANET think of this as one of those ancestors of the internet except this was reserved for the army large corporations and universities in other words it was really important fast-forward to 1987 where Kevin along with his palling DiCicco gained access to the internal network of the research laboratory at Dec this wasn't an overly complicated hack because Lenny DiCicco actually worked there and could point Kevin in the right direction of course access into the system was quickly gained for Kevin this time was different from the previous hacks he wasn’t infiltrating the network for fun curiosity or for a challenge he had a goal to seize the source code of a particular operating system called Scission accomplished but again Kevin ended up being caught although it wasn’t because of his own oversight is because somebody else turned him in it was Lennie Riccio that betrayed him he informs Dec about Kevin's hack into the company Network and then agreed to be an FBI informant wearing a wire when he invited Kevin over to his house to discuss the next stage of their plan for this crime Kevin was sentenced to a year in prison and had to take a six-month program to treat his computer dependency did the program work not a chance in hell after more hacks into companies like IPM Nokia and Motorola more arrests more probations and an FBI hunt that led agents all the way to North Carolina he was found following years of hiding Mitnick was discovered and arrested in February of 1995 at his apartment in Raleigh making the end of a well-publicized manhunt the straw that broke the camel's back was when he hacked to the computer system of toothsome Ashima Mora a research scientist Shimla Mora unhappy with being on the receiving end of it traced the hack to a modem connected to a cell tower near Raleigh and it didn't take the police long thereafter for the hundreds of hacks that he had orchestrated over the two decades prior causing damage to a computer that's a pretty hefty rap sheet following his release. On January 21st 2007 meta fork in the road he could either continue down the Rudi was growing hacking into companies stealing information and making a mockery of governments or he could put his talents to good use so he went full180 instead of working against the companies a hobby that made him one of America’s Most Wanted he decided to work for them the FBI was aware that despite Mitnick’s easy access to credit cards Social Security numbers and proprietary software he never spent a dime of other people’s money credibility was key for his shift from the dark side to the light side these days Mitnick is no longer the hacker feared by governments telephone companies in the American public he's working for the good guys as a paid security consultant public speaker and author running his own security consultancy business that he calls Mitnick’s absolute zero day exploit exchange Kevin offers security consulting for fortune 500 companies and the FBI and performs a number of security testing services for the world’s largest companies on top of that he teaches social engineering classes to government agencies showing them how to benefit from it and also how to protect themselves from exploit true to his history however there’s always a trick up his sleeve the business cards he gives out at events well those double as lock-picking kits seriously though did you expect anything less despite the huge manhunt and the hacking of hundreds of companies the way Mitnick tells it he never meant any harm in his very own words quote by never in doing this wanted to harm anybody I was just having fun I was being the magician by breaking the systems and getting the code that's why I was going after cellphones that's why I was going after operating system to become better attacking them and quote of course not everybody agrees with Kevin's view he did after all spend five years in prison for stealing software from a range of companies costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars and even as early as his la bus riding days he was exploiting the best quality in people their desire to help a fellow person so what do you think about Kevin is he friend or is he fault let us know in the comments.