Kevin Mitnick born in 1963, first gained unauthorised access to a computer network in 1979 at age 16. He was charged and convicted in 1988. After he was released, he hacked into another system and this time he fled, becoming a fugitive. He was arrested and charged and sentenced few more times and now released, he runs his own IT security consulting company in the US.
His case and the pursuit of him by the authorities was a celebrated case and made into movies and books written based on his life.
Below are some of the notable quotes by the most recognised and possibly the 1st hacker to be jailed for his illegal exploits.
My primary goal of hacking was the intellectual curiosity, the seduction of adventure.
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.
A hacker doesn't deliberately destroy data or profit from his activities.
The hacker mindset doesn't actually see what happens on the other side, to the victim.
I saw myself as an electronic joy rider.
Anyone who thinks that security products alone offer true security is settling for the illusion of security.
Every hacker is, to some extent, a rebel who lives by different standards and enjoys beating the system.
The difference can be summed up in one word: authorization. I don’t need authorization to get in. It’s the word that instantly transforms me from the World’s Most Wanted Hacker to one of the Most Wanted Security Experts in the world. Just like magic.
Knowing you’re smarter than somebody and you can beat them. And that, in our case, it was gonna make us some money.
In the security community, this letter is known by all as a 'get-out-of-jail-free card'. Pen testers tend to be very conscientious about making sure they always have a copy of the letter with them when they’re on or anywhere near the premises of the client company, in case they get stopped by a security guard who decides to flex some muscle and impress the higher-ups with his gumshoe instincts, or challenged by a conscientious employee who spots something suspicious and has enough gumption to confront the pen tester.
Since most users choose a password that is either a name or a simple dictionary word, an attacker usually begins by setting 10phtCrack (or whatever program he’s using) to perform a 'dictionary attack' — testing every word in the dictionary to see if it proves to be the user’s password. If the program doesn’t have any success with the dictionary attack, the attacker will then start a 'brute-force attack', in which case the program tries every possible combination (for example, AAA, AAB, AAC ... ABA, ABB, ABC, and so on), then tries combinations that include uppercase and lowercase, numerals, and symbols.
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