In the past few days, Shichao's circle of friends has been brushed by a person's obituary.
Kevin · David · Mitnick died at the age of 59 due to pancreatic cancer after battling the disease for more than 1 year.
For many young friends, the name Mitnick may be very unfamiliar.
But slightly older netizens must have heard more or less about the world's number one hacker's deeds, because his name was once synonymous with hackers and legends.
At the age of 15, he single-handedly overturned the US government and hacked into the US National Security Agency system, Apple, Motorola, Nokia... The websites of the world's giants were all made a big fuss by him.
Under the FBI's global wanted, he was arrested and imprisoned after playing a cat-and-mouse game for 6 years.
After being released from prison, the prodigal son turned back, opened a company, became a mentor, wrote a book, founded a discipline, and successfully washed himself to the pinnacle of life.
Mitnick was stunned to live the Hollywood movie plot as his own life.
Today, Shichao will take you to review the life of the world's number one hacker.
Just as the so-called wind began at the end of Qingping, little Kevin was born in Los Angeles in 1963 in an ordinary family, and his birth was of course not auspicious.
On the contrary, his parents' feelings were not very good, and when he was 3 years old, after his parents divorced, little Kevin lived with his mother, which also made his personality more withdrawn.
By the age of 13, little Kevin was immediately fascinated when he came into contact with computers and the Internet.
Those lines seemed to many people at that time to be heavenly code, and in his eyes, they seemed to be beautiful notes.
Soon, he discovered that these "notes" could help him a lot.
For example, the homework assigned by the teacher, he no longer has to write, just write a string of code to crack the teacher's computer password, and then directly copy the answer.
Slowly, Kevin Jr. became more and more proficient in manipulating code, and he did more and more out of line.
Once he hacked directly into the school website and changed the personal information of the school bully classmates to "hot-tempered and violent tendencies".
So, little Kevin, who was caught by the school, "graduated honorably".
But little Kevin, who embraced society, wasn't disconnected from the web.
He worked frantically to make money, and soon bought a computer of his own to reconnect successfully.
In the United States at that time, the concept of computer equipment and network was relatively popular, but whether it was the government or enterprises, the awareness of network protection was still very "simple".
When 15-year-old Kevin was frantically surfing the Internet, he accidentally discovered that his computer network could actually connect with the government network.
So, little Kevin made a move, he spent 2 months of crazy research, stunned to find the back door of the North American Air Defense Command system...
What is all in this, I will say one, it happened to be the Cold War, and the website clearly wrote that the United States faced all the nuclear warhead data of the Soviet Union.
How horrible this was, a military expert later said: If Mitnick had sold this information to the KGB at that time, he would have received at least $500,000 in honorarium. The United States, on the other hand, will need to spend billions of dollars to redeploy. ”
So to this day, the US military has not dared to give an official statement...
Little Kevin, who had played hi, started all kinds of show techniques, and he bought a magazine casually.
There is a ranking of mobile phone manufacturers inside, and he starts from the number one mobile phone manufacturer to invade one by one, such as Nokia, Motorola and other big brands are not spared.
At the age of 17, Kevin finally had an accident, he hacked into the Pacific Telephone Company's system, and changed the phone inside, resulting in the collapse of the entire Los Angeles communication.
Therefore, Kevin was arrested in a juvenile detention center, but because Kevin was not yet an adult, he was released after 3 months.
After dealing with the police, Kevin seemed to suddenly fall in love with this feeling.
In 1983, he did something even bigger: hacked into the Pentagon.
At this time, Kevin was like a presidential approval document, looking through the various systems of the Pentagon, and even saw a familiar name in the FBI arrest list: Kevin David Mitnick.
That's right, that's Kevin.
He was arrested not long after, but was soon released on bail because he had no criminal record.
But a few years later, Kevin was jailed again in 1988 for hacking a company eight years earlier, causing the company to lose $4 million.
This time, because of the huge amount of money involved, Kevin was sentenced to prison.
Although the court only sentenced him to one year, Kevin, who was already a repeat offender, became a "social pest" in the eyes of the FBI, and they felt that such people had to be imprisoned every day.
So the FBI copied its old line: phishing law enforcement.
The FBI first bribed a friend of Kevin, tricked Kevin into attacking a website, and laid a trap in advance to catch him...
As a result, halfway through the attack, he was recognized by Kevin and fled!
In this way, Kevin was on the FBI's wanted list.
According to the development of the plot of the movie novel, the protagonist brushes the previous copy, and the next opponent of equal strength is about to play.
Kevin's saga also ushered in his own "lifelong enemy".
This person was Shimomura Mito, a computer pioneer at the time and the first computer expert in the United States.
After Kevin learned that Shimomura had made a move, he was not only not afraid, but a little excited.
He first hacked into Shimomura's computer, stole the anti-hacking tools inside, and mockingly left a sentence: "Or I'm more dick ~ "
At the same time, in the process of tracking down Shimomura, he sent an email to mock: "Dad's technology is the first in the world, you want to arrest me, it's just a pipe dream!" ”
The beam was thus knotted, and you chased me on both sides and "played" for a whole 6 years.
Finally, in 1995, Kevin still showed his horse's feet and was successfully caught by Shimomura.
In 1995, Kevin went to court
Entering the game is like going home, and Kevin naturally does not ask for mercy and admits his mistakes.
But in court, Kevin, who met Shimomura for the first time, was not as arrogant as on the Internet, and he came very dashingly: "Hello, Shimomura, I admire your skills." ”
Later, Shimomura wrote a book about his and Kevin's cat-and-mouse game, and someone even wrote a movie based on this experience.
This legendary experience quickly spread online, and countless hackers regarded Kevin as an idol and wanted to intercede with Kevin.
The means used are also very hacking, including but not limited to attacking major websites and self-built "Release Kevin" websites.
It may be that these hackers were too enthusiastic, and Kevin was severely sentenced by the judge to 4 years.
It was this magical 4-year tears behind bars that made Kevin, who had been making trouble for most of his life, have an epiphany.
After Kevin was released on parole in 2000, not only did he not start his old profession and then become a hacker, but he became a "white guest", taking on some work every day to help prevent hackers and improve network security.
After his release from prison, he wrote several best-selling books ridiculed as "must-read for fraudsters", ran to host TV shows, worked as an actor, and most happily played as a CIA expert.
Even on Grand Theft Auto's game radio, you can hear Kevin's name.
At the same time, Kai Wenwen, as a "hacker master", holds lectures around the world to popularize network security.
In 2017, Kevin also came to China for the first time to participate in the CSS Internet Security Conference, attracting many Chinese engineers to "chase stars".
Beyond these technological directions, Kevin's greatest thing after the prodigal son turned back was the creation of a discipline: social engineering.
In our ordinary understanding, hackers like Kevin are immortals who hide in a small room in the dark and hold the computer to frantically type code and get any information in the world.
But in reality, Kevin tells us that social engineering attacks are the ultimate form of hackers.
Simply put, no matter how tight the system, as long as there are people, then talent is the biggest vulnerability of the system.
In social engineering attacks, hackers often complete vulnerability attacks through people.
Kevin once took the elevator with other people, and there was a famous network security researcher standing in front of him, and the person raised his mobile phone in the elevator to enter the password, and Kevin successfully hacked the password.
Today, telecom fraud, phishing software, phishing emails, etc., are common ways for hackers to start with people.
So to put it bluntly, in Kevin's view, the most advanced hacker is not multi-capable of technology, but multi-capable of people.
But don't believe it all, after all, in April this year, Kevin just used 24 RTX 4090 graphics cards and 6 RTX 2080 graphics cards to build a supercomputer for cracking passwords.
Looking back on Kevin's life, the first half of his life was tense and exciting, and in the middle of the golden basin he washed his hands, and he could turn his head and open a mountain party, which can be called dashing.
And unlike many unscrupulous hackers now, Kevin hardly directly benefits from his hacking, he is more for showmanship.
As he wrote in his book: "Anyone who likes to play chess knows that it is enough to beat the opponent. You don't have to plunder his kingdom or seize his assets to be valuable. ”
Unfortunately, too many of his followers have lost their hearts after mastering the technology.
This may also be the real reason why Kevin took the initiative to "whitewash" in the second half of his life.
Today, Kevin has joined a cybersecurity consulting firm that has served more than 60,000 clients.
And his deeds, his experiences, his books, his courses will influence many more people from generation to generation.