Kevin Mitnick is a legendary hacker. In Ghost in the Wires, he, along with William L. Simon, tells his tale. The computer is changing the world more rapidly than social institutions can keep up with it. Kevin Mitnick’s career spectacularly shows - many of the ways this social lag is exploited. He was born on August 6, 1963. His father left home when he was 3 years old. He describes him as strict and obsessive. Later, he had intermittent contact with him. His mother was a waitress who moved around a lot, had three husbands and other male relationships. The husbands abused Mitnick. The minute his mother found out she left them. Despite her behavior, his mother and his grandmother were the one point of stability in his life. They always supported him, even when they knew he was engaged in illegal activities. He speculates that his early childhood had a causal relationship to his behavior. “Not that I’m looking for excuses but I wonder if these abusive men had anything to do with my growing up to a life of defying authority figures” (p. 4). He describes himself as bright, overweight, a nerd with few friends. When he was 10 years old, magic came into his life, and he quickly became proficient. What impressed him was the delight that audiences found in being deceived. A friendly bus driver introduced him to ham radio, and he quickly mastered that. This allowed him to make phone calls for free over the radio, and he soon found other ways to do this. He found The Survival Bookstore, where there were books on how to create false identities and get public records and on lock-picking tools. He also has a remarkable ability to remember telephone numbers. He can see a number once and remember it for years. Armed with this set of skills he went to “work.” To him hacking has two essentials. One is to have adequate knowledge of programming and hacking tools. The other is the ability to get people to give you information like access codes and passwords. He devoted a great deal of time to studying the organization, its personnel, and the work argot of that organization. Much of his hacking depended on getting people to give him information. He is a super con man but complains that people are not careful enough in protecting sensitive information. He calls this aspect of his efforts “social engineering.” It is an interesting phrase to describe the ability to fool people by taking advantage of their desire to help. He hacked incessantly and was difficult to catch because his joy was in breaking in and not making a profit or damaging systems. The scope of his activities is awesome. He accessed and downloaded important source code from half a dozen major corporations. He found places to store these huge files by hacking into universities and institutions where he accessed rarely used parts of their servers. His constant activity drew so much attention that he began to get caught. Many times he was caught because hacker friends had been arrested and turned him in as part of a plea bargain for themselves. Initially, there were no laws against what he was doing, and he was so young that they did not know what to do with him. Judges often did not understand the nature of the charges. When he was about 25 years old, a psychologist who had once “treated” him wrote a letter to the judge saying that his motives were not criminal but that he had a compulsive disorder and was addicted to hacking. The judge accepted this plea. Mitnick rather proudly says that this was the first time compulsive hacking was identified as a disorder. In the final phase of his hacking career, he eluded the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for almost 3 years. During this time, he hacked into their system and exasperated them by sending teasing messages. He was finally caught because he hacked computer security expert Tsuotoma Shimomura. He went to the FBI who, in an unprecedented action, let him provide sensitive codes to Mitnick. In addition, Shimomura teamed with a journalist John Markoff to write a controversial book about the affair. Markoff had earlier written questionable articles about Mitnick after he had refused his offer to write about him. Flaws in the criminal justice system undoubtedly continued his career longer than it should have. Various corrections officials were not helpful. A psychologist treating him asked for an illicit code so he could make free phone calls home. There were ridiculous false charges. One prosecutor convinced a judge that he could whistle into a phone and launch an atomic missile. Such things became news and generated widespread public support. A “Free Kevin” movement developed on the Internet. After his final capture, Mitnick “reformed” and today makes his living as a security expert and makes frequent public presentations. From his perspective, he is still doing what he wants to but apparently not with the 24-hours-per-day intensity of before. He still has an ability to charm people. In one of his appearances, he met and became friends with Steve Wozniak, a cofounder of Apple. In his youth, he also hacked phones. He wrote a brief introduction to this book and on the day his probation allowed him to use a computer, Wozniak presented him with an advanced model Apple laptop. He also has not lost his ability to tease people. At the beginning of each chapter in the book is a cryptogram that, he indicates, people could solve. This is a fascinating book. Many of the numerous incidents depicted are humorous. If they are not illegal, they are immoral. It is easy to be seduced into thinking that these were pranks and forget how dangerous and expensive it was for the victims. There remains the question of explaining this behavior. Mitnick advances psychological explanations. I prefer a social explanation. This is an exceptionally bright and able person who takes delight in exploiting chinks in the social structure. There are not many people in the world who possess the combination of skills that Mitnick has. He is not sick, but he did what he did because he could get away with it. When he no longer could, he changed. Harris Chaiklin, PhD School of Social Work University of Maryland Baltimore, MD DISCLOSURE The author declares no conflict of interest.
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Harris Chaiklin (2012) studied this question.