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Overview

There are two types of computer specialists. The first is the academic type who speaks in zeroes and ones, while the other is a hacker.

There are good hackers and bad hackers, but they all have one thing in common: they’re cunning and smart.

Obviously, it’s not that easy. A hacker’s life isn’t all excitement and intrigue. However, some people make it seem like that, so there must be something to the lifestyle they lead.

Kevin Mitnick is a computer security consultant, author and hacker. He has written several books about his experiences as a hacker and the lessons he learned from them.

In this article, you’ll learn how Mitnick’s passion for magic led him to hack computers; how he outsmarted the FBI and became a famous hacker; and how he turned his life around by becoming an ethical hacker.

Big Idea #1: Kevin Mitnick grew up with an interest in magic and manipulation.

Kevin Mitnick was born on August 6, 1963. He had only one sibling, his mother Shelly Mitnick. They moved around a lot when he was young due to the fact that his mother got into bad relationships and couldn’t hold down a job for very long.

Kevin never had a lot of friends, because he moved around a lot. His mother’s boyfriends were abusive to Kevin and this probably contributed to his rebellious attitude towards authority figures.

Kevin was a good student and athlete, but he got hooked on magic at ten years old. He loved the element of deception and became obsessed with practicing tricks to manipulate the audience. This would influence his later escapades, which involved spying on people’s property records by using a book from the Survival Bookstore that showed how to gain access to their information.

As Kevin got further into the world of hacking, he realized that social engineering is an art of manipulating people into doing what you want. The first step to accomplishing this is to establish trust with them.

If you want to call a company and acquire some specific information, it will help if you use the correct terminology and lingo – words used by everyone else at that company.

Mitnick learned to get information by saying the right things on the phone. This strategy worked more often than not and was used before his seventeenth birthday.

Big Idea #2: Mitnick began his life as a hacker in the early 1980s, when he was still just a teenager.

The 1980s was a great time to exploit the digital world, as digital records were becoming increasingly popular. However, security systems weren’t sophisticated enough yet. Mitnick started by calling up the DMV and pretending to be an officer. He asked for codes that would allow him access to files he wanted; all he had to do was ask for specific terms like “requester code.”

He could now call the DMV and pretend to be a representative. He would make up a code number, which he would then ask for. The person at the DMV would provide him with it, but he had to get it right on his first try. Once Mitnick got that code, he could access any information about anyone in California by calling back and pretending to be someone else within the DMV system.

However, Kevin’s first run in with the authorities was when he attempted to get a phony administrator account at a research company where his friend’s father worked. Everything went fine for awhile until they got caught by the shoddy security system and were easily able to gain access to an administrative account.

A problem arose when a friend of Mitnick’s gained access to the admin account on his computer and forgot to cover his tracks. The company noticed the security breach and had to notify the FBI, thinking that Mitnick was behind it. His father questioned him about this incident and pointed out that he wasn’t yet 18 years old at the time.