Kevin Mitnick Quotes
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Social engineering is using deception, manipulation and influence to convince a human who has access to a computer system to do something, like click on an attachment in an e-mail.
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Not being allowed to use the Internet is kind of like not being allowed to use a telephone.
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A hacker doesn't deliberately destroy data or profit from his activities.
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My hacking involved pretty much exploring computer systems and obtaining access to the source code of telecommunication systems and computer operating systems, because my goal was to learn all I can about security vulnerabilities within these systems.
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Of course I'm sure half the people there hate me and half the people like me.
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I can go into LinkedIn and search for network engineers and come up with a list of great spear-phishing targets because they usually have administrator rights over the network. Then I go onto Twitter or Facebook and trick them into doing something, and I have privileged access.
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Once when I was a fugitive, I was working for a law firm in Denver.
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I think malware is a significant threat because the mitigation, like antivirus software, hasn't evolved to a point to really mitigate the risk to a reasonable degree.
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No company that I ever hacked into reported any damages, which they were required to do for significant losses.
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I keep my stuff updated all the time. Being in the security industry, I keep up to date with securities.
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My argument is not that I shouldn't have been punished, but that the punishment didn't fit the crime.
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But a lot of businesses out there don't see the return on investment, they look at it as a liability, and until they can understand that proactive security actually returns, gives them a return on investment, it's still a hard sell for people.
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The best thing to do is always keep randomly generated passwords everywhere and use a password tool to manage it, and then you don't have to remember those passwords at all, just the master password that unlocks the database.
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People are prone to taking mental shortcuts. They may know that they shouldn't give out certain information, but the fear of not being nice, the fear of appearing ignorant, the fear of a perceived authority figure - all these are triggers, which can be used by a social engineer to convince a person to override established security procedures.
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I think it goes back to my high school days. In computer class, the first assignment was to write a program to print the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead, I wrote a program that would steal passwords of students. My teacher gave me an A.
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I get hired by companies to hack into their systems and break into their physical facilities to find security holes. Our success rate is 100%; we've always found a hole.
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I got so passionate about technology. Hacking to me was like a video game. It was about getting trophies. I just kept going on and on, despite all the trouble I was getting into, because I was hooked.
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I don't condone anyone causing damage in my name, or doing anything malicious in support of my plight. There are more productive ways to help me. As a hacker myself, I never intentionally damaged anything.
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A log-in simulator is a program to trick some unknowing user into providing their user name and password.
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I was pretty much the government's poster boy for what I had done.
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I was an accomplished computer trespasser. I don't consider myself a thief. I copied without permission.
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I was addicted to hacking, more for the intellectual challenge, the curiosity, the seduction of adventure; not for stealing, or causing damage or writing computer viruses.
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I have done a lot to rehabilitate my reputation.
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Back in my day, I would probe by hand. Now you can get commercial software that does the job for you.