Kevin’s new phone
There’s a guy named Kevin Mitnick who, once upon a time, was public enemy number one when it came to computer crime. Mitnick has turned over a new leaf and is now a computer crime consultant and, apparently, his disloyalty to the script-kiddie credo has made him a target for hackers.
These hackers are attacking Mitnick’s account with relative impunity and posting his account info almost daily. As a result, his webhost and AT&T have knocked him off their networks. As Kevin notes:
“They can’t seem to secure my account,” Mitnick told The Register. “And then instead of doing something about it, they try to kill the messenger and want to boot me off their network when all I want them to do is to secure my account so no one gets access to my phone records.”
One would assume that Mitnick has some fairly good protection put up around his private information and it’s clear that AT&T is the semi-truck-sized hole in his armor. If hackers can get Kevin Mitnick’s information while AT&T sits blithely by and eventually decides rather than fixing the problem they oust him, then I can only imagine that our information is probably in boxes in front of a AT&T store in Scranton with the words “PRIVATE CUSTOMER INFORMATION DO NOT DISPOSE” written on them.
UPDATE – AT&T responds:
We investigated Mr. Mitnick’s claims and determined they were without any foundation. We refused Mr. Mitnick’s demands for money, but did offer to let him out of his contractual obligations so that he could find a carrier that he would be comfortable with.
commas are your friend.
commas are boring. who has time for commas. Not to mention STFU!! If your that concerned go teach english.
How do you know s/he doesn’t teach English.
If you don’t respect your language, you don’t respect your audience.
Sometimes poor language is unambiguous, but sometimes missing a comma or forgetting a hyphen can make your sentence ambiguous. Journalists need to be precise.
ee cummings says eat me biotch
at&t has a history of being incompetent. Try tmobile kevin they are better.
And thats also why the iphone sucks and the G1 rocks. ATT just cripples the iphone… with no bars, no service and lies lies and more lies everywhere.
Get some facts, AT&T doesn’t cripple iPhone, iPhone is weak by itself. G1 sucks ass, just like all android phones. You probably use Linux too, pathetic. Your bandwagon has you steering clear of the truth.
AT&T is slowly falling to its death. It cannot handle the iPhone and now this!
Wow Connor Crosby, what an insightful comment! AT&T, a company whose revenue has grown every quarter for the last year, MUST be “falling to its death”. Because everyone knows the iPhone is the ONLY phone anyone uses, and ALL cell phones users care exclusively about either security or iPhone support!! Dumbass.
http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:T&fstype=ii
Google is painless.
Did you just imply Kevin Mitnick was a script kiddie?
I was thinking the same thing when I read that..
Yeah…LOL, hardly…
If you read about him, you’ll find that he’s not really a brilliant hacker or anything. Like Frank Abagnale, Jr., his most impressive successes came from “social engineering” — lying to people to get passwords.
Ha! I like the caption for the photo
Congratulations on a 55 word sentence!
Mitnick’s sentence compares how?
att sucks
Haven’t you guys heard of cell phone boosters?
http://www.repeaterstore.com
Uhh.. how is a repeater going to improve the security of the servers storing our account information?
I think he’s talking to the guys who don’t have signal. So pretty much every AT&T subscriber then.
Twitter is down….
3 words far more interesting than the 266 in the article… and no… it’s not.
HTTP Server Error 503
No available server to handle this request
A busted mouse will do that too.
I believe Kevin Mitnick is used to this kinda game and he will find a way to get through it. What scares me is why ATT ignores the security issues that Mitnick’s account obviously brought to the surface. I use ATT in NJ and get good signals, but what is Really happening behind the scenes? Is my ATT account at risk?
All your data are belong to us
This is so Wednesday. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/19/att_dumps_kevin_mitnick/
Wow! Mr. Mitnick’s looks really cute in that photo. He can hack my server any day!
Gross!!!
That server have any bugs?
Ha ha ha!
Runs a little hot, but no bugs.
Lame. ATT is full of it. I used to work for them. Its near impossible to get out of a contract with them, even once you’re DEAD. NO lie. If they just gave him a free pass out of his contract its because they goofed royally. I’m glad I made my decision a long while back NOT to buy the iPhone 1.0 especially after I heard they were being released exclusively to ATT. Their customer service is, was, and remains the worst of any I have ever come into contact with… Someday I dream of having a superior iPhone on a Verison network… someday.
This whole post is so devoid of detail as to be meaningless. What does “attacking Mitnick’s account and posting his account information” mean? Are they publishing his phone number? His address? The fact that doesn’t pay his bills?
Here’s my take: Mitnick tried to shake down ATT, and asked for money to prevent him smearing ATT with accusations of slack security. They refused. He persisted. They told him to piss off. That’s at least as credible as what I just read, and probably more credible.
Why does any of this matter? AT&T’s network is insecure. Someone broke in and got account information. Regardless of who they are or how they reacted to the problem it still raises the question on what AT&T is planning on doing about the problem. The Lie and deny routine only goes so far. How else did they get the customer data? How many other customer’s data was taken at the same time?
How do we know anybody broke in? There are no details. That’s my point. Just a vague allegation, and ATT’s reaction. And all the anti-ATT groupies jumping on the issue as though it’s a national emergency. Show me the money. Show me some facts.
If AT&T did have a breach do you think they would disclose it? As much as I hate to admit it I believe the word of an ex criminal more than the word of AT&T.
Click the hotlink for “account info” in the article, and you’ll see what information of Mitnick’s is being distributed.
Now it looks even more like bullsh1t. I am a ATT customer. They don’t ask for that stuff like AIM handles. Their passcodes don’t have that format. And a professional in information security would not give ATT stuff they don’t need, like AIM handles. Or would he? Good question. Where’s his Social Security number. ATT does have that. Did these nice guys just not publish it, even though they hate him? I doubt it.
this link has some of the info hackers have posted from Kevin’s servers and accounts, mostly just showing they are in his servers and show his entire directory structure and such. Just do a search on the page for Kevin
http://hunger.hu/zf05.txt
I think that Kevin should simply hack into ATTs system and fix it enough to secure at least himself.
Based on ATTs actions they’d most likely never know anyway.
Kevin is a whiney Internet Troll unhappy with the fact that his shitty attitude keeps him from finding interpersonal success.
For a social engineering “expert”, this guy sure failed at escalating to someone in the calling center who could actually help him.
He’s probably still smarting from getting further doc dropping @ defcon.
Boohoo, Poor Kevin.
nice google ad with this article (via your RSS feed):
http://i27.tinypic.com/16k2lqu.jpg
seems odd to criticize AT&T while simultaneously advertising for them.
Nice Google AD alongside this article (via your RSS feed):
http://i27.tinypic.com/16k2lqu.jpg
Seems odd to criticize AT&T and advertise for them simultaneously.
Are any of you even old enough to remember and understand how Kevin was unfairly made example of and imprisoned?
Also, I worked for Verizon and of all the carriers they had the best security, ATT and Alltel was the worse, but always remember, nothing is beyond a good social hack.