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.

Yes, that evil “hacker” who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account was indicted yesterday. Politics aside, it was a pretty dumb thing to do, especially posting the e-mails online after the fact.

To that end, here’s renowned computer security consultant (and former HACKEROMG) Kevin Mitnick giving his opinion on the whole matter on G4’s Attack of the Show. Mitnick says he doesn’t think the kid should have his life ruined for what amounted to a harmless prank. That’s my opinion, the harmless prank part. You know, maybe spend a couple of weeks doing community service, picking up trash along the side of the road or something.

The host, Kevin Pereira, brings up another good point: why haven’t we seen more “cyber attacks” on politicians this election year?

Future NFL Hall of Famer Kevin Mitnick was on WBAI’s Off the Hook radio show last night, and he explained his travel horror when going from Bogotá to Atlanta. An MP3 version of the show was just posted to 2600’s Web site, which you can find here.

Mr. Mitnick explains (in excruciating detail) what happened to him while he was detained. Pretty interesting, especially if you’re familiar with all the guys on the show.

Lesson to take away: you’re not required to reveal your laptop’s password to security agents. Of course, 99 percent of us will, because who wants to upset Johnny Law?

Photo from Flickr

Before reading this, I suggest you watch the documentary Freedom Downtime, made by the folks at 2600. Go ahead, the whole thing is on Google Video.

Kevin Mitnick has signed a book deal with Little, Brown and Company, giving him the opportunity to refute the outrageous claims made against him—really, he could start a nuclear war by whistling into a telephone?—while making a few dollars in the process. A tell-all, if you will.

Mitnick, if you don’t already know and didn’t bother to watch the movie, is probably the most famous “hacker” out there, imprisoned in 1999 for destroy the Western World for all time. So we were led to believe, that is.

Hooray, for sure.