Amoral hacker anti-hero Kevin Mitnick met one of the people he stole from at a computer security conference in held in the San Francisco Bay Area this earlier week. Mitnick and his mark, former Novell network admin Shawn Nunley, shook hands and had a good laugh about how ten years earlier Mitnick had lied to Nunley in order to steal his companyÕs proprietary source code.
Mitnick, who is revered by the same Òprivacy advocatesÓ who so desperately attempted to
vilify the cyber-security measures enacted by the Bush Administration in the Patriot Act late last year, stole trade secrets from Novell, Sun Microsystems and Motorola and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage before being caught by the FBI and easily convicted in 2000 after years of fraud and other criminal activity. Nunley, the Novell network administrator who was duped into giving Mitnick an account on NovellÕs private servers when Mitnick called and impersonated a vacationing Novell employee, noted that Novell spent a lot of time and money Òcleaning up the mess [Mitnick] left.Ó Now, Nunley is sorry that he helped gather evidence in the US GovernmentÕs criminal case against Mitnick and believes that Mitnick was unjustly made Òan exampleÓ by the government for other would-be cyber criminals.
Bar none, this is one of the most twisted stories IÕve heard all week. Talk about the victim siding with the criminal after the crime! DonÕt you wonder what that conversation between Mitnick and Nunley was like?
NUNLEY: ÒGood to meet you Kevin, IÕm so sorry about how poorly the Feds treated you. ThatÕs really wrong, you know? IÕm just sick over it all. I wish I never kept all those incriminating voice mails you left for me at my house and at work when you were trying to get into NovellÕs servers. I know you were just a curious guy and IÕm really sorry about the trouble itÕs brought to you.Ó
MITNICK: ÒHey, itÕs all in the past, Shawn. When I lied to you about working for Novell so youÕd give me access to their files, I wasnÕt trying to make you look stupid or hurt your career. That part was more of a by-product of my criminal process. Besides, I only stole a few thousand lousy lines of code and ruined a couple of hundred thousand bucks worth of IT infrastructure that was insecure to begin with. ItÕs not like I killed anybody and they should be thanking me for showing them how easy it is to buck the system! Right, Shawn?Ó
NUNLEY: ÒSure, Kev. I mean, itÕs not like you ruined my life, because after I left Novell I got a director of technology development job at a company that makes a lot of Internet traffic management tools that are really great and really secure over in Santa Clara. I know Novell never really recovered, but they can always sue Microsoft for abusing monopoly power, right Kev? (Laughs)Ó
MITNICK: Ò(Laughs) Absolutely! Hey, that Internet traffic stuff sounds really fascinating. WhatÕs your new phone number and email account at your new company? You know, for when I finally get access to a computer again, IÕd like to go to your companyÕs website and email youÉÓ
NUNLEY: ÒYeah, hereÕs my card. But remember, Kev ø no using my phone number and email account for unauthorized access to all the secret stuff on our servers! (Laughs)Ó
MITNICK: (Blank stare and pause) ÒWell, IÕd be doing you a favor if I did break in, right Shawn?Ó
NUNLEY: (Laughs) ÒOh man, you are such a kidder, Kev! Your sense of humor mustÕve been how you survived the stuff the FBI did to intimidate you! I gotta go but hereÕs a copy of my Social Security card. Good to finally meet you and let me know if you need anything from me, Kev.Ó
Please, if you are a psychologist or paranoid privacy advocate, send me an email so you can explain all of this to me.
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