The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (28 page)

"That was kind of weird," Markoff admits, going on to describe
how he flew to San Diego to lecture the employees on how to protect
against the Kevin Mitnicks of the world.

The story strikes me as odd. Executives routinely ask reporters to
keep their company's name out of a story, though it's not necessarily
a fair demand when the same company is accusing an individual of a
crime. But trading a security lecture for the inside scoop?

I take another bite of dim sum and Markoff pops out another
surprise.

"I've thought about trying to catch Mitnick," Markoff grins. "But
I guess that wouldn't be politically correct."

He's almost laughing when he says it, and I almost laugh too.
Markoff said the same thing to me last summer just before he cata-
pulted Mitnick onto the front page of the
Times.
I didn't take it
seriously then, and I don't take it seriously now.

Markoff's in a good mood, and somehow the topic shifts to Mark
Lottor, the indicted hacker and former roommate of Poulsen. Lottor
is a cell phone hacker, says Markoff. And a damn good one. Then he
smiles. "I wrote a story for
Wired
magazine about cell phone hack-
ing," adding he was careful to use pseudonyms to protect the iden-
tity of the story's two principal subjects.

"Mark was one of the people in the article," Markoff confides,
enjoying the game. "The other was ..."

But Markoff changes his mind at the last second, and decides he
can't tell me. After all, his article revealed illicit, if not downright
illegal acts. That's OK. I've already got a pretty good idea who he's
talking about, and I've never even read the article.

We finish our dim sum, and I ask for the check. I reach for my
wallet, but it's not there. I rifle my jacket pockets, and nervously
glance around the floor. How embarrassing! I take this guy out to
lunch to thank him, and now I can't pick up the tab. But Markoff's
magnanimous about it. He flips a corporate American Express card
on the check. "Don't worry about it," the
Times
reporter assures
me. "I'm sure Arthur Sulzburger can cover it."

While we wait, Markoff says he's impressed by my ability to get
Kevin Mitnick to call and talk. Mitnick is one of the few prize
sources he's missing.

"Do you ever work with anyone else?" Markoff asks.

"Sure," I say, even though it's never actually worked out for me.

"Would you be interested in freelancing pieces with me for the
Times?"

"Sure."

We're back on the bustling streets below Chinatown, strolling to-
ward the commanding Embarcadero Center towers. Markoff's ex-
cited about his idea.

"You know," Markoff says to me as he steps off the curb, "a
book on Mitnick's life as a fugitive would be an incredible story."

* a ■

We're back in the
New York Times
San Francisco bureau in front of
John Markoff's big-screen Macintosh. He's pulled up an impressive
file on Mitnick, and is graciously letting me jot down a few names:
Deputy Cunningham, the U.S. Marshal in Los Angeles tracking Mit-
nick, and Neil Gift, the computer security expert in England who
alerted the FBI to a Mitnick call that they tried, but failed, to trace
back to its origin.

It's nearly two in the afternoon. I thank Markoff for the lunch and
the contact names and numbers, and as he walks me to the door, I offer
him some information in return. "I think Mitnick may be hacking into
that secret e-mail account you have with that guy in San Diego."

Markoff looks at me oddly and shrugs off the suggestion. My
information is wrong, he says. He [Markoff] doesn't have an account
on Tsutomu Shimomura's computer.

That's funny, I think. That's not what Mitnick said.

Morning,
January 19,1995

It's just two days after my lunch
with Markoff and eleven days
since my last call from Mitnick. De Payne phoned the previous Fri-
day, and knew all about my assignment with
Playboy.
He asked
when the magazine article would be published, and I told him not
for several months.

"Oh, good!" he replied stiffly. "That will give us plenty of time to
sabotage your efforts."

Apparently, he meant it, because De Payne or somebody else has
already begun to play games. Somebody phoned
Playboy,
asked to
be paid for a Mitnick interview, and left a call back number that
turned out to be disconnected.

At about a quarter to eleven in the morning Mitnick phones.

"I understand somebody's been calling
Playboy
and masquerad-
ing as my relatives."

"Who do you think it was?"

"I don't want to say, because he's my
friend."

"You think he's your friend or you
thought
he was your friend?"

"It's my friend. He's a hoaxter. I don't have time for games!"
Mitnick snaps. "I didn't have anything to do with it!

"Hey, I have bad news, man. I don't think I'm gonna be calling
you much anymore. The reason is something came out in
U.S. News

& World Report
— a big article on policing cyberspace — and they
plaster my name in there as being America's most wanted computer
criminal. And a bunch of bullshit claiming I did millions of dollars'
worth of damage —
millions,
right?"

Mitnick's pager suddenly blares and he starts cussing. I tell Mitnick
that while I was talking to my editor at
Playboy
his phone went dead.

Mitnick breaks into a chuckle. "I think you should phone
Playboy and say, 'You better
pay
this guy!' "

Then, he's suddenly miffed again. "See, that's the same
fucking
thing
that happened to the probation officer. Her phone went dead
one day and just because they know me, everyone thinks I have all
the time in the world to sit all day —"

"You give me your word? No way?"

"No way!
Why would 7 make the phone go
dead?
That would
blow my cover. I'd listen and keep my mouth shut so I could negoti-
ate better, right? Because I'd know what the other party's thinking. I
wouldn't blow my own cover. That's stupidity! That's exactly the
sort of shit that I'm being blamed for.

"Do me a favor. Find out if there's millions of dollars' worth . ..
[if] I'm responsible for millions of dollars of losses. Do me a favor
and figure that out for me."

All of a sudden, Mitnick sounds panicked. There's an urgency in
his voice I've never heard before.

"Hey, listen Jon. Let me call you right back, OK? I gotta go."

He phones back an hour later, still agitated.

"What happened?"

"It was an emergency," Mitnick explains.

"Really?"

"Yeah," Mitnick groans. "Things are
not
good."

It's not going to cheer him up, but I've used the last hour to think
about the trouble he may be in. I have no idea what damages the
government may be claiming. But my sources have told me that Mit-
nick's hit a number of companies for the source code to their prod-
ucts, and the FBI even called them together for a meeting to warn
them Mitnick was on the loose.

"I've heard Motorola in Arizona," I start. "That's the latest claim
I've heard."

"That they got
hit?"
Mitnick asks, incredulous.

"Yeah."

"It's supposedly me, now?" he moans.

"That's the rumor I've heard. Unsubstantiated. Another is a Ca-
nadian company, Novatel."

"Oh, that's the kind of cellular phone I have," Mitnick muses,
enjoying the irony. "How about that? They got hit?"

"Yeah. So the four I've heard so far are Motorola, Novatel,
Nokia, and Qualcomm."

"They claimed over half a dozen," Mitnick adds. "You know
Markoff exaggerates. I
never
believe what I read. What are they
claiming?"

"I heard they [the FBI] actually had a meeting and warned them
[the cell phone companies] that you're out here coming to get them."

"Wait
a minute! All the cell companies in the world got to-
gether?"

"I've heard there was a meeting with our government and some of
these companies, and I don't know whether they held up a big dart
board-sized picture of you —"

"That's pretty goddamn
serious!
That's
not
funny!" But Mitnick
can't resist a joke. "How come they didn't invite me to the meeting?"

"And I guess some of these people claimed to have tapes of you
talking."

"That would be interesting," Mitnick ponders.

"And there's supposed to be some investigation in Finland."

"That's Nokia," Mitnick volunteers. "Neil Clift told me. Some-
body, he thinks it was me, actually called these people up, had them
send a tape, and he wouldn't say where, but they went to deliver the
tapes and like an hour later, they got a phone call saying, 'I see your
car's in the parking lot —' "

"In other words," I say, "he knew the drop wasn't going to
work." But I've missed the point entirely. It was just another prank.
Mitnick or somebody else set up law enforcement to watch them
chase after a false alarm.

"The whole idea was to fuck with them," Mitnick says, sounding

impatient. "It wasn't even to get anything. Do you
see
what I'm
saying? In other words, doing it so
sloppy
that you'd know they'd
tatch on to it. Then when they think they're gonna get their man,
they get egg in their face.

"Neil says that's just like me. But if you wanna know the truth,
it's more like
other
people."

"Have you tried asking this other person to not do this stuff?" I
ask.

"Yeah," Mitnick confides. "I kinda asked the person to stop at-
tracting more attention. I'm already in enough problems. But this
person
loves
it, really
loves
it."

"I'm amazed because I was just told something today. I didn't
realize he still lives with your ex."

"No,
he
doesn't!
My ex doesn't live with him anymore."

"But you weren't happy about that to begin with?"

"No! I wasn't happy when, hell, I figured it out.

"We were kinda dating again, and I went to use her bathroom
upstairs and I saw the phone bill laying right there on the counter.
She was calling Lewis's number hundreds of times. And she never
even told me she was talking to Lewis! So I was furious because I
didn't know what was going on when I was in Lompoc."

"How long was that after leaving Lompoc?"

"Oh, within five or six months. After I found out, she admitted,
'Oh yes, me and Lewis are dating, blah-blah-blah.' A few months
later she moved in with him. I was like bummed at first. Then Lewis
said, 'If you ever wanna talk about it with me, you're welcome to.' I
just never brought up the subject."

Kevin Mitnick can seemingly hack any computer on the planet,
terrify governments, the military, and intelligence agencies. But he
can't stand up for himself. He can't tell Lewis De Payne to get lost.

"Obviously, you and Bonnie were very close when you went
through Lompoc, the stuff before and then this."

"
Yeah,"
he admits, his voice small. "It was rough. The only rea-
son she's not with me today is she predicted that I'd be in trouble
again."

"She predicted it?"

"Yeah! She said that if there was any chance that it could happen

again that she couldn't go through that pain again. Just the possi-
bility scared the hell out of her. That's what she told me. I don't
know if it was genuine or not."

Life on the run is clearly getting to Mitnick. He's flipping between
nostalgia, self-pity, and rage at the world. Cryptically, he explains
why he cut short our conversation earlier this morning. Someone's
clerical mistake has put him at risk again, and he will have to start all
over again with a new job and identity.

"Just one incompetent fool just today fucked me around so
bad. I made one request which any normal person would have
handled normally, but the person was so stupid and they fucked
up so bad that now it's costing me a lot. It's costing me like three
grand because I just had to relinquish some —" Mitnick stam-
mers. "For example, let's say a car. Like a person fucks up so
bad because they were so stupid, not out of any suspicion, you
know, just because they're an
imbecile.
I can't really elaborate.
Just put it this way. It fucked up my
whole world.
I was safe and
happy. Now I have to —"

"That was just earlier this morning, when you said things aren't
going well?"

"There could have been a link established and I can't take a
chance of that even happening, so I just have to —"

"Just an innocent, just a bureaucratic thing?" I probe.