The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (33 page)

The hacker can't believe his good luck. The attack is only success-
ful because Shimomura has not disabled the "R" commands, three
basic commands that allow users to remotely log-in or execute pro-
grams without a password. Tens of thousands of security-conscious
Internet sites, representing well over a million users, routinely block
access to the R commands to avoid its well publicized abuse by
hackers.

It takes a few keystrokes and about thirty seconds to shut off the
R commands on an Internet server. You don't even have to turn off
the machine.

Why didn't Shimomura do it?

■ ■ ■

Mitnick laughs. "He's [Shimomura's] not happy. I have nothing to
do with it. I'm just telling you what I hear through the grapevine."

"Who do you think might have done it?" I ask the likely suspect.
"How did he figure it out himself?"

"He [Shimomura] realized that somebody had edited his wrapper
log, which shows incoming connections. Somebody actually mod-
ified those logs, and then he was able to reconstruct what happened
through these logs that were mailed to another site unbeknownst to
the intruder."

Mitnick's actually telling me the evidence Shimomura collected to
figure out the attack. The wrapper is supposed to control connec-
tions to Shimomura's server and log all connection attempts. It failed
to protect Shimomura but still it logged the hacker's spoofed connec-
tion, and a copy of the log was emailed off-site.

"So you were asking me if there's a secure e-mail site?" Mitnick
continues, his voice suddenly hard. "My answer is no. This guy in
my estimation is the brightest in security on the whole Internet. He
blows people like Neil Gift away. I have a lot of respect for this guy.
'Cuz I know a lot about him. He doesn't know anything about me,
hopefully, but he's good.

"On the Internet, he's one of the best in the world."

"So if this guy isn't safe, what does that mean?" I ask.

"I dunno. Go back to manual systems," Mitnick jokes. "Instead
of Excel, you should go back to paper."

Mitnick doesn't want to talk anymore about the attack on Shi-
momura, but he will tell me about the girl he met at a diner last
night.

"I actually sat down. The first thing that gal asked me, 'Oh can I
use your phone?' I go, 'No, but you can talk to me.' She had like the
ring through the nose. I don't think that's a turn-on. That's like the
new generation. I guess I'm an older guy now."

"Maybe you are."

"I don't see myself as older. I still feel like I'm seventeen or eigh-
teen. I don't feel like I'm thirty."

"Well, I got that article you told me about. 'Cybercop.' "

" 'Armed with laptops and modems,' Mitnick jokes, pretending to
be quoting from the story. "What're they gonna do? Chase down the
wires? It's ridiculous! It should be a movie. You know, 'Cybercop.'...
At least what they said about me was short, but I didn't like it."

"They didn't name many people but they decided to name you."

"See, that's what bugs me. Why didn't they at least talk about
Poulsen. He blows me away according to everybody, so talk about
him."

"Or your other friend, Justin."

"Yeah. This asshole [Justin Petersen] is trying to snuff money from
a bank through a computer and it's like he's OK. Maybe that's what I
shoulda done is go into that business.

"If you do it for fun and you get zero off of it, it's big news, I
guess." Mitnick sighs. "Who knows? I think I stepped on the wrong
people's toes, and I think that certain individuals are personally not
happy with me. They're gonna do everything in their power to put my
name in lights 'cuz they want harm to come.

"I gotta get going 'cuz I gotta get to the airport," Mitnick says
hurriedly.

Mitnick's getting on a plane? Is this for real, or just another test to
see if I'm working for the feds, to see if this tidbit pops up later
through some channel in his information superhighway?

"Are you gonna be in the air for an hour or —"

"I can't tell you where I'm going or how long I'm gonna be in the
air."

"More than ten minutes?"

"I hope it's more than ten minutes!"

"Do you fly coach or first class?"

"Coach. Well, most of the time coach. I don't like to fly."

"Do you take any precautions?"

"Yeah I bring a fuckin' parachute!" Mitnick snarls. "What precau-
tions can I take? Yeah. Here I have my flotation cushion. So when we
crash in Pitttsburgh, I'll be able to float in the goddamn lake," he says
sarcastically. "There's no precaution. You're basically saying to the
pilot, 'You have my life!' "

"No. I meant, you said once you stay away from the big airports,
like JFK."

"Well, that's not really true. I was just joking. Because I can't. My
job — I'm required to go places, and I can't say to my boss, 'Hey, I
can't go through a major airport because somebody might recognize
inc.'. . ."

■ ■ a

Mitnick hangs up a few minutes later, and I sit at my desk, stunned
at what he's told me.

Mitnick sounded giddy. And why not? His enemy has been pub-
licly humiliated, stung by a novel, sophisticated attack. It's as if Pro-
fessor Moriarty has struck Sherlock Holmes.

Right after Christmas when Mitnick asked me about my
Playboy article he warned me Markoff and Shimomura would plot his cap-
ture. Did Mitnick opt for a preemptive strike? And if so, what was
the prize, what secrets did the NSA hacker's machine hold that
might now be part of Kevin Mitnick's bag of tricks?

Night,

January 20,1995

" IS ANYTHING SAFE IN CYBER -

space?"
U.S. News & World
Report
warns the world on the stunning cover of its January 2.3
issue, which shows a silver cop badge engraved, "cyber police, cy-
berspace patrol, pol • net." The feature article spotlights one of the
dilemmas of computer crime fighting: namely, that in trying to catch
the Kevin Mitnicks of the world, cybercops may erode basic consti-
tutional rights.

POLICING CYBERSPACE

Cops want more power to fight cybercriminals. As their techno-
battle escalates, what will happen to American traditions of privacy
and property?

"The day is coming very fast," says FLETC (Federal Law Enforce-
ment Training Center] director Charles Rinkevich, "when every
cop will be issued a badge, a gun and a laptop."

Adding a high-speed modem, cellular phone, cryptography text-
books and bulletproof vest to that arsenal might also be prudent
because "crime involving high technology is going to go off the

boards," predicts FBI Special Agent William Tafoya, who created
the bureau's home page on the Internet... . "It won't be long be-
fore the bad guys out-strip our ability to keep up with them."

. . . The FBI says that Kevin Mitnick, currently America's most
wanted computer criminal, has stolen software from cellular-phone
companies, caused millions of dollars in damage to computer oper-
ations and boldy tapped FBI agents' calls.

■ ■ ■

"I'm not going to be able to call you anymore but I wanted to tell
you something first."

It's nearly nine on Friday night, just hours since "America's most
wanted computer criminal" checked in to laugh about Shimomura
being hacked. But now Mitnick's agitated. Something's up. I've
never heard him talk this way before.

"I just saw this movie,
Murder in the First.
It's about this guy that
Mole five bucks and they put him in Alcatraz for five years and
started beating him. Finally he went nuts and killed somebody. It's
with Christian Slater.

"It parallels my case. Here I am a computer hacker. Not that I
ever went to Alcatraz. But at MDC they put me in this room with a
dim light, a bed and a toilet. Six by nine foot. They let me out forty-
five minutes a day for fresh air. The rest of the day I was in the part
where they send you if you've assaulted a prisoner or killed some-
body. Legally you're not supposed to be there more than a certain
number of days. They do it to me for eight months. I wonder if that
has anything to do with how I think about them. I was in this fuck-
ing room for eight months. They used the telephone as an excuse.
'We can't let him near a phone. He might launch missiles.'

"I was in there eight fucking months!" Mitnick shouts indig-
nantly. "I don't think you can comprehend. Go into your bathroom
and put in a fifty-watt bulb. Try to stay there for an hour."

Mitnick describes the daily rituals of his imprisonment. "They'd
shackle my legs and arms. Two guards would escort me, unshackle
me, and let me shower. A minute shower. Then shackle me back and
take me back to the cell. I can see it for a few days. But eight months?

Go into the bathroom and put up a fifty-watt bulb and see if you go
stir crazy."

"What time of the day did you go outside for the forty-five
minute —"

"Whenever the guard wanted. It was like a big patio all caged in.
Eight North. Up on the eighth floor. One time they put me in with
one of these Cuban guys. I say, 'Why are you in the hold area?' He
said, 'I have a three-man hold order. They can't move me without
three officers. I killed two officers already.' "

Mitnick yells. "They put me with this Cuban who
killed
guys!
What the fuck are they doing
that
for? Locking me up with that guy!
This guy, who knows, maybe he'll kill somebody for kicks.

"It was fucking
torture.
You're just in there with yourself. I mean
you're locked in your cell twenty-three out of twenty-four hours.
That's the worst punishment they could do. It was fucking torture,
man. It was hard to describe. I mean here it is, what is it, six, seven
years later and I'm still pissed."

"Was there ever anybody else you talked to about this?"

"I never talked to anybody about it. They don't give a shit! They
say, 'Oh, it's over.' But it's mental goddamn
torture
and I'll never
forgive the U.S. government for it, ever! I'm not saying that I'm
gonna get even or something like that, so don't read that into it. But
I'll never forgive them for that shit.

"It was the judge's order. My attorney brought it up to the judge
on several occasions in court, and know what her comment was?
That is where
he belongs.
And this is one of the most liberal judges in
the L.A. area, right? That's where he belongs. I remember those
words exactly. It's like, you know, they show me no mercy, so why
should I show them any?
No fuckin' mercy, man!"

Later, I phone the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles,
the federal jail where Mitnick did eight months of solitary, to check
out his story.

"There's very limited information that we would have," the war-
den's executive assistant tells me, suggesting I call Lompoc. "If the
inmate had a discipline problem, all that information would be con-
tained in the central file."

Officials at Lompoc are also of little help, except to explain that as

far as the Federal Bureau of Prisons is concerned, "lock down" or
"solitary confinement" doesn't exist: "The terms we use in the Fed-
eral Bureau of Prisons are 'administrative detention' and 'disciplin-
ary segregation.' "

Finally, I find someone at the Washington, D.C., office of the FBP.
I spell Mitnick's name, and she brings up his file on the bureau's
computer system.

"Oh, there he is. His registrar number was 89950-012. He came
to Terminal Island as a presentencing admission on December 9,
1988
.
Then he was transferred to MDC LA on December 12, 1988,
and remained there as a holdover until August iz, 1989."

"Was he in administrative detention?"

"No," answers the official definitively. "He was on a regular unit."

"I was told he didn't receive the same treatment as other in-
mates."

"It doesn't look that way. There was only one episode, but if
that's the reason why he was there or in any kind of different hous-
ing, you're gonna have to go through FOIA [Freedom of Informa-
tion Act] for that because I couldn't tell you that if I wanted to."

But she tells me anyway.

"It looks like he was just in regular units except for maybe two
weeks, that's about it, from April z6, '89, till May 10. That was the
only case where there was anything special about his housing. The
rest of the time it looks like he was just in regular units."

Interesting. As far as the Federal Bureau of Prisons' computers are
concerned, Kevin Mitnick's eight months of solitary confinement
was only a two-week stint. But in fact Kevin Mitnick's version is
true. Newspaper articles, one book, Mitnick's attorney, and state-
ments by the judge in his case confirm that, indeed, the hacker was
held in solitary confinement for the bulk of his incarceration.