The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (34 page)

I ask Mitnick about the
U.S. News & World Report
article that has
elevated him to the status of America's most wanted hacker.
"They're repeating these same allegations that haven't been
proven."

"Well, now they're kinda quoting it as factual," Mitnick says,

amazed. "Usually they say 'Well so and so is suspected of XYZ.'
Now it's 'So and so did XYZ. We just can't find him.' "

Mitnick's right. There's no proof of the allegations in the
U.S.
News & World Report
story. Not even any sources. It's as if John
Markoff's allegations in the
New York Times
have become undis-
puted fact.

"Who knows," Mitnick harps on his old conspiracy angle. "Maybe
the director of some bureau didn't like a lot of the adverse publicity
with the Justin [Petersen] case. And then I'm sure Lewis's attorney
aggravating over the whole case didn't help me one single bit."

But wasn't Mitnick initially excited by the prospect of the Janet
Reno letter? Wasn't he happy to put Eric and David Schindler, the
Assistant U.S. Attorney, in the hot seat?

"Were you upset about that?"

"Well, he [De Payne] was so excited about it 'cuz he was hoping
to cause the agents trouble. You know, get them suspended. Look at
the Waco case, look at the CIA, look at all those officers that
shoulda been disciplined and yet they're getting promoted. It's like
they're
untouchable.
They're above the law. So I knew that it was a
waste of time."

■ a ■

"So you said you probably can't call me for a while," I change the
subject, referring to our Friday morning conversation, when Mitnick
said he was getting on a plane.

"Yeah. It's just temporary. And it's too risky 'cuz I think your line
could be tapped. I'd like to talk to you, if you could come up with an
alternate way I can communicate with you, like through PGP [en-
cryption] on the Internet. But you're gonna have to get PGP work-
ing. You'd actually have to invest the time and get some secure
communication."

"And I'm also gonna have to keep PGP at horrie as opposed to the
host?" I ask the hacker who's been hacking into my e-mail.

"You don't leave it on the Well," Mitnick scolds. "No. You keep
it on your Mac. I know it's a pain in the ass, you know, it's just too
risky. I spend too much time on the phone with you. It's too easy to
get the city I'm in, and then they can drive around to certain places,
maybe ask if I've been there."

This is news to me. Is Mitnick getting sloppy, not disguising the
origin of his calls?

"You know I went to a movie. And maybe if they track the call to
this city, so they go to every fuckin' theater and show my pictures,
maybe they'll get lucky. There's a hundred ways to get caught. A
genius can think of fifty of them. Get my point?

"I don't wanna go back into solitary confinement because I guar-
antee you
one
hundred percent they'd do it again. ... 'This guy can
start World War Three! Or he could whistle the launch codes'. . .
and I'll get the same judge and she'll say, 'Oh, that's where you
belong!'

"My attorney went to the Ninth Circuit about the bail. They said
I was too dangerous to get bail.. . that I was a threat to the commu-
nity. Yet, if you read the law ... it said . . . the judge may determine
that the defendant is a threat to the community and may hold the
defendant in detention. But it was only if these four specific factors
were true.

"The first was if you received the death penalty or life imprison-
ment. . . . The second case was if it was a drug offense that carried
ten or more years. The third case was if it was your third conviction
lor a felony and the prior two felonies were crimes of violence. And
the fourth thing was treason, espionage.

"So, my case did not meet those four criteria in plain, simple En-
glish. I pointed it out to my attorney. All he did to me was shrug his
shoulders. Like what the fuck."

■ ■ ■

I ask Mitnick what the feds think about him.

"Who knows?" Mitnick sighs. "I don't know what they're think-
ing. ... As much as I would like to predict their movements, they'd
like to predict mine. Believe me."

"They know for instance that your weight has fluctuated a lot."

"They don't know what I look like now. I could be two hundred
ten pounds or I could be a Stairmaster Joe. I could have a beard and
a mustache. Or I could be a redhead or a blond. You don't know.
And they don't know."

"You could have glasses or—"

"I could have contacts. I could have a limp," Mitnick continues,

his anger easing. He's intrigued. He's talking about one of his pas-
sions. "The way people walk is the number one way to recognize
somebody. Did you know that? You put something in your shoe that
hurts. There's a whole book on it,
How to Disguise Yourself
or
A
Hundred Ways to Disguise Yourself."

"So another life change?"

"No. I'm not changing," Mitnick says, his voice weary. "You're
confused about what I'm doing. I have to look for new employment
soon. I'm not gonna quit until I find something new 'cuz I can't
afford to quit and not have the income. But somebody's screwup
could come back to haunt me later through the tax man. That's all
I'm gonna tell you. It's because of some idiot's procedural clerical
error. You gotta look at everything. You gotta look at the taxes.

"Like I said, any genius can think of fifty ways to get caught. I'm
no genius, so say I can think of twenty-five."

"How smart are you?"

"I dunno. I never took an IQ test. I think I'm just average."

"Why are you so good at what you do?"

" 'Cuz I have passion for it."

"Where does that come from?"

"I dunno, I guess the heart. I just have passion for it. I don't think
I'm any smarter than the next guy. If I was a supergenius, I wouldn't
be in this mess."

Mitnick laughs. "I'd be driving my Mercedes to my penthouse in
Manhattan."

"Or in Switzerland," I joke.

"All right, dude. Well, you take care."

January 21-23,1995

Saturday afternoon, January
21, I drive to the local multi-
plex and sit among the empty seats and watch
Murder in the First.

The movie stinks, but it captures the brutality of prison life. And it
makes me think about what I'm doing. I'm treating Mitnick's predic-
ament as a story, a way to practice my craft, make a living, and
perhaps even enjoy myself. But Mitnick's emotional call last night
jarred me. He challenged me to sit in my bathroom, with a fifty-watt
bulb, to stay there for an hour and imagine what it must be like day
after endless day. I didn't try it, not even for an hour.

His anger surprised me. But then Kevin Mitnick isn't some kid
who did his time in a comfy Club Fed like a lot of white-collar crimi-
nals of the 1980s. Kevin Mitnick didn't successfully pocket millions
of dollars. He pranked who knows how many people and illegally
copied a big corporation's software. He got what he considers tor-
ture as his punishment. Mitnick was punished because of what he
represented, and, I suspect, because he couldn't afford the kind of
lawyers that work for the likes of Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky.

But I'm not convinced of the great conspiracy Mitnick keeps harp-
ing on. I think Mitnick is cyberspace enemy number one for simpler
reasons. Because he or De Payne keep pranking the FBI. Because either
the Justice Department or the Assistant U.S. Attorney in California

decided he would make a great scapegoat for a much bigger problem
they can't control. And because hacker horror stories sell newspapers.

I don't know if the government truly believes Mitnick is dan-
gerous. The FBI and the U.S. Attorney have not publicly commented
on his alleged new crimes. The only new crime on the books is a
minor probation violation caused by Mitnick's continued associa-
tion with De Payne and his alleged unauthorized listening to Pac Bell
Security's voice mail.

Finding victims of his hacks that will talk is not easy. Qualcomm,
the cellular phone company in San Diego that told Markoff about
the alleged copying of its software, with the understanding he would
not publish its name, declines to comment. Only individuals are will-
ing to comment on the dangerousness of Kevin Mitnick, individuals
like Neil Clift, in England, who sells software security bugs he finds
in his spare time to the Digital Equipment Corporation:

.. , He [Mitnick] said he admired me and wanted to do what I do.
He wanted me to help him learn a bit about the operating system.
What books to read. What chapters. I don't see any harm in that. If
he could actually find the problems himself, he wouldn't be inter-
ested in using them....

Kevin's a bit too clever for me. He's always probing. He asked a
question and put an answer together with an answer he got previ-
ously. ... I never know whether he likes me or just wants informa-
tion. He got quite nasty at times. .. . He kept calling me stupid... .
He'd take things from me and say that's OK, because I don't make
any money at them....

I got a kick out of talking to him. He was very interesting.... If he
calls again, I'll always talk to him. If I get a chance to put him away,
I'll do that as well.

Clift, who actively helped the FBI attempt to trace Mitnick's calls to
England, is a perfect example of why Kevin Mitnick remains an
enigma. He is one of the few people who will admit to being
victimized by Kevin Mitnick, yet he describes the hacker's "crimes"
as a search for knowledge, a search he willingly assisted.

Maybe Mitnick's right to think the press hasn't given him a fair

shake. Judging from the
U.S. News & World Report
article he has a
good argument. He hasn't been indicted, he hasn't even been ac-
cused of a crime by a law enforcement official, much less convicted.
But in the press his alleged crimes are now fact.

Still, I know Mitnick has investigated his investigators, and likely
helped himself to whatever software he pleases. My sources have
told me Mitnick has been messing with the FBI agents on his case
and has copied cellular software from major manufacturers. So far
nobody will go on the record with these allegations, or even specu-
late on the significance of these alleged crimes. But that didn't stop
the
New York Times
or
U.S. News & World Report.
Both publica-
tions printed allegations without naming any government officials.
The reporters just said Mitnick was a suspect or flatly stated he'd
committed the crimes. They apparently had no sources willing to go
on the record.

With all this bad press, I'm not surprised that Mitnick is worrying
about the prospect of returning to solitary confinement. He was more
careful yesterday, his calls brief, in sharp contrast to our marathon
conversations earlier in the week. It makes sense. Mitnick knew he was
going to be hopping on a plane, and figured even if the feds were
tapping my phone line, he'd be long gone before they could find him.

That is, if he was telling the truth.

■ ■ ■

It's Monday morning, January 23, three days after Kevin Mitnick
phoned and chuckled that the great cybersamurai had been humbled,
that Tsutomu Shimomura's computer had been hacked. I get up,
stumble down the front steps, and pull the folded paper from the shiny
blue plastic bag.

Here it is, on the front page of the
New York Times.

DATA NETWORK IS FOUND OPEN TO NEW THREAT

By John Markoff

San Francisco, Jan. 22 — A Federal computer security agency has
discovered that unknown intruders have developed a new way to
break into computer systems, and the agency plans on Monday to
advise users how to guard against the problem.

The new form of attack leaves many of the 20 million government,
business, university and home computers on the global Internet vul-
nerable to eavesdropping and theft. ...

The first known attack using the new technique took place on Dec.
25 against the computer of a well-known computer security expert
at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. An unknown individual or
group took over his computer for more than a day and electron-
ically stole a large number of security programs. .. .

The flaw, which has been known as a theoretical possibility to com-
puter experts for more than a decade, but has never been demon-
strated before, is creating alarm among security experts now
because of the series of breakins and attacks in recent weeks.

The weakness . . . previously reported in technical papers by AT&T
researchers, was detailed in a talk given by Tsutomu Shim-
omura ... at a California computer security seminar.. . .

I read on, amazed at the parallels to the story Mitnick told me last
week. The attack is described as brilliant and novel, and there's a
reference to CERT, the federal security agency Mitnick told me
about, as well as the security talk Mitnick said Shimomura gave on
the subject. The
Times
story describes the attack itself slightly differ-
ently. Markoff describes it as Internet Protocol Spoofing, while Mit-
nick dubbed it a TCP/IP prediction packet attack. Markoff terms it
"masquerading," while Mitnick described it as "impersonating a
friendly host."