The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (39 page)

I reread the header — "From: Jon Littman, To: jlittman." How

weird! Someone inside the Well sent me this message, as if I'd typed
and sent it myself. It's not hard to figure out who's the likely suspect.
But just in case I'm not sure, Mitnick has added a footnote to the
newsgroup post noting the first name he has in common with the Air
Force captain.

This must be the post Mitnick referred to a few days ago on the
Shimomura attack. And the post Markoff referred to. From what I
can tell, it's a post to an Internet security newsgroup.

I'm impressed. It's not every day I read something written by an
Air Force captain in Information Warfare. And Captain Ziese has
some insightful observations that expand on Mitnick and Markoff's
comments. First, the big attack on Shimomura wasn't really this
Christmas but "last summer." Second, "most of the tools were origi-
nally pilfered then — not now. " Third, the tools taken in the new
attack were "far less significant." And fourth, half the Internet is
vulnerable to attack through "simple techniques."

In other words, the Christmas Day hack was a media creation and
the Internet is swiss cheese. IP spoofing may be an interesting attack
method, but according to this Air Force captain most of the Inter-
net's doors can be pried open with the technical equivalent of a
screwdriver.

"Have you heard anything?"

It's John Markoff on the phone, the afternoon of Wednesday,
February 8. "You probably have quite a bit more information than I
do," I say.

"I don't know," Markoff sighs. He's obsessed with finding out
who broke into Shimomura's machine.

"It gets quite murky. I don't even know if it's Kevin I'm onto. I'm
into a real heavy paranoia stage. Hang on for a second... ."

Is Markoff saying that he thinks Mitnick didn't do the Christmas
Day hack?

"Sorry," Markoff comes back on the phone. He sounds flustered,
confused, not at all the cool journalist I'm accustomed to.

"Well, I don't know. I'm sort of running around and I don't know
where to run ..." Markoff frets, and then, suddenly, is back in

control. "If you had to guess where Kevin was in the country, where
would you guess?"

"Guess what city he's in?" I ask, already knowing from my
sources that Markoff's been telling people Denver.

"Yeah."

"I'd say he's probably not in Seattle."

Markoff agrees that's unlikely.

"I don't know, maybe somewhere in the central U.S.?"

Markoff brushes off my ambiguous reply. "What about his
MO?" Markoff asks without missing a beat. "Do you think he now
feels secure 'cuz he's using cell phones?"

"I think there might be a city," Markoff offers. "Before he was rea-
sonably clever. He sort of worked through switches, and you
couldn't really tell anything.

"But now I don't know if it's [Mitnick] at all," he groans. "An-
other voice mail message was left on Tsutomu's machine berating
him for putting his voice on the Net."

"His voice on the Net?"

"Tsutomu posted the [voice] tapes to [the Internet]," Markoff ex-
plains. "You can go listen to them."

"Who berated him?"

"Unknown. But it sounded like the same guy."

"The same synthesized voice?"

"No, it was a different synthesized voice, a Japanese thing. 'Grass-
hopper, son, you make mistake.' It was very funny actually."

■ ■ ■

Mitnick phones the following afternoon, Thursday, February 9, say-
ing he knows I've sent my assistant to meet with Kathleen Cun-
ningham, the U.S. Marshal in Los Angeles. He sounds cocky, full of
himself, the same way he sounded after he hacked Lottor. The same
way he sounded after he told me about the breakin to Shimomura's
machine.

"How do you know everything?" I ask, stunned.

"Well I keep tabs on them as much as they like to keep tabs on

me. That way I can predict their next move. You would be sur-
prised."

"Well, I guess I shouldn't be anymore. It's pretty impressive."

"Yes," Mitnick agrees. "Kathleen Cunningham."

"You're amazing. How do you know?"

"I can't say, 'cuz then you'd be obligated to tell them because of the
way it's done, because then you'd be an accessory after the fact."

What does Mitnick know? The only time I ever discussed my assis-
tant's upcoming meeting with the marshal was on the telephone.

I've got news that I figure will surprise him. "I was asked to write a
story for the
L.A. Times
about Shimomura but I turned it down."

"Oh, about Shimomura?"

"Yeah. They wanted me to do a cover story."

"Well, I think it's great. It helps me out in a way. It puts him in the
media."

"A strange thing happened. The
L.A. Times
called me at four-
thirty p.m. one day, right, and asked me to do it."

"Hold on!" Mitnick jokes. "Did you say four-thirty?

"Yeah."

"Oh, I had it at a different time — never mind. I'm just kidding,"
Mitnick chuckles. "I just had to fuck with your head! I better be
quiet, because you're going to start to believe it and start to be like
one of these other paranoid people out there."

What about Mitnick knowing about this U.S. Marshal meeting
before it happens? Shouldn't that make me a tad paranoid?

"What did make me paranoid is the next day I get a call from
John Markoff. He's calling and offering me all this stuff."

"Did you ever see the movie
Puppetmaster?"

"No."

"It's where these aliens seat themselves on the neck of the humans
and actually take them over, their mind and body. Well, I picture a
big FBI alien sitting on the back of Markoff. He's a puppet, that's my
nickname for him. Puppetmaster."

Mitnick is on his Markoff conspiracy tirade again. I ignore it and
continue.

I tell Mitnick that when Markoff called me he already knew I'd
been offered the
L.A. Times
assignment.

"Yeah, 'cuz they probably have a wiretap on your phone line and
they're probably taking the info I'm telling you. That's all I can make
of it. Did you ever admit to Markoff that I talked to you?"

"I did slip at one point."

"Did you tell him the frequency that we talk?"

"No. I told him he had to swear — he had to swear he would tell
nobody. I said, 'You have to swear you don't tell the FBI or anybody
like that.' "

"I'm surprised there haven't been marshals at your place," Mit-
nick wonders. "I mean, relatives [of mine] have been visited that I
haven't talked to in years."

"He did say one thing that made me think that he is trying to get
you captured."

"Oh, hell yes! I know that! I don't know why. I never have done
anything to harm him. When they [Markoff and Hafner] wanted to
talk to me about writing their book, I said, 'How much money are
we talking,' and they said nothing. I said, 'Sorry. I'm not going to
spend my time when you guys are making six figures.'

"I don't know why I've been talking to you. I think it's because I
like you. It's weird, 'cuz you're going to write what you write. I'm
not making a fucking dime from talking to you. I'm risking my ass
talking to you. I must be nuts."

I chuckle, but Mitnick doesn't think it's funny.

"No, seriously. I mean something eggs me on to talk to you.
You've got a sense of humor. I enjoy talking to you. That's bad for
me. I wish you were more of an
asshole!"

Coming from Kevin Mitnick this is a compliment. Or a con.

"Markoff clearly knows it's [the Shimomura IP Spoof attack] not
me. See, the media is interested in this Internet shit. They've got
Shimomura on the front page. I know the marshal is trying to get me
put on the front page as the cause for it all. 'If we put him away there
will be no more computer crime.'

"Markoff was the whole cause of the whole thing. I wonder if he
is on some payroll. Do you personally know why he has such an
interest in me? Did I piss him off in some fashion? I want to nail his
motivation."

"Nobody can figure out why they [the Marshals] went public with that
information," I say, asking Mitnick why they revealed he was nearly
captured in Seattle. "Because that's not what the FBI usually does."

"No, because if you go public with it, that makes the other person
[Mitnick] know that you know. And it makes the other person
change all their methods."

"How many people are involved in your case?

"Maybe a total of five, six."

"That many?" I say, surprised. "Who else besides the two in
L.A.?"

"You got Ken. You got Kathleen," Mitnick runs down the list as
if he's naming his bowling team. "You got their technical people.
Then you have U.S. Marshal people. Then you never know if you
have any people in other states."

■ ■ ■

I ask Mitnick about his hobbies and he clams up. He says the feds
find people by their habits and hobbies.

"Remember where everything fucked up?" Mitnick cryptically re-
fers to that "idiot's" error that cost him his last job. "That all has to
do with the Sleepless thing [Mitnick is cryptically referring to his
near capture in Seattle by alluding to the movie
Sleepless in Seattle.]. When the connection [Mitnick's identification] was made there were
techniques and methods that had to be completely redrawn from
scratch." He says little more, except to hint that he's completely
reinvented himself, down to the food he eats.

"I'm not going to say it's going to go one way or another. I'm not
that confident. All I can say is, hey, I gave it my best shot. If it goes in
my direction, great. I accomplished something. And if it doesn't go
in my direction at least I know I tried."

"And what have you accomplished?"

"Living my life the way I want to live it."

"Is there something else, too? The feat itself?"

"No, no. I don't consider this a game anymore."

■ ■ ■

Perhaps. But it's clear he's still playing. Mitnick jokes about his new
"degree" not quite being ready, chuckling that it takes sixty days for

the paperwork to come through. Somehow in his mind it's all right
because he says he's in it for the thrill.

"Take a game, say I play a Nintendo game all the time. My line of
thinking, whether it's corrupt or not."

"Right."

"I know there's like a back way of winning the game. So I break
into Nintendo, and I steal the source to the game, figure out how it
works, don't pass it to anyone, don't keep it. There's no money in it,
there's no evil intent. Well, I consider that a game.

"Now on the other hand if I took that and sold it to Mattel ...
[Some of the] stuff I've done, I could have made lots of money."

Now we're getting somewhere. Mitnick's finally talking about
how he could hack his first million. That is, if he were just a cy-
bercriminal, and not a dedicated hacker.

"Theoretically what could one make money with?"

"Information," Mitnick says weightily. "Insider trading."

Ivan Boesky, listen up.

"Let's say I wanted to make lots of money. Like right now I can
get out of this fucking bind that I am in right now. Alls you've got to
do is become a real criminal. Infiltrating companies that do le-
veraged buyouts and stocks and mergers. Obtain this information,
create a new identity, and do stock trades. Something that's not
going to be so high profile that the Securities and Exchange Commis-
sion steps in. Like fifty k here and fifty k there."

"A lot of money," I say.

"Become another Ivan Boesky. That's easy. I can do it tomorrow,
but that's where I don't cross the line. But if somebody wanted to
do that, the key would be infiltrating the companies that do the
leveraged buyouts. As the guy said in
Sneakers,
it all comes down to
the ones and zeroes."

"So all you need to do is infiltrate the leverage buyout com-
panies?"

"The buyout companies," Mitnick repeats. "The attorneys that
do the buyouts."

"Which is probably easier?"

"You know they're not secure, " Mitnick says. "Like for instance,
I hate saying names."

"Well, I'll say a name like Lehman Brothers or —"

"Shearson Lehman. So you just basically attack those companies,
and I'm good enough, I can basically get in anywhere I choose. Like
now if I was a real desperado that's what I'd be doing."

"Right," I say with a touch of disbelief in my voice.

Mitnick doesn't like my tone. "You know that I'm not bullshit-
ting you!" Mitnick snaps.

"Right. You just target somebody who has —"