>>thirty+(OP)
Oh man, oh man. This is heart-breaking. Even though I never met Kevin IRL, he was always something of a.. well, maybe not a "role model" exactly, but certainly an inspiring character in many regards. Some of my earliest forays into the world of phone phreaking and related activities were inspired by the stories I read about Mitnick and his crew out in LA, in Markoff and Haffner's book
Cyberpunk. For a while me and some of the guys I ran with would use the word "Kevin" as a sort of code-word for this stuff to avoid telling our parents any more than necessary about what we were doing
"Where are you going to night boys?"
"Oh, we're going to hang out with Kevin."
(this meant a night of trashing telco dumpsters, fucking around with payphones, and various other dubious activities)
"Oh, OK. Well, be careful."
That sort of thing.
Wow. Never saw this coming. I didn't even know he'd been ill.
Anyway... RIP, Mr. Mitnick. May there be clueless operators to social engineer, on "the other side".