zlacker

>>thirty+(OP)
Mitnick was a hacker hero of mine in my youth. I think I’ve understood his role as jester prior to conviction less as I’ve grown older, but there’s something about the boyhood charm of being so divorced from the potential consequences of one’s actions that is almost unique.

Mitnick had so many stories that entranced the people around him. I heard one second hand of Mitnick dealing with a bank who had early voice verification software. Upon meeting the CEO he gave the executive his card and departed for the evening. Arriving back at his hotel, he called the CEO and asked him to read his phone number to him. The phone number contained all ten digits which Mitnick had neatly tape recorded so as to make the CEO’s voice reproducible. He then proceeded to use the bank’s vocal banking system to transfer $1 from the CEO’s account to his as the authentication mechanism was reading out your own account number in your voice.

When Mitnick arrived back in the board room the architect of the voice verification system was crestfallen and the bank CEO delivered a check on a silver platter.

Now how much of that tale is embellished I will never know as it was second hand, but that was the kind of whimsy Mitnick brought to our world.

Rest in Power.

>>josh26+W3
He has the CEO’s number and successfully calls him, and through some miracle gets through directly to ask this trivial question — as opposed to getting the number from the assistant who answers his phone - sure ok but then under what pretense does he then ask him to repeat his phone number? “Please repeat the phone number I just dialed.”

The phone number contains all the digits needed to recreate the bank account number?

He somehow has the bank account number?

He meets the CEO (despite just being a security consultant) and gives his report to the board of directors?! That is not how companies usually work, especially the board part.

Check on a silver platter? architect of the voice system is brought into the room with the board to be humiliated? This reads like something a 13 year old would dream up (nothing against OP maybe someone even Mitnik really did claim this happened).

The tale is absolutely embellished if it has any truth at all.

>>educti+tb1
This is the 90's and early 2000's. We didn't have the security processes and checks like we do nowadays. I worked for a bank right after the dot-com crash and was in charge of their internet banking web presence. I was witness to other employees passing around CDs and printouts containing the private information of hundreds, maybe thousands of customers. This was the era when your SSN was your userid. So these CDs contained SSNs, names, addresses, bank account numbers, passwords (not even encrypted, much less salted), etc. I moved into a new cubicle one time and saw these CDs just left over. It was a free-for-all for people like Kevin Mitnick.

>>stuff4+4k1
I was once asked by Target for my SSN because I was returning a product. That was in the early 2000s

>>butter+iq2
LOL, I was asked by a pet shelter for my SSN in order to adopt a cat. I stupidly put it down on the paper form and then asked why they needed it. She didn't have an answer and rejected my application to adopt. But she kept the paper form in case I tried to reapply in the future. I ripped it out of her hands and left. I should have just put a phony one in there...

>>stuff4+hD2
Why did you get rejected

>>kuhewa+Ux4
Perhaps they thought such a clever person wouldn't be suitable for a cat, since cats like to have "owners" they can actually train.

>>realae+aA4
clever people are trainable like all the rest, they are that much better and fooling themselves