>>thirty+(OP)
Wow. He was only 59.

I've always loved his lockpicking business card: https://www.mitnicksecurity.com/kevin-mitnicks-famous-lockpi...

While I assume this is real, part of me does feel like a combination of how young he is and who is is leads me to be slightly skeptical. Assuming it's real, hopefully he would have appreciated the skepticism.

>>thirty+(OP)
I'n guessing the hug of death will be forthcoming for this site: http://web.archive.org/web/20230719235437/https://www.dignit...

>>obiefe+E1
To reach moderators, email hn@ycombinator.com with your request.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>

(I'd just made this suggestion via email on seeing this post.)

>>thirty+(OP)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick

>>h2odra+I
The....Gerber Baby? Is there a story there? She seems pretty normal and pleasant from her Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Turner_Cook

>>m4jor+p1
I'm wondering the same thing. Wikipedia page isn't updated, I don't see any updates on https://www.mitnicksecurity.com/ or https://www.knowbe4.com/, and I can't find any other news mentions about this.

I also can't find mention of him having pancreatic cancer, but that's not necessarily a confirmation of anything. He certainly could have kept it private.

>>JuanTo+U1
As I write this, there's a pending edit, accepted for review, of Mitnick's death.

That seems to have been reverted pending a reliable source:

Edit: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&old...>

Revert: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&old...>

Wikipedians typically resolve such issues pretty quickly.

>>thirty+(OP)
I'm a bit "on the younger generation" but I remember the movie based on his story: "Take Down" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159784/.

To this day I know the difference between a cracker and a hacker :)

RIP.

>>thirty+(OP)
RIP. I loved reading about Kevin whilst growing up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlbUYl67LTY

>>mindcr+l5
Everything Markoff ever wrote was untrue.

https://youtu.be/3zgLHEqIlJg?t=528

>>bshipp+A2
It doesn’t matter who the Gerber Baby really is. Society has chosen to associate the Gerber Baby with certain attributes regardless of who the person behind the photo really is, and so it is with Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick, the real person, excelled at social engineering more than any other trait and was arguably subjected to malicious prosecution. But in his later years, there’s a lot of documentation online indicating that he didn’t live up to the myth that grew around him and he was not a pleasant person [1].

People here are mostly reminiscing about Mitnick--the myth, not the man.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/uk6wgd/why_d...

>>serf+71
I'm still rocking one on my laptop to this very day.

https://fogbeam.com/free-kevin.jpg

>>29athr+P3
And read "Ghost in the Wires":

https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wires-Adventures-Worlds-Wanted-...

>>thirty+(OP)
> Donations can be made in Kevin's memory to The National Pancreas Foundation https://pancreasfoundation.org/ or The Equal Justice Initiative https://eji.org/

> These are two causes of great importance to Kimberley and Kevin; both organizations put the majority of donated funds to work in the communities they serve.

If Kevin inspired you, perhaps a donation in his name would be a nice gesture.

>>thirty+(OP)
Mitnick's legend (and his books) are definitely a big part of why I have a job I love.

I was tempted to send a box of donuts as a gift... but instead I think I'll send the two dozen as a donation to the EJI instead.

https://eji.org/

>>thirty+(OP)
I first learned about Mitnick on a network security course where we had to recreate the now iconic TCP spoofing attack he employed against Shimomura's X-Terminal [0].

He was definitely a legend.

[0] http://wiki.cas.mcmaster.ca/index.php/The_Mitnick_attack#The...

>>thirty+(OP)
Worth noting that Wikipedia at the time of this post is refusing to acknowledge his death, citing poor sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&act...

Hope he is alive and well. May he rest in peace if not

>>thirty+(OP)
BoingBoing is now confirming it:

https://boingboing.net/2023/07/19/kevin-mitnick-1963-2023.ht...

>>thirty+(OP)
For those looking for an official source outside of the obituary: Dave Kennedy (a longtime infosec pro and, in my opinion, a trusted source) confirmed in a tweet: https://nitter.net/HackingDave/status/1681838080355966976

Although I haven't seen an "official" statement, I believe that this news is legitimate.

RIP Kevin.

>>ecohen+T9
Looks like he died from pancreatic cancer. This cancers always reminds me of the Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. He was a CMU professor who also died from pancreatic cancer 15 years ago.

https://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/

Here’s an HN discussion from a few years ago.

>>24972377

>>owenma+C7
Less fraud protection. I got my first credit card in 1998 and started paying attention.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_and_Accurate_Credit_Tra...

This gave prior anti-fraud legislation more teeth and had a huge impact.

>>capabl+vb
Here's another source that independently confirmed Mitnick died:

https://www.securityweek.com/famed-hacker-kevin-mitnick-dead...

You're right, though, about my original post -- that was my bad! I read their blurb but didn't click through the link... thank you for the callout.

>>thirty+(OP)
"FREE KEVIN MITNICK, NOW" https://youtu.be/xkKa-jvh4Ik (@1:55)

Does anyone know where this samples comes from?

>>mellin+wb
There is some hope for improved M&M in pancreatic cancer: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06063-y, thanks to personalized mRNA vaccines and PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitors.

>>wnisse+13
None of the commenters expressing this bullshit sentiment will provide their children with 1% of the education, health, freedom, security, etc that Mitnick will have left for his child. We struggle our whole lives to provide, it looks like he already assured that for his family, even into perpetuity if managed well.

It's not like he gave himself cancer on purpose and chose to leave a child with nothing out of spite. He played the hand he was dealt, it seems.

"Mitnick has filed a 13G form with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing ownership of 9,379,829 shares of KnowBe4, Inc. Class A (KNBE). This represents 6.9 percent ownership of the company. "

" companies announced on Wednesday that they have entered into a definitive agreement, with KnowBe4 stockholders set to receive $24.90 per share in cash, "

"Vista Equity Partners to Acquire Security Awareness Training Firm KnowBe4 for $4.6B"

https://fintel.io/news/mitnick-kevin-discloses-stake-in-knbe...

https://www.securityweek.com/vista-equity-partners-acquire-s...

>>autoex+qk
https://www.toool.us/equipment/Emergency-Pick-Card-p36508921...

>>thirty+(OP)
mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20230719235437/https://www.digni...

Rip. I've read Art of Deception in high school and I think it had a lasting influence on me. It reads like a collection of interesting stories. I recomend that book to everyone, especially to people outside of tech.

>>thirty+(OP)
Relevant: https://twitter.com/th3j35t3r/status/1681835933052575745

>>david_+db
The New York Times has also posted their obituary: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/technology/kevin-mitnick-...

>>r3vo+Ja
The New York Times has their obituary up: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/technology/kevin-mitnick-...

RIP

>>androm+84
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/technology/kevin-mitnick-...

>>Splite+K2
KnowBe4 has confirmed. https://web.archive.org/web/20230720043020/https://www.nytim...

>>Apocry+Gb
I miss Adrian, looking at this picture now gives me a wistful feeling https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lamo-Mitnick-Poulsen... Hope Kevin Poulsen is doing okay tonight.

>>autoex+qk
https://www.toool.us/equipment/Emergency-Pick-Card-p36508921...

>>places+q6
Obligatory link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ILA5Cso3w

>>gkober+t1
Wired story about the origin of the cards: https://www.wired.com/2007/06/lock-pick-busin/ (I looked it up because I thought they looked like some cards someone I knew designed, and sure enough…)

>>77pt77+LE
The european bank account numbers are often posted publicly. If you are a VAT payer, you're supposed to check that the account you send money to is registered with the business in the public registry. Otherwise you may be held liable for the receiver's tax fraud. Many companies also show them at their webpage to make it easier to get paid. See e.g. https://www.pre.cz/en/contacts/bank-details/

The account number should be just an ID, not authentication mechanism.

>>thirty+(OP)
The Cyberthief and the Samurai (along with a few other books like Snow Crash, Hackers, the Cuckoos egg etc.) were books that made a big impact on me earlier in my life. It wasn't as much about facts as much as about building a virtual map of the digital world in my head. This was before I had actual access to a fast internet connection.

I had a printout of the MIT guide to lock picking and used to try out stuff with some hand crafted "tools". I'd forgotten about Mitnick and later (probably via. Slashdot) came across his site again and saw this https://www.mitnicksecurity.com/kevin-mitnicks-famous-lockpi... which suddenly brought back the same image I had formed about him. Playful to the extent of not caring, irreverent, and curious.

Rest in Peace.

>>thirty+(OP)
Gone too young.

Pancreatic cancer is terrible. Hacking the disease with RNA would be the better homage possible to Mitnick. Lets pray for the vaccine coming soon.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/mrna-va...

>>scirpa+Rw
Not necessarily:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks

>>4gotun+0z
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/survivorship/coping/attitudes-...

>>nyokod+6B
>Manning’s leaks included vast numbers of documents related in no way to a legitimate whistleblowing issues, some of which helped spark the Arab Spring which precipitated in an ongoing civil war in Syria

You're mistaking Manning's leak with the CIA.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/world/middleeast/cia-syri...

>>myshpa+0Q
I think we should have a link that isn't totally broken. I guess a lot of people here read the headline and came to comment and share some anecdotes, which is totally fine. But the link is broken, so we should at least fix that. Here are a couple of alternatives:

https://www.engadget.com/kevin-mitnick-formerly-the-worlds-m...

https://boingboing.net/2023/07/19/kevin-mitnick-1963-2023.ht...

>>thirty+(OP)
Archive link for those in countries that this page doesn't allow access from: https://archive.is/13uNy

>>dijit+NM
Anyone who knew Kevin, knew that Takedown was complete BS - "fiction" or not.

You'd be better off watching Freedom Downtime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Downtime

https://archive.org/details/FreedomDowntime-TheStoryOfKevinM...

>>4gotun+0z
>It is well known that your psychological state influences the immune system a lot, and even from anecdata, you can see that people rapidly deteriorate when they give up. It is not a coincidence all these terms are used.

citation needed. This meta study seems to not have found many biological links: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361287/

>>larryw+Ng
Alas the book (and the movie) were trash, rather like Shimomura. Anyone who knew Kevin, knew that Takedown was egotistical BS.

If you really want to know about "the pursuit of Mitnick," watch Freedom Downtime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Downtime

https://archive.org/details/FreedomDowntime-TheStoryOfKevinM...

>>master+MW
https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.cobeha.2019.01.009

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejon.2003.09.003

https://doi.org/10.1080/16506078809455814

https://doi.org/10.1037%2F0033-2909.130.4.601

>>logicc+RR
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking-health/m...

>>madaco+K51
TL;DR in UK medical errors seem to be the 7th Cause leading factor

I did some maths (Or Code interpreter did? but I did verified unsourced numbers are in the ball park, at least for UK)

So for UK the estimate of deaths by medical errors is ~11k deaths, which puts it at the 7th cause factor according to this chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-number-of-deaths-b... just below dementia and above liver desease

---

Keep in mind that I am not sure if the 3.6% figure really means causation, I am tired!

GPT4 chat link:https://chat.openai.com/share/7d235295-c149-45f0-ac3d-2a0cfd...

>>thirty+(OP)
https://www.mitnicksecurity.com/kevin-mitnicks-famous-lockpi...

A link to his famous business card which doubled as a lock pick kit. Rip Kevin.

>>noSync+a11
At first I thought this was a reference to the movie Sneakers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zVgWpVXb64), but after searching it seems Wells Fargo also does this, https://www.wellsfargo.com/privacy-security/voice-verificati....

>>educti+tb1
> He somehow has the bank account number?

Being able to login if you have the bank account number is still a pretty big flaw.

If you are a bank, your security threat model should assume that a hacker has access to somebody's account number and basic personal details.

Particularly for a high profile/value account, you can see how it might be possible to get soundclips of them saying the numbers 1 to 9 (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWcldHxHFpo)

>>TheBig+1d1
Two of the most recent most high profile hacks required a large degree of preplanning, scoping out, custom coding etc to achieve the breadth and depth of penetration gained upon execution.

How would you classify supply-chain attacks?

Primary security was bypassed by breaking secondary security .. so there was security to be overcome, there was no social engineering aside from understanding procedures in play, and no disgruntled employees.

https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/SolarWinds-hack-ex...

https://forensiccontrol.com/guides/unravelling-the-moveit-ha...

>>thirty+(OP)
I really enjoyed reading his book Ghost in the Wires. It is the story of Mitnick’s hacking career, from the start in his teens, through becoming the FBI’s most wanted hacker, to spending years in jail before finally being released. It’s a fascinating book that at times reads like a thriller. One of the things that struck me when reading it was how often he used social engineering to gain access to systems.

I wrote more about it here:

https://henrikwarne.com/2015/12/27/social-engineering-from-k...

>>puzzli+Td1
I come from a long line of clinical/medical folks in my family - and me on the tech side of medicine...

That said the following is me talking out my ass, but I have followed a very few number of pancreatic cases - jobs being one... and there is one anecdotal that I would hope people closer to such cases can chime into ; how much wine did these people drink (jobs was a prolific wine drinker)

Im wondering if sulfates from wine are a major player.

https://www.distractify.com/p/patrick-swayze-alcoholic

>>jeremy+Tu
One of the few known modifiable risk factors is sun exposure, which reduces risk by 30-40%:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24075798/

Whether it would be too late to do anything after getting the diagnosis is another question. Studies that look at sun exposure over time and mortality (e.g. Lindqvist's studies) show that it takes decades of sun exposure to lower the mortality risk by this amount.

>>OJFord+fe1
Yes, I think this is pretty stupid too.

Ahem.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/sep/22/voice-recognit...

>>defros+9f1
let me blow your mind with "the lazarus heist" podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvg9/episodes/downloads

>>mcv+fR
There is some reason to hope, tho regrettably too late for your family:

https://www.mskcc.org/news/can-mrna-vaccines-fight-pancreati...

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...

>>felixh+pD1
Another good example, thank you.

Over time they got more interesting and less like the "basic unsophisticated | opportunistic | social engineer | inside agent" description given above.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Group

>>loup-v+Qv1
I'm only aware that documents were circulating saying that, but now that I'm searching around, I think the best details are here:

https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs_purported_HIV_medical_...

Conclusion is that the documents shouldn't be taken at face value... so maybe not?

However, if he was HIV+ I can totally see why it would be covered up.

I guess it's a big question mark, but it's not unbelievable.

>>thirty+(OP)
You can watch some of Kevin's telnet logs here: http://www.takedown.com/evidence/transcripts/index.html

No disrespect to the dead, but I always thought he kind of lived in a lame timeframe. It used to be a lot easier to do what he did. If you check the terminal logs, he was a script kiddie at best (I know he's more famous for the social engineering). How many CVEs did Mitnick have to his name..? (AFAIK, zero)

Anyway, I'm prepared to get some downvotes but do check out the logs. It's pretty entertaining regardless.

>>thirty+(OP)
May he rest in peace.

I first heard of Kevin Mitnick in the early 2000's when I was watching "The Broken" with Kevin Rose and he interviewed Mitnick in one of the episodes.

I was 14-15 years old at the time! Wow!

Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcWByfwkf4k

>>frellu+Q7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MctHTxESCFM

>>mcv+fR
My mom's situation was almost exactly the same. Our family has a history of cancer and it turned out she had the harmful BRCA2 variant.

Were you offered any kind of genetic testing?

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/geneti...

>>witten+OO
Please make your substantive points without snark. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

>>PostOn+sm
Please make your substantive points without calling names. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

>>jeremy+Tu
We detached this subthread from >>36795786 and marked it off topic.

>>thirty+(OP)
http://web.archive.org/web/20230720113741/https://www.dignit...

https://archive.ph/13uNy

>>samsta+or1
> Im wondering if sulfates from wine are a major player.

I work in healthcare in one of the wine capitals of the world, Napa County, CA.

We do not have a higher rate of pancreatic cancer than anywhere else. It is average. If sulfates from wine were a factor, it is quite likely that we would have seen a higher rate of pancreatic cancer here.

https://www.countyofnapa.org/DocumentCenter/View/11029/Main-...

>>ianpen+1A
Update: had no idea Kevin was a ham. His licence got yanked. N6NHG SK.

https://twitter.com/kevinmitnick/status/551997777031340032