Kevin Mitnick

Kevin David Mitnick (born August 6, 1963) is one of the most famous criminal hackers to be jailed. He was arrested by the FBI on February 15, 1995. Mitnick was convicted of wire fraud and of breaking into the computer systems of Fujitsu, Motorola, Nokia, and Sun Microsystems. He served five years in prison (four years of it pre-trial), 8 months of that in solitary confinement, and was released on January 21 2000. During his supervised release, which ended in 2003, he was restricted from using any technology other than a landline telephone.

Controversy

Kevin Mitnick's criminal activities, arrest, and trial were controversial, and have caused some computer industry journalists to raise legal and ethical questions concerning the events surrounding him.

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Mitnick continues to claim that his treatment was unfair and has alleged that at one time he was held in solitary confinement for 9 months because the authorities believed he might cause a nuclear attack.

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The core of the controversy came from two books that presented varying facts that were at odds with one another: John Markoff and Tsutomu Shimomura's Takedown, and Jonathan Littman's The Fugitive Game. In particular, Littman made allegations of journalistic impropriety against Markoff, of overzealous prosecution of Mitnick by the government, of mainstream media over-hyping of Mitnick's actual crimes, and of the legality of Shimomura's involvement in the matter. Further controversy came over the release of the movie Takedown, with Littman alleging that portions of the film were taken from his book without permission.

Related Topics:
John Markoff - Tsutomu Shimomura - Jonathan Littman

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The case against Mitnick was an important one. It tested then-nascent laws that had been enacted for dealing with computer crime, and it raised public awareness of security issues involving networked computers. The controversy remains, however, as Mitnick is often used today as an example of the quintessential criminal hacker, despite the fact that his activities are thought by some to have been far less damaging and significant than those of other computer criminals of the time.

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