Hacker Mitnick
Released
For the first time since 1995, computer
criminal Kevin Mitnick is a free man. But will he hack again?
By Kevin
Poulsen, ZDNet News ©
UPDATED January 21, 2000 9:30 AM PT
Nearly
five years after news of his arrest blazed across the nation's
headlines, hacker Kevin Mitnick walked out of a medium
security prison in Lompoc, Calif., early Friday morning -- and
into an uncertain future.
The 36-year-old hacker was greeted at the
gate by friends and family members. His mother will drive him
to Los Angeles, where his first order of business will be to
obtain a driver's license, report to his new probation officer
and see a doctor about injuries he suffered in a prison bus
accident last year.
"He's having neck pains, and back and
shoulder pains," said Reba Vartanian, Mitnick's
grandmother. "He hasn't had a regular doctor in five
years."
A free man for the first time since 1995, he
will live in the Los Angeles suburb of Westlake Village with
his father, Alan Mitnick, a general contractor.
Less clear is what Mitnick is going to do
for a living. Under court order, the hacker is banned for
three years from using any kind of computer equipment without
the prior written permission of his probation officer -- a
restriction that even the court acknowledged would affect his
employability. "He's experiencing a lot of frustration
over the things he can't do," said Eric Corley, editor of
the hacker magazine 2600
and the leader of a "Free
Kevin" grass-roots movement. "Keep in mind this
is someone who's been kept away from these things for five
years, and when he gets out he won't even be able to touch
them."
Does incarceration cure an addict?
The restrictions, and long history of
recidivism, make one former friend and partner-in-crime
pessimistic about Mitnick's future. "Do you cure a drug
addict or alcoholic by incarceration on its own?" asked
Lew DePayne, rhetorically. "Do you cure him by taking
away his ability to earn a living?"
Mitnick and DePayne became friends in the late
1970s, when they were both teenagers. Together, they explored
and manipulated the telephone network as Los Angeles' most
notorious "phone phreaks." In the 1980s, DePayne
seemingly dropped out of the scene, while Mitnick moved on to
corporate computers and networks, developing a penchant for
cracking systems in search of proprietary "source
code," the virtual blueprints for a computer program or
operating system.
Mitnick had already been in a series of
minor skirmishes with the law when, in 1989, he suffered his
first adult felony conviction for cracking computers at
Digital Equipment Corp. and downloading source code. He served
one year in federal custody, followed by three years of
supervised release.
In 1992, Mitnick was charged with a
violation of his supervision for associating with DePayne
again. He went underground and online, using the Internet to
crack computers belonging to such cell phone and computer
makers as Motorola
(NYSE: MOT),
Fujtsu and Sun
Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW)
and to copy more proprietary source code. The FBI captured him
on Feb. 15, 1995, when computer security expert Tsutomu
Shimomura suffered an attack on his machine and responded by
tracking Mitnick to his hideout in Raleigh, N.C.
Shimomura and New York Times reporter John
Markoff went on to write the book "Takedown: The Pursuit
and Capture of America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw -- By The
Man Who Did It." Shimomura and Markoff sold the movie
rights to Miramax Films, who cast Skeet Ulrich as Mitnick. But
since shooting wrapped on the project in December 1998 the
movie has languished on the shelf with no known theatrical
release date, surrounded by swirling rumors of a
direct-to-video or cable TV release. Miramax publicists didn't
return telephone inquiries about the project.
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