| mainly Social Engineering...that's how he got the access. Downloaded Solaris source code, had in his possession a list of CC numbers from Netcom (which at the time, so did hundreds of other people..the list was freely available on some BBS's...though they blamed Kevin for stealing them even though it was someone else) I can't remember what he got from Novell but they claimed it cost them billions, even though it wasn't a big deal.
(Yeah, he deserved to be punished, but nowhere near what they did or would've liked to have done.)
I don't remember everything though...I do know he evaded arrest...took flight and was caught in North Carolina. I know the reason he was caught the first time and that time were due to Tsutomu Shimomura. The reason for the solitary was the warden thought he could hack into NORAD or such using the prison phone and launch a nuke or somesuch (ignorance, go figure...people believe entirely too much of what they see in the movies...and read in the papers, as one of the main writers on the Mitnick case, John Markoff, seems to have been more concerned with the fame he was getting because of it than the facts of the matter.)
For more info:
Freedom Downtime is the pro Kevin side...2600 made a video on the whole Free Kevin movement along with some background on the reality of hackers.
Takedown, a book by Shimomura and Markoff, out of print though, but details how Shimomura helped to capture him from Shimomura's prospective. Admittedly seems to be more about his daily life and eating habits than how he caught Mitnick. There was a movie made with the same name that was never released stateside, but released in France under a different name.
There has been mention in various books about hackers and their culture that might help fill in the gaps and reach more of a middle ground between the two. Unfortunately I can't remember much of it, and being at work have no access to my books/videos. |
