Speaking of feds, one of the reasons Kevin is famous is that the feds chased him down for getting into a DEC system and downloading a copy of DEC's RSTS/E OS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSTS/E ). DEC alleged he did billions of dollars in damage (you wouldn't download a car), the press claimed he was hacking satellites to launch nukes. He did a year, and it was insane: he wasn't allowed to make phone calls because they were worried he was gonna hack a telelphone to launch nukes. (The press was really insistent that he could launch a nuke and was an evil wizard of some sort.) After that, he got popped during his supervised release, and went on the run instead of going back to do more time. Wasn't allowed to use a computer or any digital communications networks. This is a sentence that would result in death by starvation nowadays but was sort or manageable then, except that he couldn't get a job doing anything else, so he wrote a book about social engineering using a typewriter and then sent the manuscript to his friend to typeset it.
There was a documentary about this called "Freedom Downtime". It is worth watching. (You might have seen it when I was rambling some time a year or two ago about getting hammered and watching it and I typed "frek evin" in a bunch of FSE announcements.) It is free, you can watch it for free:
@p@freespeechextremist.com freedom downtime is very good and changed my perception of kevin, as it had been tainted by everyone ironically blaming him for every hack, like a sam hyde type character
I love how they could prohibit this guy from using any tech, but many courts have ruled that it's unconstitutional to prohibit convicted pedophiles from using the internet or going to parks where children are present as a condition of release.
@p@Humpleupagus The difference is when it happened. It's simply not possible to exist without the Internet anymore.
Even when I had an Internet ban in 2013, it had exceptions you could fly a plane through. Anything for education or a job or getting a job, and I work in IT. Really, it was just them not wanting me to use Twitter or my blog to embarrass a dumbass "computer detective" who didn't know shit.
Also, that ruling was in regards to a statute that blanket banned people from using any site with a social media component. It wasn't a case-specific pretrial or probation restriction.
@eee They can do whatever they want. His team argued that this was stupid in court and the prosecutor said he should work at McDonald's and the Greek chorus of journos said "YEAH, FLIP BURGERS, NERD!" and the judge thought he was gonna launch a nuke that was basically it.
I figure if he could have launched a nuke, he would have at that point. I would have.
@p@eee These people are so tarded. I'm fairly certain the controls for atomic weaponry are air-gapped. Fedgov is stupid, but they're not THAT stupid. The codes were 000000, but I have no doubt the launch controls are actually incompatible with TCP/IP and most likely only connected to each other via a sneakernet over the phone (a 'speakernet'?)
@Hoss@Owl The best part is that to get an account, he just called, said he worked there, and asked for an account. No cracking involved at all: he just asked.
Kevin Mitnick did nothing wrong. Old school techies like him were extremely based and the polar opposite in every single way of the establishmentphilic bugs that occupy big tech's gleaming offices in modern day Silicon Valley.
>The press was really insistent that he could launch a nuke and was an evil wizard of some sort. I wish I could make the establishment seethe so hard that the press paints me as the world's most ultimate badass every time I am the subject of their writings.
RIP king. I've been meaning to read Ghost In the Wires for a while now, maybe it's time.
Bad news gentlemen: Weev got stuck in fucking *Ukraine*. He didn't get out fast enough. His wife and children made it out to Western Europe but last I heard he was still stuck there. Alive, at least as of a few months ago. Apparently his house even got blown up by Russian artillery, meaning that he's now had his domicile destroyed by both the US *and* Russia.
@p > This is a sentence that would result in death by starvation nowadays but was sort or manageable then
I think weev had a similar set of conditions (no confuser, but was allowed a smartphone)... last I've heard of him he had moved to a country where his opinions on Jews are close to the mainstream (Lebanon, IIRC); funny enough, he did the time for discovering some apple website thingy had incremental IDs allowing you to harvest emails / phone numbers, not sure what else, reporting it to apple, being ignored, then publicizing it because no other way to fix the thing...