Kevin Mitnick Now Selling Zero-Day Exploits

Re:Kevin Mitnick Now Selling Zero-Day Exploits by philwelch on Wednesday September 24, 2014 @01:29PM (#8362799)

As far as I could ever tell, 90% of the sympathy for Mitnick was because of the excessive sentencing passed down by the government. It's less like hip hop idolizing gangsters and more like sympathy for Rodney King, who was drunk driving at 100 miles per hour and resisted arrest before he was beaten by the LAPD.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Kevin Mitnick Now Selling Zero-Day Exploits by x0x0 on Wednesday September 24, 2014 @02:23PM (#8363167)

Yup. This is why people were upset about Mitnick:

   Mitnick served five years in prison—four and a half years pre-trial and 
   eight months in solitary confinement—because, according to Mitnick, law 
   enforcement officials convinced a judge that he had the ability to "start a 
   nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone", meaning that law enforcement 
   told the judge that he could somehow dial into the NORAD modem via a 
   payphone from prison and communicate with the modem by whistling to launch 
   nuclear missiles. He was released on January 21, 2000. During his 
   supervised release, which ended on January 21, 2003, he was initially 
   forbidden to use any communications technology other than a landline 
   telephone. [1]

He committed a series of crimes, and prison was appropriate. Solitary confinement, however, was not.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick

[ Parent | on HN ]