From the 1970s up until his last arrest in 1995 Kevin Mitnick skillfully eluded and bypassed corporate security safeguards, penetrating some of the most well-guarded systems, including, amongst countless others, the likes of Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment Corporation, Motorola, Netcom, and Nokia. He has even had to go on record and deny hacking into the Department of Defense’s North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and wiretapping the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
At a recent app-enabled cloud network performance and security briefing hosted by Citrix and Palo Alto Networks in Washington, DC, Mitnick opened up about his former life and introduced himself to the Washington crowd accordingly.
“I assume there are a lot of Federal agencies here so we may know each other from a past life,” Mitnick said in a devious, yet still tempered tone.
With the bylines of “Most Wanted” and “Infamous” and a laundry list of corporate names etched onto his belt of exploits, it’d be fair to assume that Mitnick’s hacking masterpiece evolved from one of his more high profile penetrations. That assumption, however, couldn’t be further from the truth.
Actually, the seminal stunt of his hacking career is much more puerile but nonetheless humorous. As Mitnick explained, “My favorite hack was actually when I was a kid.”
Mitnick hacked the frequency of a local McDonald’s drive-through ordering system and took control over the drive-through speaker, relishing the consequential bewilderment of unsuspecting McDonald’s employees.
“I would sit across the street from McDonald’s and I would take their order and tell them they were the 50th customer so your order is free. Please drive through your order is free,” Mitnick reminisced. “People would drive up to the window and I would say, ‘Our weight detection system detected your car is a little heavy so w
