Conference back40::soapbox

	Good story on how they caught him. 

    Thanks John, good read!
    

    
    This Shimumuro (sp) sounds like one sophisticated dude, how in the hell
    do people like him learn this stuff. Incredible.
    
    Mark

	I wonder if John Covert could give him a run for his money?

    
    me thinks neither John nor herr binder could touch this guy, though
    I hear they both are quite good.
    
    Mark

	slighting the code warrior?

| <<< Note 301.5 by POBOX::BATTIS "Contract Studmuffin" >>>


| me thinks neither John nor herr binder could touch this guy, 

	I didn't want to know if they would touch him, just if he was in the
same league!

| though I hear they both are quite good.

	I wouldn't know.....:-)

    
    Lady Di, no not at all. The might code warrior, Mr. Thomas is quite
    an expert from what I hear. I don't think to many within Dec could
    touch this guy, just from what I read. The guy sounds like some sort
    of genius, the F.B.I. and the NSA seem to think so anyway.
    
    Mark

The guy is basically a punk, as well. I "met" him at Anaheim DECUS in
1982 when he was physically ejected from the exhibit hall on multiple
occasions for hacking around with the RSTS and VMS systems. His energies
are severely misdirected, and I sincerely question his ability to
channel them in any fashion which could be reputably made use of for
worthwhile purposes. The ability to write BASIC-PLUS hackery on the
fly wasn't too marketable a skill in 1982 and I doubt that he's
professionally progressed much past that point in the interim.

    
    Jack I take it you are referring to Mitnik.

Yes, Mitnick - I though that was clear. Sorry if not.

Susan Thunder?

> Susan Thunder?

That was her "code" name - I forget her actual surname. She was another
of the early 80's hacker crowd that attended Fall '82 DECUS. She also
appeared on 20/20 right around that time as she'd recently turned state's
evidence on a "friend" of hers in California for telephone fraud (blue box).

    Very good read!  Reminds me of the 'Cuckoo's Egg' (?) story of a few
    years back about the german guy breaking into assorted systems in US,
    especially in Berkeley.  
    
    Sorta scary about how they track these guys down.  Makes the X-Files
    more and more believable.
    
    Doug

    the cuckoo's egg, by cliff stoll.  excellent read.  stoll himself is a
    loony kind of guy, clearly not certifiable but definitely left coast. 
    he's a member of aol.

     > a member of aol   ???
    
    Also, glad Dec has learned their lesson and that we weren't invaded!
    
    What a gaff *that* would've been if we were hit.

    
    
    If you don't know who this guy is, or want more info about
    all the trouble he has caused, read the book "Cyberpunk" by
    Katie Hafner and John Markoff.  Some of the stuff he did
    was really wild, and alot of it is related to our Mother DEC.
    
    
    Terrie
    

Gaffe, unless you're referring to Mitnick's fishing expedition.

What software did he steal from Digital regarding the 1989 conviction?  What
else is he known/suspected of doing to Digital systems?

    
    
    	I believe he stole VMS source code...
    
    

	So much for going to the source....

    Got it without a PAK or a DEC # huh?  He should have been locked up. 
    Well, DEC is still sending him software updates anyway, I bet.:-)
    
    Dan
    

>He should have been locked up. 

He was.  For a year.

/john

    In a previous life as a VMS tech. writer, I remembered when Mitnick's 
    hacking caused a major release delay as all VMS developers worked overtime 
    to check the integrity of _every_ line of VMS source in CMS. 
    
    Then, a few years later (late 1990 or early 1991), I bumped into Kevin
    Mitnick working at one of our customer sites here in Las Vegas. Corp.
    Security was very interested to hear about this since, according to
    the terms of his parole, he wasn't supposed to be anywhere near
    computers, modems, etc. As noted previously, he appeared to be a bit
    lonely, misdirected, and looking for a little attention/friendship. 
    
    I bumped into him again at UNLV about four months later, where he was
    taking a programming course. (Maybe he was just trying to get close to 
    the Cray at the Supercomputing Center.)
     

>    Security was very interested to hear about this since, according to
>    the terms of his parole, he wasn't supposed to be anywhere near
>    computers, modems, etc. As noted previously, he appeared to be a bit
>    lonely, misdirected, and looking for a little attention/friendship. 

Keeping him away from stuff is probably the right thing to do, however
I'm not sure how one accomplishes that in this day and age. Anyone have
any ideas?

    .26
    
    > I'm not sure how one accomplishes that in this day and age.
    
    given that he is a convicted criminal soon to be convicted for
    recidivism, the way to keep him away from the stuff is to lock him in a
    cell where he has no access to the hardware through any means.  which
    is where atavistic individuals such as he is belong.

True enough, I guess. However we all know that he will, sooner
or later, and more than likely sooner, be back on the streets before
long, and thence onto the phone lines at the keyboard. Ya can't
hang a guy for what he does. Ya can't imprison him for life.
Ya can't adjust his attitude. What do ya do?

A lobotomy comes to mind . . . 

    now THAT would adjust his attitude...

    
    I'm glad Tsutomu Shimomura is on the good guys side!
    
    As for Mitnick, I hope the warden can keep him away from the computing
    equipment available in prison, first thing he probably would do is
    change the release date on his record.
    
    JB
    
    

>    As for Mitnick, I hope the warden can keep him away from the computing
>    equipment available in prison, first thing he probably would do is
>    change the release date on his record.

Kinda like the obscene caller who was hauled in and given a dime for
his one permitted phone call, and then was heard breathing heavily into
the pay phone . . . 

THE WEEK IN REVIEW: CAUGHT BY THE KEYBOARD -- HACKER AND GRIFTER DUEL ON THE NET

By JOHN MARKOFF
c.1995 N.Y. Times News Service
   SAN FRANCISCO - My first inkling that Kevin Mitnick might be reading my
electronic mail came more than a year ago. I found a document posted on a
public electronic bulletin board containing a personal message that could
only have been obtained by someone reading my mail.

   At the time, I suspected it might be Mitnick, a convicted computer felon
who was being sought by the FBI for violation of probation, but I simply
shrugged and stopped using that e-mail account for anything important. I'd
been around the Internet long enough to believe that true computer
security is a fleeting illusion.

   In cyberspace, many people have become inured to the dangers of living
in world of swashbuckling electronic pirates.

   But the exploits of rogue technophiles that once made people fatalistic
about privacy have also brought about a kind of backlash.

   If some citizens of cyberspace are blase about the likelihood of
electronic intrusion, a growing number of others react to the filching of
computer files with the feelings of outrage and violation normally
provoked by a burglar's rifling their home. What once seemed like a
misguided spirit of adventure seems more and more like garden-variety
vandalism.

   Last month, when I learned that my accounts were again among those
vandalized, I was less tolerant than I had been a year ago. I was not
alone. The electronic intruder had also rifled the files from the home
computer of Tsutomu Shimomura, a researcher at the San Diego Supercomputer
Center, and left taunting messages.

   Shimomura, who has a deeply felt sense of right and wrong, abandoned a
cross-country skiing vacation to spend the next two weeks on little sleep,
tracking down the person who, he believed, had done it.

   Shimomura and a team of three other computer experts came to believe
their suspect was Mitnick, who was being hunted by the FBI for various
crimes, including the theft of some 20,000 credit card numbers from
computer systems around the country. They let me know he was probably
responsible for a second intrusion into my e-mail account.

   Then, a few days later, Shimomura came to believe that Mitnick was his
burglar too. He began cooperating with the FBI to track him down. Using
sophisticated surveillance software, he watched his suspect type out
messages that seemed to reflect Mitnick's thoughts, worries and
complaints.

   I had to agree that Mitnick seemed to be the typist. One day this month,
I watched Shimomura's computer screen as the suspect wrote a message to an
acquaintance complaining that I had put his picture on the front page of
The New York Times.

   I only know one suspected computer criminal whose picture has
accompanied an article I have written. That was Mitnick. So I too became
enmeshed in the digital manhunt for the nation's most wanted computer
outlaw.

   The technical sophistication of the pursued and his pursuer, Shimomura,
was remarkable.

   But underneath the technological paraphernalia -- the tracking software
and the radio homing devices carried by the pursuer, the baffling
telephone switching manipulations used by the pursued to cover his tracks
- there was the interplay of two opposing personalities, who had little in
common beside their considerable skills.

   Their meeting was a collision of two dramatically different minds that
happen to share a fascination for cyberspace. One is an intense scientist
who is a master at manipulating computers, the other is a chameleon-like
grifter who is a master at manipulating human beings.

   Mitnick seemed to believe he was an equal of the man who finally caught
him. At his pre-trial hearing in U.S. District Court in Raleigh, N.C. last
week where he faced charges of computer fraud and illegal use of a
telephone access device, he greeted Shimomura saying, ``Hi, Tsutomu. I
respect your skills.''

   The feeling wasn't mutual. In Shimomura's eyes, Mitnick's history of
break-ins was a simple violation of the tight-knit community of computer
users who have built and maintained the Internet. ``This kind of behavior
is unacceptable,'' Shimomura said. And so, he decided to put a stop to
it.

   It didn't take long. Using different tools, including his own homebrew
software program, which permits a video-like reconstruction of individual
users' computer sessions, and cellular telephone scanning equipment, he
had narrowed down the location of the suspect.

   Early Monday morning, two weeks after he began his hunt, Shimomura was
pointing to a cluster of apartment buildings in Raleigh, N.C. and telling
FBI agents, whom he had been in regular contact with, that they would find
their target inside. Two days later, the FBI knocked on an apartment door
and arrested Mitnick. 

   Shimomura's technical skills are obvious. He himself is almost
impossible to classify. Although he studied under the physicist Richard
Feynman at the California Institute of Technology, he has no college
degree.

   What he does have is an uncanny ability to solve complex technical
problems in the manner of Star Trek's Vulcan Mr. Spock.

   After meeting Shimomura for the first time in Sausalito, Calif., two
weeks ago an FBI agent turned to Assistant U.S. Attorney Kent Walker and
shook his head saying, ``He talks at 64,000 bits-per-second but I can only
listen at 300 bits-per-second.''

   Shimomura also has what Neal Stephenson, the author of the novel
``Snowcrash,'' calls ``kneejerk iconoclasticism,'' a willingness to
question everything.

   He seems to embody the very essence of the original hacker ethic --
writing programs to create something elegant, not for gain -- as described
by Steven Levy, the author of ``Hackers: Heros of the Computer
Revolution.'' ``Tsutomu's very much into the culture of sharing,'' Levy
said.

   Mitnick was not. I wrote my first article about Mitnick in the early
1980's after he was arrested in Southern California for breaking into a
Pacific Bell central office and stealing the telephone company's technical
manuals. At the time he was a teenager.

   Since then Mitnick has been arrested three more times. In 1987, he was
convicted of unauthorized access to a computer for electronically breaking
into the computers at the Santa Cruz Operation. He was sentenced to
probation.

   In 1988, he was charged with stealing software electronically from
Digital Equipment Corp. He was convicted a year later and sentenced to a
year in prison and six months of counseling for what his attorney termed
his addiction to computers.

   The third arrest came last week. He is in Wade County jail in western
North Carolina, awaiting trial.

   Mitnick is the archetype of the cyberpunk antihero. He feels as if he's
living in a post-Orwellian world, where outlaw street culture merges with
high technology.

   Read William Gibson's novel ``Neuromancer'' or watch Ridley Scott's
movie ``Bladerunner,'' and you will understand a world populated by
superfast computers and shady characters who blend high-tech skills with
an outlaw sensibility.

   If anything, Mitnick's real ``darkside'' brilliance comes not from his
computer skills, but from his insight into people. He understands how
organizations keep information and he knows how to trick people into
giving the information to him.

   Mitnick is not a hacker in the original sense of the word. Shimomura is.
And when their two worlds collided, it was obvious which one of them had
to win.

   22:07 EST   FEBRUARY 18, 1995

Article: 1746
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
Subject: Kevin Mitnick Legal Defense Fund 
Organization: Society for Putting Things On Top of Other Things
From: [email protected] (Maddi Hausmann Sojourner)
Keywords: topical, smirk, computers, original
Approved: [email protected]
Path: jac.zko.dec.com!pa.dec.com!decwrl!ablecom!ns2.MainStreet.Net!array!looking!funny-request
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 95 3:20:04 EST
Lines: 34
 
[originally posted to netcom.general]
 
Kevin has asked me to publicize his urgent plea for funds.  As I'm sure
you all know, Kevin is not permitted telephone access to his account and
is unable to get to his usual sources of money.
 
Please join in giving to the Mitnick Legal Defense Fund.  Over 20,000
fellow Netcom customers have already participated!  To make a
contribution, simply post your full name, credit card number, type, and
expiration date to this newsgroup as a follow-up to this post.  We'll 
take care of the rest.
 
Thanks in advance,
Kevin's mommy for
The Mitnick Defense Team
 
 
[Kevin Mitnick was recently arrested on charges of serious computer
intrusion.  Among the systems he cracked was Netcom, a San Jose
commercial-access firm, and among the files he had was one with
the credit card numbers of 20,000 Netcom subscribers.  He is currently
held without telephone access due to his past telephone-system 
phreaking, and is only allowed to speak to his mother and his lawyer;
the guard must dial the call for him.]
 
-- 
Maddi Hausmann Sojourner                   [email protected]
Another unwilling pawn in Netcom's quest for world domination
 
--
Selected by Maddi Hausmann Sojourner.  MAIL your joke to [email protected].
Attribute the joke's source if at all possible.  A Daemon will auto-reply.
 
Remember: Only ONE joke per submission.  Extra jokes may be rejected.

    Let's hope readers understand the context of the newsgroup....

    
    	If you find the methods of tracking and hacking interesting try
    following alt.2600 or the quarterly mag called ... 2600.
    
    	You would not believe some of the things talked about.
    	
    	The thing I find scary is the ease in which many of the systems
    we use everyday are HACKED.
    
    	Efw 

Article: 2667
Path: jac.zko.dec.com!pa.dec.com!decwrl!tribune.usask.ca!herald.usask.ca!sht123
From: Mike Schenk <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: alt.humor.best-of-usenet
Subject: [comp.security.misc] "Most wanted" cracker caught
Followup-To: alt.humor.best-of-usenet.d
Date: 23 Feb 1995 18:20:06 GMT
Organization: best of usenet humor
Lines: 25
Approved: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: herald.usask.ca
X-Disclaimer: the "Approved" header verifies header information for article transmission and does not imply approval of content.  See .sig below.
X-Submissions-To: [email protected]
Originator: [email protected]
 
 
From: [email protected] (Marcus J Ranum)
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc,comp.security.unix,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: "Most wanted" Cracker caught!
 
Peter da Silva <[email protected]> wrote:
>Mitnick, by the by, is the guy who so scared the authorities they wouldn't
>even let him make a phone call lest he crack someone's computer that way.
 
	Yeah. I've heard he can generate IP packets with PPP
encapsulation and compression, just by whistling at a modem, and
that he can crack DES in his head. One site he broke into, he
broke into by triggering a sendmail hole using an infrasonic dog
whistle and a ham radio transmitter with the I.M. Pei pyramid
at the Louvre in Paris as a reflector. He can steal packets
from telnet sessions using the fillings in his back teeth. So if
he gets his hands on a cellular phone, there's a real risk of him
singlehandedly launching a global nuclear war, or crashing the
stock market, or ending the baseball strike.
 
--
Moderators accept or reject articles based solely on the criteria posted
in the Frequently Asked Questions. Article content is the responsibility
of the submittor.  Submit articles to [email protected]. To write 
to the moderators, send mail to [email protected]. 

    Hmmm, I wonder if it was Mitnick that I did 'battle' with back in
    '82. I was a second-shift operator in Northboro, MA at the time. Had 2
    PDP11/70's with LA120 harcopy terminals. One night I noticed someone
    logged on in the system account (I was the only one logged on at night
    (also in the system account)). I sent a message to them but they didn't
    respond. Next thing I know, boom, my process gets killed. I logged on
    and killed their process. Before I could lock the system up they were
    back on again and killed my process again. I quickly logged on and got
    them one more time and managed to stop logins before they got back on.
    I can't remember for sure but at one point I think they sent me a
    taunting message. Anyway, I reported it to the Network Security folks and 
    they said they'd been trying to catch whoever it was for 3 weeks and that
    they'd been dialing into various DEC facilities and managing to get
    onto different systems. Security also said it looked like they were
    trying to get to ZKO and the machine that held the VMS source code
    (VMS had just been released if I remember correctly).
    
    						Thom...

Apparently we are using Mitnick or a Mitnick look-alike in our ads:
================================================================================
EISNER::BADDORF "Deb Baddorf"			(from DECUServe)
-< Digital's ad text >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I saw that ad, too, and was duly amazed.   With loud, strident modern
    music, flashes the following text in black & white strobe, in block
    print:
      For your eye only.
      Confidential material.
      Classified documents.
      Letters to mom.
      Digital offers some of the toughest security systems and services in
    the business.
      For more information on how tough Digital security is, contact:
      inmate number  23-38AA3872   Leavenworth, Kansas.
      DIGITAL
    
    I too thought that the prisoner looked like Mitnick.

    
    John
    
    That person EISNER::BADDORF "Deb Baddorf" is one of my biggest
    customers here in Chicago, she works for Fermi National Accelerator
    Labs. How ironic.
    
    Mark

               <<< PEAR::DKB100:[NOTES$LIBRARY]SOAPBOX.NOTE;1 >>>
                          -< SOAPBOX.  Just SOAPBOX. >-
================================================================================
Note 1658.0                          Mitnick                          No replies
ELWOOD::LANE "soon: [email protected]"       213 lines  13-JUL-1994 10:48
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date:	06-Jul-1994
Posted-date: 06-Jul-1994
Precedence: 1
Subject: (A) Hacker, Computer Criminal most wanted by FBI
To:     See Below
CC:     See Below

  This article appeared on the front page of The New York Times, July 4, 
  1994.  You may recall Mitnick created havoc on Digital's Easynet years ago. 
  He is now suspected as having stolen cellular technology software and 
  information from different manufacturers.  Many hacking techniques are 
  low-tech.
  
  Please communicate to your users and system managers that one must continue 
  to be vigilant of spoofs, scams, and social engineering.  
  
  	Be aware or beware!  Do not release information or disclose 
  	passwords unless the individual is authorized and authenticated.
  
  If in doubt, check with a manager and/or the owner of the information; or 
  consult with security.
  
  Regards,
  
  Allen
  
                                     -----
  
  
  CYBER-FUGITIVE ELUDES FBI WITH TECHNICAL WIZARDRY
  By JOHN MARKOFF
  c.1994 N.Y. Times News Service
  
     Combining technical wizardry with the ages-old guile of a
  grifter, Kevin Mitnick is a computer programmer run amok. And
  law-enforcement officials cannot seem to catch up with him.
  
     As a teen-ager he used a computer and a modem to break into a
  North American Air Defense Command computer, foreshadowing the 1983
  movie ``War Games.''
  
     He gained control of three telephone-company central offices in
  Manhattan and all the phone switching centers in California, giving
  him the ability to listen in on calls and pull pranks like
  reprogramming the home phone of someone he did not like so that
  each time the phone was picked up, a recording asked for a deposit
  of 25 cents.
  
     For months he secretly read the electronic mail of computer
  security officials at MCI Communications and Digital Equipment,
  learning how their computers and phone equipment were protected.
  Officials at Digital later accused him of causing $4 million in
  damage to computer operations at the company and stealing $1
  million of software.
  
     Now law-enforcement officials suspect that Mitnick, 30, one of
  the nation's most wanted computer criminals, is the person who
  stole software and data from more than a half dozen leading
  cellular telephone manufacturers, coaxing gullible employees into
  giving him passwords and computer codes that could be used to break
  into their computers.
  
     The companies plan to use the software for everything from
  handling billing information to determining the location of a
  caller to scrambling wireless phone calls to keep them private.
  Such a breach could compromise the security of future cellular
  telephone networks even as their marketers assert that they will
  offer new levels of protection.
  
     While he is thought to be living somewhere in Southern
  California, Mitnick has eluded an FBI manhunt for more than a year
  and a half, Justice Department officials say. Last year, while a
  fugitive, he managed to gain control of a phone system in
  California that allowed him to wiretap the FBI agents who were
  searching for him.
  
     ``He has created a lot of frustration inside the bureau,'' said
  James Settle, a former computer crime fighter for the FBI. ``He
  should have been locked up long ago.''
  
     Mitnick is adept at what is known in the computer underground as
  ``social engineering.'' By masquerading as a company executive in a
  telephone call, he frequently talks an unsuspecting company
  employee into giving him passwords and other information that makes
  it possible for him to gain entry to computers illegally.
  
     Using a personal computer and a modem, he then connects to a
  company's computer and, with his knowledge of how operating systems
  work, commands it to copy software illegally, display confidential
  electronic messages or alter a telephone switch so he can silently
  monitor a call.
  
     There is no evidence that Mitnick has used his computer skills
  illegally to make money, although the cellular phone companies say
  the person who stole their software could sell it to competing
  manufacturers in Asia or to criminals who want to offer free phone
  calls.
  
     FBI and Justice Department officials said they were still
  uncertain of his motives and did not have absolute proof that he
  was behind the attacks on cellular phone companies. Three friends
  and one former associate reached in an attempt to speak with
  Mitnick said they had not seen or heard from him since he fled.
  
     Mitnick grew up a shy loner who found delight and a sense of
  power through his computer. ``He is an overweight computer nerd,
  but when he is behind a keyboard he feels omnipotent,'' said
  Harriet Rossetto, a counselor at the Beit T'Shuvah treatment center
  in Los Angeles, where Mitnick was treated in 1989, under the order
  of a federal judge, for his ``addictive'' attraction to computer
  hacking.
  
     Always fascinated by spying, he fancied himself a master at
  fooling and eluding the authorities, much like a role model, the
  character played by Robert Redford in ``Three Days of the Condor.''
  In the 1975 movie, Redford portrays a CIA employee who used his
  knowledge of the telephone network to avoid capture by sinister
  forces in the government.
  
     Mitnick developed his passion for computing at Monroe High
  School in the Los Angeles suburb of Sepulveda, where he was raised
  by his mother, Shelly Jaffee, a waitress who had divorced Mitnick's
  father when their son was 3.
  
     Mitnick got in trouble at his high school for tapping into the
  Los Angeles School District's computers. He began spending time
  with a loosely knit group of ``phone phreaks,'' young people whose
  hobby was illegally mastering the inner workings of the telephone
  switching system.
  
     His first brush with the law came in 1981, when, as a
  17-year-old, he was arrested for stealing computer manuals from
  Pacific Bell's switching center in Los Angeles. He was prosecuted
  as a juvenile and sentenced to probation.
  
     A year later, he was caught breaking into computers at the
  University of Southern California and was jailed for six months.
     The exploits of Mitnick, who worked at various computer
  programming jobs to support himself, became legendary. For example,
  after he gained control of the telephone switching network in Los
  Angeles, he reprogrammed the system to mislead federal agents
  trying to trace his call. Thinking they had found his hideout, they
  barged into the home of a Middle Eastern immigrant watching
  television.
  
     After being denied a job in computer security by the Security
  Pacific Bank, he created a fake news release stating inaccurately
  that the bank would show a loss of $400 million for the quarter,
  and tried to distribute it on a business news service. (The news
  service detected the ruse in time to stop it.)
  
     In 1987, he was arrested for electronically breaking into a
  computer at the Santa Cruz Operation, a software publisher. He
  pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, paid a small fine and was placed
  on three years' probation.
  
     A year later he was arrested again, this time by FBI agents, for
  stealing prototype operating-system software from the Digital
  Equipment Corp. He was later convicted.
  
     The FBI had closed in on him only after he tried to harass a
  friend and partner in crime by pretending to be an IRS agent and
  making threatening calls to his friend's employer. His friend then
  told the authorities what Mitnick had done.
  
     A man with a passion for gathering dossiers and playing tricks
  on both friends and enemies, Mitnick so intimidated the authorities
  when he was arrested in 1988 that Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer of the
  Federal District Court in Los Angeles initially ruled that he could
  not have access to a telephone for fear of the damage he might
  cause.
  
     Other law-enforcement officials had been similarly cautious. In
  one investigation in the mid-1980s, a Los Angeles police detective
  said he had been forced to go into hiding while he conducted
  surveillance on Mitnick. ``I've always considered him dangerous,''
  said the detective, Jim Black, now a security specialist for MCI.
  ``I had to go underground. If he targets you, he can make your life
  miserable.''
  
     After Mitnick's 1988 arrest, his lawyer convinced the judge that
  Mitnick's problem was similar to a drug or gambling addiction. He
  served a year in prison at the low-security federal prison in
  Lompoc, Calif. He then spent six months in a small residential
  treatment program that emphasizes the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous
  model.
  
     During the treatment program Mitnick was prohibited from
  touching a computer or a modem. He began exercising regularly and
  lost more than 100 pounds. Later, he briefly obtained a job as a
  programmer for a health care provider.
  
     Mitnick vanished in November 1992 after the FBI searched his
  home with a warrant stating that he was again breaking into
  telephone-company computers while working for a Southern California
  detective agency. His friends say he may be supporting himself
  through a computer programming job he gained by using a false
  identity.
  
     He is currently being hunted for violating a federal probation
  requirement that he not enter computers illegally or associate with
  other people convicted of similar crimes.
  
     In addition, the California Department of Motor Vehicles issued
  a warrant in September for his arrest. The warrant states that
  Mitnick wiretapped FBI agents' calls to the state agency. He then
  used law-enforcement access codes he had obtained by eavesdropping
  on the agents to make illegal requests for drivers' licenses, state
  investigators say.
  
     The information from such drivers' licenses could help him gain
  a false identity and find out where his enemies live. It is just
  such tactics that will make Mitnick very hard to find.

Subj:	G&S Hackery


From:	US1RMC::"[email protected]" "Bill Sconce" 18-APR-1995 15:18:03.07
To:	took::delbalso
CC:	[email protected], [email protected], escrow::hewitt, 
[email protected]
nders.lockheed.com
Subj:	recognize anyone here?


[forwards deleted]

 >From: John Russell <[email protected]>
 >Subject: The Modern Cyberpunk
 >Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
 >
 >   To the tune of "A Modern Major General" by Gilbert & Sullivan
 >
 >I am the very model of a modern teenage Cyberpunk
 >I rent my own apartment and it's full of electronic junk
 >I own a VAX, a 486, I've even got a PDP
 >I've finished Myst and Doom but I am stumped by Wing Commander III          
 >                                                        
 >I'm very well aquainted too with matters pornographical
 >I have a list of image sites, both overseas and national
 >So if you want to see a picture of that Anna Nichole Smith
 >I'll fire up my terminal and fetch for you a naughty GIF
 >         
 >I'm totally an anarchist, the government I'd like to wreck,
 >Though if they were to get blown up, who'd give to me my welfare cheque?
 >In short if you need answers that concern your electronic junk,
 >I am the very model of a modern teenage Cyberpunk
 >
 >I know the ancient myths about RTM, Pengo and Mitnick
 >I 'hack' into computers and I then perform a credit check
 >I scare all my non-hacker friends with tales of cracker theivery  
 >and even though I'm spouting crap they'll listen and believe in me
 >         
 >I've learned to spot a troll and I've seen flames about the way I spell,
 >I've traced badly forged cancels and seen napalm poured on AOL
 >I've laughed at all the newbies and their flailing cries of "You all Suck!"
 >I've been flamed by Carasso, with an anvil I have then been struck
 >
 >I've hung around in alt.tasteless and seen war waged on rec.pets.cats
 >I've spent my time in talk.bizarre and used those stupid Relay Chats
 >In short, if you need answers that concern your electronic junk,
 >I am the very model of a modern teenage Cyberpunk
 >         
 >Well postings like "MAKE.MONEY.FAST", I am now somewhat wary at,
 >I have been "Global Killfiled" by the Joel Furr Commissariat,
 >When rosebud posts a lengthy rant 'bout Microsoft she swears is true,
 >I know that she is just another short lived kook without a clue
 >
 >When I have learnt what progress has been made upon the Internet,
 >When I know something more than just a smattering of netiquette,
 >In short when I can have a world-wide soapbox on which I can stand
 >I've got no time for other things, like beer and trips to Disneyland
 >
 >My life outside the Internet is very very sad you see  
 >I cannot get my spots to fade, my social life's a tragedy,
 >But still if you need answers that concern your electronic junk,
 >I am the very model of a modern teenage Cyberpunk.
 >


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    I am ashamed to admit I got every joke in there but two.
    
    RTM and Pengo.
    
    

    RTM = Robert Morris