Kevin Mitnick Book Deal: Setting the Record Straight?

According to Silicon Valley Insider, Kevin Mitnick, infamous hacker and phone phreaker has signed a book deal with Little, Brown and Company.

Mitnick was first arrested in the mid-nineties for a series of what he describes as "social engineering" crimes. Mitnick is credited/blamed for having hacked into systems at PacBell, NORAD and Digital Equipment. While Mitnick's technical abilities were great, he prided himself on his ability to "socially engineer" situations in which he could gain the trust of strangers in order to access confidential information. By acting as a superior-ranking employee, hustling access codes from unsuspecting secretaries, and simply searching admin manuals for default access codes, Mitnick managed to crack into what were believed to be some of the most secure systems in the country.

Mitnick was convicted of his first crime at 17-years-old after a member of his phone phreaking gang exposed his indiscretions. Unbeknownst to several major corporations, he had been perusing their files and emails, sometimes for weeks. A year after his first conviction, Mitnick attended computer courses at University of Southern California where he met Lenny DiCicco. DiCicco and Mitnick broke into ARPAnet using a series of USC's computers and campus security caught them in their crime. The two were then sentenced to juvenile youth prison. After being caught for a series of additional crimes, Mitnick and DiCicco teamed up again and gained access to Digital Equipment’s Palo Alto research laboratory via DiCicco's employer's machines and a series of IP-spoofing tactics. DiCicco, scared of losing his job and getting into more trouble with the law, confessed his crimes and aided the FBI in capturing Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick went to jail for one year with a six month stint in a rehabilitation center to overcome his computer addiction. He later went on to hack into a notable security experts' system, Tsutomu Shimomura. Shimomura pursued Mitnick for two months before tracking him to N. Carolina. The hacker served almost 60 months in prison. Due to the conditions of his parole, Mitnick was unable to profit from his crimes (including writing an autobiography) until now. This has allowed others to profile Mitnick as a malevolent sociopath without rebuttal. Featured as one of America's most dangerous criminals in Time Magazine, Mitnick will finally have a chance to tell his side of the story in his very own book deal.

Honestly, if you hear enough stories about the boogie man, you tend to believe them. If I had any money, power or influence, Kevin Mitnick would freaking terrify me.

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