Kevin Mitnick is on tour and has stopped in Madrid. The hacker (pirate computer) most famous in history is now dedicated to giving lectures and offering his computer security services from his company Mitnick Security Consulting. After spending five years in prison for various crimes such as software theft, electronic fraud and interception of communications, he has emerged reformed and is on the bright side of computing.
"I don't miss my rebellious days. Now companies pay me to enter their networks and find their security vulnerabilities. And everyone wins. I enjoy doing the things I like, which is detecting security flaws and, at the same time, I help my clients instead of causing them harm," Mitnick said today in a meeting with EL PAÍS.
Mitnick is proud that some companies he hacked now hire him, such as Nokia, Novell and Fujitsu, which even offered him the position of head of security. "It's very exciting that the companies that I caused so much damage to are now interested in requesting my services. I don't know if I'm a white hacker (whitehats, as security experts who play in favor of companies are known in slang). The times change. You can say I've matured."
Persecuted tirelessly by the FBI, Mitnick not only escaped persecution but outwitted the agents, locating them on their cell phones and playing cat and mouse. "I thought it was really funny, but they shouldn't have thought it was so funny. So when they finally caught me, they gave me a really hard time."
Mitnick spent five years in prison, from 1995 to 2000, in a harsh isolation regime that prohibited him from using any type of electronic device (including television) and even from communicating with his lawyer or family. "The prosecutor even said that they should prohibit my access to any telephone because whistling on the cell phone could cause a nuclear war. Or they said that only a floppy (the first flexible disks of very low capacity) contained dangerous files that could cause serious harm. national security problem. They treated me like I was Hannibal Lecter of hackers. And I'm not, I assure you."
Despite the out-of-court agreement, Mitnick is very dissatisfied with the US Justice system "because they violated my constitutional rights, such as the right to a trial or to communicate normally with my lawyer."
In the end he had to reach an agreement with the Government: "I blamed myself for things I did and also for things I didn't do. But I had no choice because otherwise I would have spent my entire life going from trial to trial." When he was released from prison, authorities placed him under electronic quarantine. "They only agreed to let me talk on my cell phone because my father had an illness but they checked my phone bill every month. And he was writing my book and they only authorized me to use the word processor program."
The now businessman has written two books –The art of deception y The art of intrusion– and the film was inspired by his life Take Down, which he complains about "because it mixed truths and lies to discredit me." To put things in his place, Mitnick is now preparing an autobiography in which he will tell the true adventures of El Cóndor, his nickname of war during his hacker days. "There have already been several Hollywood studios that have been interested in acquiring the rights to make a film."
Mitnick, who will participate tomorrow in the Security Cluster of the Community of Madrid, invited by the Madrid Institute of Development, says that the Internet offers many vulnerabilities but despite this he defends the freedom of the Internet and is not in favor of the illegalization of programs P2P file sharing (peer to peer). "You just have to be very careful to see how much of your hard drive you're actually sharing."