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" I could have evaded the FBI a lot longer if I had been able to control my passion for hacking. "
Kevin Mitnick
Passion
Hacking
FBI
Related Quotes:
" I use Mac. Not because it's more secure than everything else - because it is actually less secure than Windows - but I use it because it is still under the radar. People who write malicious code want the greatest return on their investment, so they target Windows systems. I still work with Windows in virtual machines. "
Kevin Mitnick
Investment
Work
Windows
" For a long time, I was portrayed as the Osama bin Laden of the Internet, and I really wanted to be able to tell my side of the story. I wanted to be able to explain exactly what I did and what I didn't do to people who thought they knew me. "
Kevin Mitnick
Thought
Time
Story
" I think malware is a significant threat because the mitigation, like antivirus software, hasn't evolved to a point to really mitigate the risk to a reasonable degree. "
Kevin Mitnick
Think
Risk
Point
" Social engineering is using manipulation, influence and deception to get a person, a trusted insider within an organization, to comply with a request, and the request is usually to release information or to perform some sort of action item that benefits that attacker. "
Kevin Mitnick
Action
Organization
Influence
" Think about it: if you were running a multi-million dollar company, and your database of customer information was stolen, would you want to tell your clients? No. Most companies did not until the laws required them to. It's in the best interest of organisations - when they're attacked and information is stolen - to tell nobody. "
Kevin Mitnick
Best
Information
Customer
" For the average home-user, anti-virus software is a must. A personal firewall such as Zone Alarm and running a program like HFNetcheck, which is a free download for personal users. It checks your system to see if anything needs to be patched. I'd also recommend a program such as SpyCop to periodically check for any spyware on your system. "
Kevin Mitnick
Free
Average
Personal
" I think it goes back to my high school days. In computer class, the first assignment was to write a program to print the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead, I wrote a program that would steal passwords of students. My teacher gave me an A. "
Kevin Mitnick
School
Teacher
Think
" Computer hacking really results in financial losses and hassles. The objectives of terrorist groups are more serious. That is not to say that cyber groups can't access a telephone switch in Manhattan on a day like 9/11, shut it down, and therefore cause more casualties. "
Kevin Mitnick
Say
Results
Serious
" Back up everything! You are not invulnerable. Catastrophic data loss can happen to you - one worm or Trojan is all it takes. "
Kevin Mitnick
You
Data
Back
" I can go into LinkedIn and search for network engineers and come up with a list of great spear-phishing targets because they usually have administrator rights over the network. Then I go onto Twitter or Facebook and trick them into doing something, and I have privileged access. "
Kevin Mitnick
Engineers
Search
I Can
" Use a personal firewall. Configure it to prevent other computers, networks and sites from connecting to you, and specify which programs are allowed to connect to the net automatically. "
Kevin Mitnick
Computers
You
Personal
" I'm still a hacker. I get paid for it now. I never received any monetary gain from the hacking I did before. The main difference in what I do now compared to what I did then is that I now do it with authorization. "
Kevin Mitnick
Hacking
Hacker
Never
" Hackers are becoming more sophisticated in conjuring up new ways to hijack your system by exploiting technical vulnerabilities or human nature. Don't become the next victim of unscrupulous cyberspace intruders. "
Kevin Mitnick
Human
Human Nature
Nature
" The myth of Kevin Mitnick is much more interesting than the reality of Kevin Mitnick. If they told the reality, no one would care. "
Kevin Mitnick
Care
Interesting
Reality
" Sometimes I get a call from my bank, and the first thing they ask is, 'Mr. Mitnick, may I get your account number?' And I'll say, 'You called me! I'm not giving you my account number!' "
Kevin Mitnick
You
Bank
Giving
" Social engineering is using deception, manipulation and influence to convince a human who has access to a computer system to do something, like click on an attachment in an e-mail. "
Kevin Mitnick
Human
Engineering
Deception
" I'm not a fugitive anymore. Never will be in the future. After spending five years in jail, you learn your lesson. I never want to return there. "
Kevin Mitnick
Future
Jail
Learn
" Somebody could send you an office document or a PDF file, and as soon as you open it, it's a booby trap and the hacker has complete control of your computer. Another major problem is password management. People use the same password on multiple sites, so when the hacker compromises one site, they have your password for everywhere else. "
Kevin Mitnick
People
Control
Management
" Security is always going to be a cat and mouse game because there'll be people out there that are hunting for the zero day award, you have people that don't have configuration management, don't have vulnerability management, don't have patch management. "
Kevin Mitnick
Day
People
Management
" Penetrating a company's security often starts with the bad guy obtaining some piece of information that seems so innocent, so everyday and unimportant, that most people in the organization don't see any reason why the item should be protected and restricted. "
Kevin Mitnick
Security
Innocent
Organization
" A company can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on firewalls, intrusion detection systems and encryption and other security technologies, but if an attacker can call one trusted person within the company, and that person complies, and if the attacker gets in, then all that money spent on technology is essentially wasted. "
Kevin Mitnick
Company
Technology
Security
" You can never protect yourself 100%. What you do is protect yourself as much as possible and mitigate risk to an acceptable degree. You can never remove all risk. "
Kevin Mitnick
Possible
Never
You
" Garbage can provide important details for hackers: names, telephone numbers, a company's internal jargon. "
Kevin Mitnick
Details
Numbers
Important
" As a young boy, I was taught in high school that hacking was cool. "
Kevin Mitnick
Boy
Young
School
" Anything out there is vulnerable to attack given enough time and resources. "
Kevin Mitnick
Enough
Time
Attack
" It's actually a smarter crime because imagine if you rob a bank, or you're dealing drugs. If you get caught you're going to spend a lot of time in custody. But with hacking, it's much easier to commit the crime and the risk of punishment is slim to none. "
Kevin Mitnick
Risk
Punishment
Time
" If I needed to know about a security exploit, I preferred to get the information by accessing the companies' security teams' files, rather than poring over lines of code to find it on my own. It's just more efficient. "
Kevin Mitnick
Own
Security
Know
" My actions constituted pure hacking that resulted in relatively trivial expenses for the companies involved, despite the government's false claims. "
Kevin Mitnick
Actions
Pure
Government
" If you go to a coffee shop or at the airport, and you're using open wireless, I would use a VPN service that you could subscribe for 10 bucks a month. Everything is encrypted in an encryption tunnel, so a hacker cannot tamper with your connection. "
Kevin Mitnick
You
Service
Hacker
" I get hired by companies to hack into their systems and break into their physical facilities to find security holes. Our success rate is 100%; we've always found a hole. "
Kevin Mitnick
Security
Break
Always