The prominent hacker Kevin Mitnick, on the other hand, was sentenced to a long prison term, with the judge perhaps slightly overestimating the danger he posed:
Mitnick served five years in prison—four-and-a-half years’ pre-trial and eight months in solitary confinement, because, according to Mitnick, law enforcement officials convinced a judge that he had the ability to “start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone”,[36] implying that law enforcement told the judge that he could somehow dial into the NORAD modem via a payphone from prison and communicate with the modem by whistling to launch nuclear missiles.[37]
Always makes me laugh reading about the things they thought Mitnick could do. I wonder if they thought Captain Crunch could whistle and make your brain leak out your skull at 2600 hz.
I will not stand for the blatant disrespecting of Captain Crunch. He could easily whistle you brain to goo and so much more!
i am sad my “free kevin” shirt did not last.
Back in the 80’s and 90’s, hackers were respected and feared. That title meant something, and was earned.
We were few, because everything had to be done by hand, and the knowledge to do so came from experiments, experience, and obscure community.
Then those lazy script kiddies arrived along and ruined that.
Crazy to think that the method of attack in the year 2000 was to email a script to someone and request them to open it.
tbf, social engineering still works. always has and always will when clueless end users are around.
My corp just sent everyone an email from a jshfgkejfue.fr email address.
It said that the inbox was at 99% capacity and they needed to click this link to inspect the contents of their drive.
Our company does HIPAA training annually and cyber security training quarterly.
Folks still failed it.
Humans gonna human. We are all just dumb apes that react when emotionally triggered.
So this will always be a thing.
