Mitnick was an odd bird, stole tens of thousands of credit card numbers but only ever lived modestly. Apparently he did the most of it just for the challenge.
How many times did he launch nukes by whistling into a phone?
He was basically a “gray hat” hacker. It seems he rarely did it for financial profit.
It was more the curiosity and fun.
Good riddance to trash.
He was only 59. Maybe he was vaxxed?
“Police said...”
LOL! They are too dumb to realize that to make a call Mitnick would have to be able to whistle two tones simultaneously. That’s impossible. But Ma Bell told them what to do, and they did it.
Nuclear weapons are air-gapped.
I had a colleague who (back in the day) would make long distance calls by whistling into the phone. He knew the phone company signal pitches.
There were also ways to mechanically trick a pay phone to get free local calls....
The company I used to work for used his KnowBe4 online computer security training. He introduced each of the videos and narrated most of them.
He was part owner of KnowBe4, provider of an integrated platform for security awareness training and simulated phishing testing,
I worked on a Toll Fraud Detection project for Sprint in the late 80’s. On the Sprint team was a hacker they caught. They didn’t arrest him, they hired him and he was our subject matter expert. At the time, many long distance calling services utilized DTMF (dual tone multi-frequency) tones for access and control. Users entered their credentials by using touch tones generated on their phone to access long distance calling. Obviously, cell phones obviated this PITA. Hackers quickly built hand-held devices to simulate these codes and steal long distance service. This guy would analyze reams of DTMF data and would identify new patterns for us to code to. Sprint later told us our project paid for itself the first day it went live. Facetious? Perhaps, but the point was made.
I recall one of our Sprint lines at work got hacked one time and we were billed several thousand dollars for a call to Israel that was several days in duration.
He was much like me and many others back then. Compouters were a whole universe to explore and often there were no “rules” about where you could go in this universe so you explored.