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Kevin Mitnick, former 'most wanted' hacker who police said could launch nukes by whistling into a phone, has diedBy Joshua Wolens published about 22 hours ago A legend in the history of computing, Mitnick died on July 16 due to complications from pancreatic cancer.Kevin Mitnick, one of the most famous computer hackers in the world and the subject of an over two-year manhunt in the 1990s, died of complications from pancreatic cancer last Sunday, aged 59. His death has been confirmed to the New York Times. Mitnick is a legendary figure, one of those people whose life story reads like...

Trump reportedly ordered acting White House chief of staff to fire 'Secret Service Director Randolph Alles',.. Alles insists he wasn't fired but knew about a coming transition two weeks ago. 'U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Lee Cissna'... is also leaving....So are DHS undersecretary for management 'Claire Grady' and general counsel 'John Mitnick'. Trump adviser Stephen Miller, the 33-year-old former staffer to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions.... Alles, Cissna, Grady and Mitnick were on a list of officials Miller targeted for removal as 'too soft,' according to a White House official. White House official said Monday that the Secret Service shift had...

Has social networking changed hacking? Made it easier. 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. If I know you love Angry Birds, maybe I would send you an e-mail purporting to be from Angry Birds with a new pro version. Once you download it, I could have complete access to everything on your phone. How easy was it for those...

The fact is that Mitnick used his manipulative skills in an amoral attempt to defraud and steal from respected companies like Novell, Motorola, Nokia and Sun Microsystems for years until his capture in 1995. Mitnick has often claimed that he did nothing wrong and that the onus of the crimes was actually on the companies he stole from. For example, Mitnick firmly believes Novell’s stupid gullible employees shouldn’t have trusted him when he showed up to their offices wearing a stolen phone company technician’s uniform and asking for access to their company’s phone system. To Mitnick, the 20,000 credit card...