How A Hacker Obtained Motorola Source Code with a Few Phone Calls

AlphaAtlas

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Motherboard uploaded a video showing how Kevin Mitnick managed to obtain a Motorola cell phone's source code with a couple of phone calls. And, just for fun, he hacked Motorola's network afterwards, and obtained older versions of the source code as well. This just goes to show that, no matter how secure a system is, humans on the phone are sometimes the only weak link a hacker needs.

Check out the video here.

In this episode of 'Greatest Moments in Hacking History,' Kevin Mitnick is a fugitive hiding out in Colorado. In an attempt to avoid detection from the authorities, Mitnick decides he wants to hack a cellphone so he can hide his location while using the device. To do this, the hacker sets up a social engineering attack against Motorola to fool them into giving him the source code to the MicroTAC Ultra Lite cell phone so he can break into it.
 
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Holy crap he's in Colorado? I need to start looking for him, I'm sure there's a good reward for catching him.
 
"Kevin Mitnick managed to obtain a Motorola cell phone's source code with a couple of phone calls."

How delightful!
 
I think that fugitive bit is just story framing.
The story is long over. He evaded prison for a little while, but the interesting bit is how much time he spent in prison before ever going to court due to unwritten conditions regarding his "cyber criminal" activity. He was just a security consultant before it was a well recognized industry. Even today we still have people going to jail or killing themselves over similar cases.
 
Companies should be aware of Social Engineering attempts just as much as any other kind of cyber attack.
I`v see many occasions where employees (due to indifferent management) will give anyone claiming they are from IT anything they want.
 
I've read most of his books. I even suffered through that terrible movie that was stuffed full of lies and inaccuracies. The government threw the whole fucking book at him because they didn't understand what was going on and because of an angry software engineer, among other things. The media made him seem like a child killer, and the government actually stated he could launch a nuke by whistling into a pay phone. He was Satan to the entire public at the time, who had zero grasp on technology at the time.
 
Kevin Mitnick really is a master social engineer and truly is the king of cyberpunks.
 
In related news:

"Free Kevin" will no longer be available to the general public. - Red Hat
 
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