Mitnick was also a champ at what hackers refer to as social engineering, gathering information simply by asking people for it. He has, however, denied cracking the NORAD (North American Air Defense) Command computer, a crack that was widely credited to him, and inspired the movie War Games. Mitnick was charged with stealing at least $1 million worth of sensitive project data from computer systems, snagging thousands of credit card numbers from online databases, breaking into the California motor vehicles database, and remotely controlling New York and California's telephone switching hubs on various occasions - and he also possessed the uncanny ability to convince home phones that they were really pay phones. He was also the first cracker to have his face appear on an FBI "Most Wanted" poster. 15, 1995, Kevin Mitnick was the very first person to be convicted of gaining access to an interstate computer network for criminal purposes. Kevin Mitnick: Snagged by the FBI on Feb. Many say that MOD members would not have gotten caught if they hadn't been competing against LOD the war made them less cautious than they should have been. The groups then battled each other for the crown of Cracker King for years, until most of them got busted in 1993. ![]() MOD was also famous for the wars they engaged in with the Legion of Doom (LOD), another cracker group that had the reputation of being the headquarters for the most elite hackers.ĭue to internal struggles among the members, the infamous cracker Phiber Optik left LOD and formed MOD. They also accessed credit-record reporting agency TRW's computer system, and were able to gain access to credit reports of the rich and famous. MOD also hacked its way into many a database, including those belonging to the National Security Agency, AT&T, and the Bank of America. They were famous for figuring out ways to avoid paying for long-distance calls, and could also listen in on private conversations, and create huge party lines that allowed many people to chat to each other at one time. The MOD were mostly Phone Phreaks: folks who had fun with the telephone system. That's what it cost to de-worm the machines his critter had penetrated. Morris said it was just a stunt, and added that he truly regretted wreaking $15 million worth of damage. Morris was one of the first to be tried and convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, but he only had to perform community service and pay a fine, since the argument was made that the worm didn't destroy the contents of affected computers. Morris made the mistake of chatting about his worm for months before he actually released it on the Internet, so it didn't take long for the police to track him down. Named the Morris Worm, this exploit inspired the founding of a governmental anticyber-terrorism team, CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team), to deal with future Morris worms. 2, 1988, Robert Tappan Morris released a worm that brought down one-tenth of the Internet –- which back then meant he crippled more than 6,000 computer systems. ![]() Murphy, now the chairman of IAM/Secure Data System, was the inspiration for the movie "Sneakers." ![]() Of course, the bargain-seekers who waited until midnight to call long distance were hit with high bills.
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