The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (29 page)

"Not bureaucratic. Not a DMV employee. An
idiot
just fucked up
my
whole world!
My new world, which is gonna change again any-
way. If I told you, you would laugh, but it's things like that that
could fuck me up. Things like that if I don't know about it before
they happen, could be
disastrous."

The conversation shifts to Mitnick's overseas opponent, Neil Clift.

"He thinks I'm
evil,"
Mitnick says.

I quote Clift talking about Mitnick: " 'Technically, he's not in-
credible, but he's a very bright guy.' He said, 'The way he told me he
does it [social engineering] is he pretends he's an actor in a film and
plays it out in advance and becomes that character.' "

"That's
right!
" Mitnick says enthusiastically. "I practice it and it's

to the point where I psych myself out that the story I'm portraying is
real, so even
I
believe it. So that's how I'm so convincing."

"His [Clift's] girlfriend said he was playing with fire, that he got a
kick out of talking
to
you."

Mitnick sounds almost sentimental. "The only reason I stopped is
because I thought it was too risky because he kept calling them [the
FBI] every time I called him."

"How did you know?"

"I did a fishing expedition," Mitnick explains. "I said, 'Neil, I'm
really getting pissed off! Every time I call you you're telling these
people. I wanna know why.'

"The first thing he said was, 'How'd you know?'

" 'Well,
idiot!
I didn't know. You just told me, right?'"

I continue. "He said that you told him you had an advanced degree."

"Economics."

"Economics. A master's?"

"No, just a bachelor's. That's enough," Mitnick snaps, the irrita-
tion racheting up in his voice. "That had something to do with this
idiot!"

"Pardon?" Mitnick seems on the verge of revealing what his fake
degree had to do with today's close call, but he says nothing more
about it.

"But how do you get a bachelor's?"

"Oh, I can't tell you," Mitnick says coyly. "Four years of
grueling work!"

"Did it take two hours or twenty hours or three days?"

"All it takes is getting access to the right computer and accessing
the database in any college in the world," Mitnick says matter-of-
factly. "So figure it out!"

"So it might have taken ten minutes?"

"Yeah, it might have. But actually, when I get in — you gotta look
around, see how things are set up."

"Then it's probably more like an hour or two?" I ask.

"I dunno. I hate to reduce it to things," Mitnick jokes gleefully. "I
went to school!"

"Do you play chess?" Mitnick asks.

"No."

"You have to look six moves ahead. Because some
idiot
in human
resources fucked up, something could come of it. There is a twenty
percent chance of trouble," Mitnick pauses for emphasis. "Twenty
percent is too high in my business."

"So you don't work in computers?"

"Come on!" Mitnick shouts. "No programming, no systems. But
I can create a background of my choosing and it would be verifiable.
The only way you verify someone is by writing a letter or by calling a
phone. Think of the possibilities. It's pretty easy."

Mitnick could hack into a university computer and create a
courseload of specific classes, grades, and a degree, then, just in case
he might be detected, forward calls or faxes to one of his lines so he
could be his own reference.

"I'd love to get a job with the U.S. Marshals!" Mitnick cries, his
voice revving. "I know a flaw that could be discovered, a way to
discover people in the witness protection system. A way to discover
their identity. It would only take me two days of computer time to
find
everybody
under that program. There
is
a way. And no one told
me about it either."

■
■
■

The conversation drifts from topic to topic, the hours gliding into
the middle of the day. I'm hungry, but Mitnick's feeding me with
information. He's lonely, isolated, and just needs someone to talk to.
He tells me how simple it is for a fugitive to get lost in New York,
how he managed to get an official-sounding AT&T recording of
"Thank you for using Kevin Mitnick!" for kicks, and how he can't
trust anybody, not even his own mother and father. Today, there's
little background noise. Mitnick doesn't sound like he's at work.
Could he be at his apartment?

"Which are the most secure systems out there?" I ask the world's
most feared hacker. "Are any of them secure?"

"If you're on the Internet, you're in trouble."

"OK. What about CompuServe?"

"No."

"America Online?"

"No."

"But they told me they're secure."

"Why don't you call the Well?" Mitnick snips sarcastically. "You
know the Well is secure. Use the Well. You don't like people reading
your mail, do you?" Mitnick chuckles. "Why don't you just say,
'Hey, don't read my mail!' "

I ignore the taunt, and ask more about Internet security. "It's
funny because one of the larger Internet providers told me, 'No, only
those smaller providers have problems. We're perfectly secure. And
if you wanna be extra secure, we just won't list you in the direc-
tory!' "

"Maybe you should go with Netcom," Mitnick snickers.

It's an inside joke. Netcom is the Internet provider Lewis De
Payne uses, and one of Mitnick's many personal cyberspace play-
grounds. De Payne told me the government ordered a wiretap on his
own Netcom account. So how did De Payne find out? He phoned up
Netcom and asked them.

"You don't feel this fear out there?" I ask. "What do you think
could be done?"

"1 don't know if it's real or not. I guess it's real, because who am I
to say how someone else feels? But I think fear is played upon a lot,
too."

■
■
■

"Who do you consider to be the cell phone experts in the country?"

"The best cell phone company is Motorola."

"So would the expert be the head of a particular division?"

"Yeah, but they're a victim. ... You want to get someone that
knows a lot.... I found out the guy that actually helped Mark Lot-
tor break the Oki phone code was Tsutomu Shimomura, an NSA
spook."

"He broke it?"

"They worked on it together, but Mark has no idea that I know it
was Tsutomu."

This rings a bell. Something Markoff told me . ..

"You probably read
Wired
magazine, right?" I ask. "They had an

article about cell phone hackers and I wonder if that might be Mark?
It was written by Markoff."

"He [Markoff] only knows what he's told, and Shimomura is one
of his friends, and Shimomura believed I tried to social engineer him
once...."

Markoff is a friend of Shimomura? That's news to me, as is this
claim that Mitnick tried to social engineer Shimomura. What was he
looking for?

"How do you know Shimomura broke it for Mark [Lottor]?"

"I know they worked on the code together. Someone told me that
Shimomura has a copy of the broken Oki phone code on his work-
station in San Diego. I just heard that through the grapevine," Mit-
nick states.

"So they broke the Oki phone code together?"

"Yeah. They worked on reverse engineering the Oki phone code
together."

"And you heard this from —"

"I know it for one hundred percent positive fact."

"How do you know it one hundred percent —"

"Because this person's very trustworthy."

"And they did this, like, a year ago?"

"Yeah. They've been doing it for like the past couple years, and
Mark has been sending Shimomura [code]. Mark modifies the firm-
ware [the memory chips that hold the phone's basic workings]. So
you can do things like change your ESN and scan and he has a direc-
tory. And apparently he downloads a copy of all he's working on to
Shimomura's machine. And apparently, Shimomura wrote the disas-
sembler for Mark that Mark uses. The 8051. He wrote that disas-
sembler."

"The 8051 disassembler?"

"Yep!" Mitnick chimes. "For the 8051 processor... and
they've worked on it together. So you have a government em-
ployee hack[ing] with Lottor, the ex-roommate of the superhacker
Poulsen. Boy, I'll bet you can sensationalize something with that,
huh?"

Mitnick is saying that Shimomura translated the machine code of
the Oki's 8051 chip into understandable assembly language —

words and commands that might enable Lottor and others to deci-
pher and then modify the phone's basic operation. Lottor later con-
firmed that Shimomura did write the 8051 disassembler.

"It's kind of interesting. What would be the benefit to Shi-
momura?"

"I don't know."

"Do you know how I can find Shimomura?"

"He doesn't know me personally," Mitnick replies, defensive.
"He's a spook. I think he works for the NSA."

Markoff told me the same basic story at lunch. That Shimomura
works for the intelligence agency.

"What's the company he's with in San Diego?"

"UCSD," Mitnick answers.

"And he's definitely a smart guy?"

"I would think so."

■ ■ ■

"How much time do you think this Shimomura spent talking to Lot-
tor or working on this stuff?"

"Oh — a year or two."

"So he would have spent weeks on it?"

"Oh yeah!" Mitnick chuckles. "He's been a busy beaver there."

"And Shimomura, of course, knows all about Lottor's problems
with the other arm of his employer?" I'm referring to the federal
hacking indictment against Lottor and Kevin Poulsen.

"Yeah! Interesting, huh?"

"But who is Shimomura's official employer?"

"I dunno. He's easy to get ahold of. Hold on, I'll get his number
lor you. Where's my file?"

"You mentioned Los Alamos," I continue, trying to draw out
more information, "but is that Shimomura's official or unofficial
employer?"

"Hold on a minute. Where's his file? Hold on a second. Here's my
Shimomura file, it's right next to my Littman file!" Mitnick teases.
"Where's his phone number? Oh, here it is!"

He's probably just kidding, but it does make me wonder. What
does Kevin Mitnick really know about my private life? "So how

much do you know about me? You must know a little about me,
right?"

"Just what you tell me," Mitnick says.

"Honest to God?"

"I just know what you have told me, seriously. OK, here's his
phone number. I don't know if it's listed or not, 619 area code,
259-65XX. And his work number is 619-534-50XX."

Mitnick's got Shimomura's home number. And something tells
me it's not listed in the phone book.

"OK. Thanks."

"You want his mom's number?"

"You've got his mom's number?"

"Yeah. But I'm sure he's not gonna be at his mom's house."

I don't ask for Shimomura's mother's number.

"OK, I'll take it that you don't know anything about me. You
don't know that I've got a . . ."

"As far as I know, you could be a federal agent," Mitnick drones
in a flat, emotionless voice. "That's interesting," Mitnick muses. "I
think I found his [Shimomura's] beeper number. I don't know if it's
his beeper number. Should we call it?"

"No. I don't wanna spook a spook," I say nervously. "It's proba-
bly not a good idea. He's one person I wouldn't want to mess with.
He probably has friends."

Mitnick's not listening. He's still reading his secret files.

"Here's Mark Lottor's cell phone number. That's interesting!"

■ ■ •

The hacker has put on a pretty impressive display. In a couple of
minutes, Mitnick has offered evidence that he can invade nearly any-
one's privacy, even the privacy of a world-renowned government
hacker. He's also provided me with the perfect setup for my question
about fear and privacy in the information age.

"The average Joe would think that you do this all the time — that
you know everything about everybody. And somebody you knew
from a past life said, 'Do you know what you're getting into? You
and your friend [De Payne] will make my life miserable for years and
years.' How do you respond to that?"

"I have to know who you're talking about," Mitnick says care-
fully. "That's the problem."

What Mitnick is really saying is he wants to know which of his
enemies issued this warning.