There is only fun and boring - R30 Issue #12

The final batch of FBI documents concerning Kevin Mitnick got released, and sent me down memory lane. Kevin gained notoriety as a hacker in the 80s and 90s, breaking into government and corporate data systems.

Technological aptitude played as much a part in his attempts as did social engineering, manipulating people into giving him access while pretending to be someone else. You can read about this in his 2003 book called The Art of Deception. It’s got some interesting bits, but I never finished it, to be honest.

He and Captain Crunch were the names most often cited in the burgeoning hacker craze of the 1990s. While the FBI was busy charging Mitnick with wire fraud, pop culture started venerating “security researchers” as savvy subversives sticking it to the man.

First there was Sneakers with Robert Redford in 1992, featuring a ragtag team of professionals trying to steal a device that can crack any encryption mechanism. Then came Hackers in 1995, with Angelina Jolie as Acid Burn and Johnny Lee Miller as Zero Cool. I think that was the first time handles were used to identify someone. It was still four years before Keanu Reeves would say “I am Neo” in The Matrix. Let’s not forget another little film released in 1995, Ghost in the Shell.
As The Plague would say: “There is no right and wrong. There’s only fun and boring.”

By the way, that’s a floppy disk in that Hackers movie clip. Works as a portable data storage device, much like a USB stick, except all the bits are organized on a magnetic disk. You shove it into something like this to access the data. (please don’t @ me saying that’s a different format)

All that ancient technology, forgotten and obsolete. Much like Crunch whistling into a phone in the 1970s, to control the phone switching system. What do you do nowadays? You smish (SMS phising) to grab a user’s Apple or Google Wallet. Which is then loaded onto a phone, and then the phone gets sold. Or you smuggle data through emojis. That’s kinda benign. The cool kids on the block nowadays just hack a plane. Maybe stick to jailbreaking your Kindle?

I hope you liked that little hacking detour, because I don’t have anything else planned for today. Don’t get Necrons in your brain (biohacking?). Also, remember, When you ride with Tesla, you ride with Hitler. Instead, learn about the six new F1 rules for 2025.

Or create a map through computational means? Karina asmr is good.

Leftovers: Palestinian Pixel Art Library, The Nazi Block, The Great Depression in 1933

Group photo of Adrian Lamo, Kevin Mitnick, and Kevin Lee Poulsen by Matthew Griffiths

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