Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker (61 page)

My cousin Trudy Spector was so kind and generous in allowing my mom and grandmother to stay in her home whenever they would commute to Los Angeles to visit me. She also allowed me to stay at her place before I decided to disappear after my supervised release had expired.
I wish she could have had the opportunity to read these words, but she sadly suffered a serious medical issue and passed away in 2010. I feel a great sense of loss and sadness that I lost such a loving and caring person.

My dear friend Michael Morris has always been a true and loyal friend to my family and me. Thank you, Mike, for all your kind and generous support throughout the years. I know you’ll personally remember a lot of the stories written in these pages. I will always cherish your friendship.

I have had the extraordinary good fortune of being teamed up with bestselling author Bill Simon once again to write my memoir. Bill’s notable skills as a writer include his magical ability to take information provided by me and write it up in such a style and manner that anyone’s grandmother could understand it. Bill has become more than just a business partner in writing; he is also a close friend who has listened to my stories, sometimes several times over to ensure that the story is written with precision. Although we had several moments of frustration and disagreements regarding the inclusion of technical-based hacking stories during the development phase of this book, we always compromised to our mutual satisfaction. In the end, we decided to target a larger readership that didn’t require prerequisite knowledge such as advanced hacking or networking skills. Besides working with Bill Simon, I had the pleasure of teaming up with Donna Beech for some work at the end of the project. It was great working with her.

I’m eager to thank those people who represent my professional career and are dedicated in extraordinary ways. My literary agent, David Fugate of LaunchBooks, spent a great deal of time negotiating the book contract and acting as a liaison with the publisher, Little, Brown. My speaking agent, Amy Gray, with New Leaf Speakers, has represented me for almost a decade. She has thoughtfully and diligently worked with countless clients throughout the world who hired me to keynote at their events. She has done and continues to do an awesome job as my agent. Thank you, Amy. And always remember—Almost Famous ;-)

I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to work with Little, Brown on developing this exciting project.
I wish to thank my editor, John Parsley, for all his hard work and great advice on this project. Thank you, John. It was a pleasure meeting you while I was in New York.

I wish to thank my childhood hero Steve Wozniak for spending his valuable time in penning the foreword for my memoir. This is the second foreword that Steve has graciously written for me. The first one was published in
The Art of Deception
(Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2002). I’ll never forget that “getting off supervised release” gift you gave me on
The Screen Savers
show—a brand-new PowerBook G4. It was an amazing gift that left a smile on my face for months. I always look forward to hanging out with Steve during our travels. We both try to visit the Hard Rock Café in every foreign country we visit and collect the T-shirts. Thank you, Steve, for being such a great friend.

And of course, I have to thank my former girlfriend Darci Wood for all her love, support, and devotion in the time we were together. Unfortunately, sometimes relationships don’t work out for one reason or another. Regardless, it’s comforting to still have Darci as a loyal and trusted friend. Now I just need her to sign a backdated Non-Disclosure Agreement from the day we met and everything will be just fine! Just kidding, Darci. (Or maybe not.)

Jack Biello was a close friend and caring person who spoke out against the extraordinary mistreatment I endured at the hands of journalists and government prosecutors. He was a key voice in the “Free Kevin” movement and a writer who had an extraordinary talent for writing compelling articles exposing information that the government didn’t want people to know about the Kevin Mitnick case. Jack was always there to fearlessly speak out on my behalf and to work together with me preparing speeches and articles. At one point, he even represented me as a media liaison. Jack’s passing, while Bill and I were finishing up the manuscript for
The Art of Deception
, left me feeling a great sense of loss and sadness. Although it’s been almost nine years now, Jack is always in my thoughts.

Although my friend Alex Kasperavicius was never really a hack, he was always willing to be brought into my hacking projects, usually to participate in some exciting social-engineering project. Later we developed a social-engineering workshop to help businesses identify and mitigate the risk of social-engineering attacks, and delivered these workshops at businesses around the globe. We even had the honor of training the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) in Oklahoma City. In late 2000,
we hosted a popular Internet talk radio show called
The Darkside of the Internet
on KFI-AM 640 in Los Angeles. Thank you, Alex. You have been a loyal and trusted friend.

Eric Corley (aka Emmanuel Goldstein) has been a friend and supporter for almost two decades. He launched the “Free Kevin” movement in early 1998 after I had been detained for over three years. Eric contributed substantial effort, time, and money in getting the word out during my incarceration in Federal detention. He also created a documentary entitled
Freedom Downtime
, released in 2001, which documented the “Free Kevin” movement and even won an award for best documentary at a New York film festival. Eric, your kindness, generosity, and friendship mean more to me than words can express. Thank you for everything and for being there for me.

I want to acknowledge my ex-hacking partner Lewis De Payne for taking the time to refresh my memory on several past hacking adventures that we both participated in. Thank you, Lewis. It has been a long and crazy adventure for both of us and I truly wish you the best.

My close friend Christine Marie assisted me with the initial rough draft of the Afterword included at the end of the book. Thank you, Christine, for your participation and effort.

I wish to thank my close friends Kat and Matt Wagenknecht for working with me to develop the codes that appear at the beginning of each chapter. Great work! Let’s see how many readers are able to solve the puzzles and win some prizes.

I wish to thank Jari Tomminen for allowing me to use a photo he had taken of me in Helsinki, Finland, for the
Ghost in the Wires
book jacket.

I want to acknowledge my friend and security expert David Kennedy, who was kind enough to review a section of this book and provide me with good advice.

Thank you, Alan Luckow, for allowing me to include in my book a picture of the drawing you made, which was on the gift wrapping that covered the box that contained the Apple PowerBook G4 that Steve Wozniak gave me on
The Screen Savers
show.

Thanks to the social-networking site Twitter, I was able to find a few volunteers willing to take some photographs for the book. I wish to
thank Nick Arnott, Shellee Hale, John Lester, aka Count Zero, Michelle Tackabery, and several others for their kind contributions and for volunteering their time. For those of you who wish to follow me on Twitter, please visit
twitter.com/kevinmitnick
.

I want to thank my former Federal prosecutor, David Schindler, who was kind enough to take the time to allow me to interview him for my book.

I also wish to thank Justin Petersen, aka Eric Heinz, and Ronald Mark Austin, who were kind enough to allow me to interview them for my book. A short time after Bill Simon and I interviewed Justin Petersen, he was found deceased in his apartment in West Hollywood, possibly because of a drug overdose. It’s a shame he suffered the same fate as my brother, who had me initiate contact with Petersen when Justin was using the alias Eric Heinz.

And as I write these acknowledgments, I realize I have so many people to thank and to express appreciation to for offering their love, friendship, and support. I cannot begin to remember the names of all the kind and generous people I’ve met in recent years, but suffice it to say, I would need a flash drive to store them all. There have been so many people from all over the world who have written me words of encouragement, praise, and support. These words have meant a great deal to me, especially during the times I needed it most.

I’m especially thankful to
2600
and all my supporters who stood by me and spent their valuable time and energy getting the word out to anyone who would listen, voicing their concern over and objections to my unfair treatment and the hyperbole created by those who sought to profit from the “Myth of Kevin Mitnick.”

I’ve had too many experiences with lawyers, but I am eager to express my thanks to the lawyers who, during the years of my negative interactions with the criminal justice system, stepped up and offered to help me when I was in desperate need. I have come to respect, admire, and appreciate the kindness and generosity of spirit given to me so freely by so many. I wish to thank Greg Aclin, Fran Campbell, Robert Carmer, Debbie Drooz, John Dusenbury, Sherman Ellison, Omar Figueroa, Jim French, Carolyn Hagin, Rob Hale, Barry Langberg, David Mahler, Ralph Peretz, Michelle Carswell Pritchard, Donald C. Randolph, Tony
Serra, Skip Slates, Richard Steingard, the Honorable Robert Talcott, Barry Tarlow, Gregory Vinson, and John Yzurdiaga.

From Bill Simon

In my Acknowledgments for
The Art of Deception
, I wrote about Kevin that “this is not a work of fiction, although the central figure could be one I might invent for a screenplay thriller. I built for this one-of-a-kind coauthor a very healthy respect.” And I commented that “his working style differs from mine so radically that one might wonder how we could have coauthored a book and come out planning to do other projects together. We have both stretched and learned and found pleasure in the intensely hard work of turning his knowledge and experiences into a fun read.” Though this, our third book together, has been by far the hardest on our friendship, I’m happy to report that the friendship and mutual respect survived and strengthened despite the sandpaper frictions of the process. I expect that this book will last a long time; I expect our friendship will last as long or even longer.

It would be hard to beat the talents of John Parsley as an editor. Supportive but demanding, bringing out the best, always there when you need him. John’s guidance has made this a better book, and I’m in his debt. His estimable chief copyeditor, Peggy Freudenthal, proved to be a champion—putting up with a challenging task, performing peerlessly, and never losing her cool; Kevin and I are both indebted to her.

It’s never easy to finish a book without having my wife and companion of so many years, the multitalented Arynne Simon, supporting me, cheering me on, making me work just a little harder on finding the right phrase. But her smiles still keep me going.

Agents Bill Gladstone and David Fugate both had a hand in making this project come together. A tip of the hat to you both.

In addition to the input from Kevin, I’m grateful to those others who helped fill in parts of the story—in particular Kevin’s mother, Shelly Jaffe, and his grandmother Reba Vartanian; his ex, Bonnie; Assistant U.S. Attorney David Schindler; Kevin Poulsen; former Pacific Bell Security Investigator Darrell Santos; former Detective, now Chief David
Simon, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (and my twin brother). The book is richer for their willingness to share. But I especially want to acknowledge the late Justin Petersen, aka Eric Heinz, who was forthcoming in ways that went beyond my expectations.

I especially want to recognize Sheldon Bermont for his contributions to this book. And to grandchildren Vincent and Elena Bermont, whose smiles and enthusiasms have helped keep me in a happy mood.

Finally—last mentioned, a place of honor—I extend a deep bow to Charlotte Schwartz, who makes all the difference.

Me in my pre-hacking days, around age nine, when my hobby was performing magic tricks
(Shelly Jaffe)