Explore Quotes by Kevin Mitnick

To have transactions made on your web site via credit card, you must be PCI compliant. Businesses make the mistake of thinking that because you passed the requirements and are PCI certified, you are immune to attacks.

I trust online banking. You know why? Because if somebody hacks into my account and defrauds my credit card company, or my online bank account, guess who takes the loss? The bank, not me.

Protecting yourself is very challenging in the hostile environment of the Internet. Imagine a global environment where an unscrupulous person from the other side of the planet can probe your computer for weaknesses and exploit them to gain access to your most sensitive secrets.

The explosion of companies deploying wireless networks insecurely is creating vulnerabilities, as they think it's limited to the office - then they have Johnny Hacker in the parking lot with an 802.11 antenna using the network to send threatening emails to the president!

I went from being a kid who loved to perform magic tricks to becoming the world's most notorious hacker, feared by corporations and the government.

I keep my stuff updated all the time. Being in the security industry, I keep up to date with securities.

When I read about myself in the media, even I don't recognize me. The myth of Kevin Mitnick is much more interesting than the reality of Kevin Mitnick. If they told the reality, no one would care.

A log-in simulator is a program to trick some unknowing user into providing their user name and password.

I could pose as a Yahoo rep claiming that there's been some sort of fault, and somebody else is getting your e-mail, and we're going to have to remove your account and reinstall it. So what we'll do is reset the current password that you have - and by the way, what is it?

Businesses should absolutely set aside funding in their budgets for security consultants. Unless there is an expert on staff, and there usually is not, it needs to be outsourced.

Somebody could send you an office document or a PDF file, and as soon as you open it, it's a booby trap and the hacker has complete control of your computer. Another major problem is password management. People use the same password on multiple sites, so when the hacker compromises one site, they have your password for everywhere else.

I was fascinated with the phone system and how it worked; I became a hacker to get better control over the phone company.

I'm an expert witness in a case that's in appeal about a guy who allegedly misappropriated source code from a major, major company - he actually worked there and then apparently they found it on his laptop later.

I saw myself as an electronic joy rider. I was like James Bond behind the computer. I was just having a blast.

Nine out of every 10 large corporations and government agencies have been attacked by computer intruders.

Think about it: if you were running a multi-million dollar company, and your database of customer information was stolen, would you want to tell your clients? No. Most companies did not until the laws required them to. It's in the best interest of organisations - when they're attacked and information is stolen - to tell nobody.

The government does things like insisting that all encryption programs should have a back door. But surely no one is stupid enough to think the terrorists are going to use encryption systems with a back door. The terrorists will simply hire a programmer to come up with a secure encryption scheme.

For a long time, I was portrayed as the Osama bin Laden of the Internet, and I really wanted to be able to tell my side of the story. I wanted to be able to explain exactly what I did and what I didn't do to people who thought they knew me.

If I needed to know about a security exploit, I preferred to get the information by accessing the companies' security teams' files, rather than poring over lines of code to find it on my own. It's just more efficient.

The first programming assignment I had in high school was to find the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead, I thought it would be cooler to write a program to get the teacher's password and all the other students' passwords. And the teacher gave me an A and told the class how smart I was.

I'm not a fugitive anymore. Never will be in the future. After spending five years in jail, you learn your lesson. I never want to return there.