It doesn’t matter who the Gerber Baby really is. Society has chosen to associate the Gerber Baby with certain attributes regardless of who the person behind the photo really is, and so it is with Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick, the real person, excelled at social engineering more than any other trait and was arguably subjected to malicious prosecution. But in his later years, there’s a lot of documentation online indicating that he didn’t live up to the myth that grew around him and he was not a pleasant person [1].
People here are mostly reminiscing about Mitnick--the myth, not the man.
I think we'd all be surprised to find out how many "legendary", "amazing", "revolutionary" famous people are not particularly pleasant. You don't achieve greatness by being a sweetheart.
[ftr, I have no idea what his demeanor was; like many, it's quite likely he softened over time.]
Regarding your source: People don't behave consistently all the time. There are probably people who have briefly met you when you were not in a good mood who would say that you are a jerk.
I don't really want to say bad things about someone I respect who just died, but the fact of the matter is that Kevin (especially when he was younger—he mellowed out later) really could be menacing. Combined with the compulsiveness of his nature, that could be unpleasant. It was as if he could not stop hacking and messing with people.
RIP. I still have my FREE KEVIN sticker on an old freezer.
One of my fond memories with my now-dead mother was going to see him during a prison transfer in Los Angeles and yelling outside the place until he waved to us and the rest of the crowd through a window.
RIP. Same here, I read the whole book on a Sony Ericsson W810i Walkman cell phone in high school. The phone I read it on had a 176x220 pixels tiny little screen. Book was captivating.
I also can't find mention of him having pancreatic cancer, but that's not necessarily a confirmation of anything. He certainly could have kept it private.
While I assume this is real, part of me does feel like a combination of how young he is and who is is leads me to be slightly skeptical. Assuming it's real, hopefully he would have appreciated the skepticism.
“Lamo was best known for reporting U.S. soldier Chelsea Manning to Army criminal investigators in 2010[7] for leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks.[8][9] Lamo died on March 14, 2018, at the age of 37.[10]”
Kind of the wrong side in history there. But RIP, regardless.
Manning’s leaks included vast numbers of documents related in no way to a legitimate whistleblowing issues, some of which helped spark the Arab Spring which precipitated in an ongoing civil war in Syria, slave markets and the beheading of religious minorities in Libya, and on and on all over the region affecting 100s of millions of people. I don’t know about Lamo, but Manning certainly isn’t on the right side of history and deserves to be still in jail.
>Manning’s leaks included vast numbers of documents related in no way to a legitimate whistleblowing issues, some of which helped spark the Arab Spring which precipitated in an ongoing civil war in Syria
Manning was very sloppy; that's true. But she also released very important information about war crimes. The intent was good, the execution was bad.
As for the Arab Spring, you can blame it for revolutions in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt (some good, some bad), but I don't think Syria has anything to do with it. And ISIS was the direct result of the US invasion of Iraq.
I had a similar thought, his social engineering abilities were very strong. If there was one person in the world willing to fake their own death to engineer access to something, it would have been him. A sad day.
what is there to elaborate, other than pointing out that he was good at social engineering things and finding behavioral or procedural loopholes to get access to systems?
Wired story about the origin of the cards: https://www.wired.com/2007/06/lock-pick-busin/ (I looked it up because I thought they looked like some cards someone I knew designed, and sure enough…)
He was the person I associated the word hacker with, when I came across his name back in 2003 as a kid when I was searching for 'top hackers in the world'. (Google was functional back then...).
I'll go in tomorrow and update our August KnowBe4 training deployment for August to be a couple of his modules. Our users won't know, and I guess he won't either, but cancer sucks and it'll make me happy to do it.
KnowBe4 is the bane of my work existence. It's honestly the worst thing about my job, having to take their courses. It's too bad Mitnick sold out to Scientologists (KnowBe4), but I guess he had to cash in somehow. It kind of upsets me that I'm forced to watch Mitnick's videos about social engineering, considering his own nefarious use of the tricks he's teaching people to avoid. I mean, I guess learn from an expert? That service just rubs me the wrong way, maybe it's the scientologists that run it.
If you and your wife really love each other and your wife really want to have a piece of the love you had in form of another family member, why not?
Is the submission for someone who just died the right place to write something you already know is harsh? Considering the kind of person Kevin was, I'm sure a bunch of his friends are on here, reading these very comments so maybe just a tiny bit of respect would be suitable.
It’s the age old issue if someone can’t understand something therefore there can be no understanding in it.
While many people are remembering the Free Kevin phenomenon, the random places the t-shirts would appear for years.. like other things Kevin appeared to do - it’s a decision that’s entirely Kevin and his wife’s business, and they seem more than capable of it.
He certainly was an interesting person. It was always amazing the degree to which law enforcement prosecuted his hacking and cracking, when it seems like much more impactful crimes involving computers go uninvestigated. Plenty of people are hounded by threats of violence into leaving their jobs and homes, that seems far more impactful than Mitnick's crimes.
And FYI, while he died unexpectedly young, a 57-year-old man in the US has only a 50% chance of living to see their child reach 23 years of age. I, personally, wouldn't feel comfortable risking leaving a child with a likelihood of dealing with my death at that relatively young age.
Well just doing the math, they must have conceived after his diagnosis, so presumably that was baked in sadly just knowing the actuarials on pancreatic cancer.
Everything is high school. A rebel thumbing their nose at the system must be punished, while the conventionally corrupt deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Wow, this comment is the most profound thing I've read in a while on HN. I find myself a) intuitively agreeing and b) trying to pick it apart. Society as a whole seems to have a very complicated love/hate relationship with rebellion and rebels. But with Mitnick it's like he personified Chaos vs law enforcement's Order in an almost mythological, Jungian sense that goes beyond any utilitarian justification.
That's very specific to US society. Authorities treat computer intrusion more seriously than many violent crimes because it can affect companies and the government.
Companies and the government can spy on people all they want (see Snowden) but the reverse is punished severely (see Assange)
Reading between the lines of the article he battled cancer for 14 months, but his wife is currently pregnant with their first kid. So they chose to have a kid knowing he was a 57 year old with an aggressive form of cancer.
>And FYI, while he died unexpectedly young, a 57-year-old man in the US has only a 50% chance of living to see their child reach 23 years of age. I, personally, wouldn't feel comfortable risking leaving a child with a likelihood of dealing with my death at that relatively young age.
To me it seems more like he wanted to have a child with his wife before he passed so they planned it out so it would happen.
I think it's pretty amazing to be 57 and expecting a child. I'd be thrilled. I'm 54 no kids and I wish I could have great relationship with a woman that is so good we had a child. Seeing how sick he was and sterility is a possibility from cancer drugs I think Kevin would be thrilled about the child as anyone would be.
None of the commenters expressing this bullshit sentiment will provide their children with 1% of the education, health, freedom, security, etc that Mitnick will have left for his child. We struggle our whole lives to provide, it looks like he already assured that for his family, even into perpetuity if managed well.
It's not like he gave himself cancer on purpose and chose to leave a child with nothing out of spite. He played the hand he was dealt, it seems.
"Mitnick has filed a 13G form with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing ownership of 9,379,829 shares of KnowBe4, Inc. Class A (KNBE). This represents 6.9 percent ownership of the company. "
" companies announced on Wednesday that they have entered into a definitive agreement, with KnowBe4 stockholders set to receive $24.90 per share in cash, "
"Vista Equity Partners to Acquire Security Awareness Training Firm KnowBe4 for $4.6B"
We don't live in an ideal world. That doesn't mean it's not worth living in.
The man didn't hang himself, he got a case of severe bad luck. I'm sure he'd be here doing the father figure stuff if he could, but if he can't, that doesn't mean the kid shouldn't have been created, and really, that's their family's own personal decision to make.
Ultimately, he did a good job for his family and the kid will be fine.
People shitting on him on the day he died for choosing to have a kid that he leaves very well taken care of just seems wrong in several different ways.
I mean, we could all be at work trying to provide for our theoretical kids right now and we're sitting here saying dumb shit on the internet instead.
That's interesting that people felt it worth the time to email.
I think what's going on here is that some people (myself included) find it extraordinarily offensive to question someone's right to procreate, whether they're "good enough" by some metric to have done so. Are you young enough, rich enough, smart enough, tall enough, moral enough, etc.
Of course, the offense can be a combination of being offended on behalf (of Mitnick in this case), and also projecting (what if we lived in a world where people questioned whether I should have children for reasons of age, wealth ... or worse reasons.)
I think we live in a world where we need all kinds of people from all kinds of parents; when we start to pick at who "should" have children, we risk losing something.
He decided to have a child knowing that an average man had decent chance he would be dead before they entered college. Being in remission from one of the more deadly and rapid forms of cancer meant he knew or should have known that the child would likely grow up without a father. That does not seem like support to me.
And Warren Buffet will tell you that you want to give your kids enough money so that they can do anything, not so much that they can do nothing. Have you spent time around kids who know they will be millionaires when they grow up? Really messes with your head. A buddy of mine was supported by his parents as an expat in a resort city and ended up brutally murdering his dad after they clashed about money.
And FWIW, I will be able to give my kid enough money to do anything, have been carefully developing his mental and physical aspects, travel abroad, language immersion, etc. So your attack is inaccurate in my case.
I'm not trying to attack you, just the idea. (I saw the same sentiment from several commenters) I'm just saying I strongly disagree with publicly questioning a dead man's decision to have kids when the kid still has at least one parent and financial stability. There's plenty worse you can do and not a lot better. If he'd lived to 80 would it have been "perfect"? We can't all achieve perfection.
It's virtually always impossible for almost everyone to be able to simultaneously 1] have kids while you're still young 2] wait until you have "enough" money.
Warren Buffet's quote doesn't make sense, because both "anything" and "nothing" are relative. You can "do nothing" with extraordinarily little money. You can also not be able to do "anything" even with billions of dollars (start an asteroid mining company?).
If you give your kids the moon, you just have to make sure they still have motivation and character, it's still possible. Not everyone who inherits money is a layabout.
I can stop now though, I think we just fundamentally have different opinions on this and probably won't budge much.
660 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 359 ms ] threadRIP dude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Turner_Cook
People here are mostly reminiscing about Mitnick--the myth, not the man.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/uk6wgd/why_d...
[ftr, I have no idea what his demeanor was; like many, it's quite likely he softened over time.]
One of my fond memories with my now-dead mother was going to see him during a prison transfer in Los Angeles and yelling outside the place until he waved to us and the rest of the crowd through a window.
https://fogbeam.com/free-kevin.jpg
That seems to have been reverted pending a reliable source:
Edit: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&old...>
Revert: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kevin_Mitnick&old...>
Wikipedians typically resolve such issues pretty quickly.
I also can't find mention of him having pancreatic cancer, but that's not necessarily a confirmation of anything. He certainly could have kept it private.
Sad to hear the news :\",
I've always loved his lockpicking business card: https://www.mitnicksecurity.com/kevin-mitnicks-famous-lockpi...
While I assume this is real, part of me does feel like a combination of how young he is and who is is leads me to be slightly skeptical. Assuming it's real, hopefully he would have appreciated the skepticism.
They did ship the card to me.
“Lamo was best known for reporting U.S. soldier Chelsea Manning to Army criminal investigators in 2010[7] for leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks.[8][9] Lamo died on March 14, 2018, at the age of 37.[10]”
Kind of the wrong side in history there. But RIP, regardless.
Manning’s leaks included vast numbers of documents related in no way to a legitimate whistleblowing issues, some of which helped spark the Arab Spring which precipitated in an ongoing civil war in Syria, slave markets and the beheading of religious minorities in Libya, and on and on all over the region affecting 100s of millions of people. I don’t know about Lamo, but Manning certainly isn’t on the right side of history and deserves to be still in jail.
You're mistaking Manning's leak with the CIA.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/world/middleeast/cia-syri...
As for the Arab Spring, you can blame it for revolutions in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt (some good, some bad), but I don't think Syria has anything to do with it. And ISIS was the direct result of the US invasion of Iraq.
Care to elaborate?
I might not be up to speed with a particular instance of that in his life though. Perhaps that's where my lack of understanding stems from.
Remember when Yahoo! was defaced with a "FREE KEVIN" message? Good times.
RIP
<https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>
<https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>
(I'd just made this suggestion via email on seeing this post.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Is the submission for someone who just died the right place to write something you already know is harsh? Considering the kind of person Kevin was, I'm sure a bunch of his friends are on here, reading these very comments so maybe just a tiny bit of respect would be suitable.
It’s the age old issue if someone can’t understand something therefore there can be no understanding in it.
While many people are remembering the Free Kevin phenomenon, the random places the t-shirts would appear for years.. like other things Kevin appeared to do - it’s a decision that’s entirely Kevin and his wife’s business, and they seem more than capable of it.
And FYI, while he died unexpectedly young, a 57-year-old man in the US has only a 50% chance of living to see their child reach 23 years of age. I, personally, wouldn't feel comfortable risking leaving a child with a likelihood of dealing with my death at that relatively young age.
Companies and the government can spy on people all they want (see Snowden) but the reverse is punished severely (see Assange)
Perhaps a clearer way to put it: a 57-year-old man in the US has a 50% chance of living to 80, which doesn't seem quite as shocking of a statement.
The poster above mentioned that Mitnick had more than 9 million shares of some company sold for ~25 dollars each. That would be ~225 million.
To me it seems more like he wanted to have a child with his wife before he passed so they planned it out so it would happen.
Obituaries mention surviving family members by convention, but otherwise leave very personal matters to the family.
The death of someone can be a reminder of our own mortality. Maybe a later HN post can work through some of those thoughts.
It's not like he gave himself cancer on purpose and chose to leave a child with nothing out of spite. He played the hand he was dealt, it seems.
"Mitnick has filed a 13G form with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing ownership of 9,379,829 shares of KnowBe4, Inc. Class A (KNBE). This represents 6.9 percent ownership of the company. "
" companies announced on Wednesday that they have entered into a definitive agreement, with KnowBe4 stockholders set to receive $24.90 per share in cash, "
"Vista Equity Partners to Acquire Security Awareness Training Firm KnowBe4 for $4.6B"
https://fintel.io/news/mitnick-kevin-discloses-stake-in-knbe...
https://www.securityweek.com/vista-equity-partners-acquire-s...
The man didn't hang himself, he got a case of severe bad luck. I'm sure he'd be here doing the father figure stuff if he could, but if he can't, that doesn't mean the kid shouldn't have been created, and really, that's their family's own personal decision to make.
Ultimately, he did a good job for his family and the kid will be fine.
People shitting on him on the day he died for choosing to have a kid that he leaves very well taken care of just seems wrong in several different ways.
I mean, we could all be at work trying to provide for our theoretical kids right now and we're sitting here saying dumb shit on the internet instead.
I think what's going on here is that some people (myself included) find it extraordinarily offensive to question someone's right to procreate, whether they're "good enough" by some metric to have done so. Are you young enough, rich enough, smart enough, tall enough, moral enough, etc.
Of course, the offense can be a combination of being offended on behalf (of Mitnick in this case), and also projecting (what if we lived in a world where people questioned whether I should have children for reasons of age, wealth ... or worse reasons.)
I think we live in a world where we need all kinds of people from all kinds of parents; when we start to pick at who "should" have children, we risk losing something.
And Warren Buffet will tell you that you want to give your kids enough money so that they can do anything, not so much that they can do nothing. Have you spent time around kids who know they will be millionaires when they grow up? Really messes with your head. A buddy of mine was supported by his parents as an expat in a resort city and ended up brutally murdering his dad after they clashed about money.
And FWIW, I will be able to give my kid enough money to do anything, have been carefully developing his mental and physical aspects, travel abroad, language immersion, etc. So your attack is inaccurate in my case.
It's virtually always impossible for almost everyone to be able to simultaneously 1] have kids while you're still young 2] wait until you have "enough" money.
Warren Buffet's quote doesn't make sense, because both "anything" and "nothing" are relative. You can "do nothing" with extraordinarily little money. You can also not be able to do "anything" even with billions of dollars (start an asteroid mining company?).
If you give your kids the moon, you just have to make sure they still have motivation and character, it's still possible. Not everyone who inherits money is a layabout.
I can stop now though, I think we just fundamentally have different opinions on this and probably won't budge much.