Newsgroups: alt.2600 Path: nntp.gmd.de!newsserver.jvnc.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!world!mis From: m...@world.std.com (Mark Seiden) Subject: Re: Shimomura & Mitnick Message-ID: Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA References: <3i6cee$6n7@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> Date: Sun, 19 Feb 1995 11:04:17 GMT Lines: 75 cy...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Paul Thompson) writes: >>From: tho...@marlaw.demon.co.uk (Thomashot) >>Subject: Re: Shimomura & Mitnick >>Date: Fri Feb 17 13:03:10 1995 > >>In article <1995Feb17.011915.41...@cc.usu.edu>, >>sl...@cc.usu.edu wrote: > >>>Whose role would you say is more difficult. The fox or the hound? I >>>have my opinion- I'd like to hear yours. > > > >>Whose role was more difficult, Jesus' or Judas'? > >>A grass is a fucking grass and deserves naught but a rope. > >>The propaganda engines of the police-state have successfully presented >>Mitkin to the masses as a despicable fugitive, thief and scoundral. How >>strange that this technology-wielding genius should be portrayed as >>dangerous and those who are the real threat --the henchmen for the >>consolidators of power --are portrayed as the "good" guys. > >How very true. In my opinion Simomura and Mitnick are two sides of the same >coin; one working for the status-quo (powers permitted to rip you off by law >or tradition) and the other against it, ripping you off for his own gain. >Rip off artists, either way. > >Paul > I agree that both sides had substantial hacking talents, which makes the story interesting. I believe mitnick was the aggressor here. it just so happened he chose his victims poorly. Some of them were not defenseless or clueless. but he wouldn't leave them be. you may in some contorted way think of the Well and Netcom as rip off artists. (I don't, particularly, but i wouldn't argue a lot about it.) however I certainly don't think of some of the other victims, Art.net (Lile Elam), Mark Lottor, Shimomura's personal machine, Internex (a small startup Internet Service Provider), Eric Allman, Paul Kocher (a cryptographer at Stanford), Markoff as rip off artists. These people work hard at what they do and do good work. I know them all personally. Lottor is an interesting example. He's still under federal indictment himself, mostly for having made a poor choice of roommates (Kevin Poulsen), in my opinion. He's running a one-man business that makes ingenious devices, and still doing the Internet Census. He does it all on a shoestring. but Mitnick wanted Lottor's Oki phone code, and had to have it. nothing would stop him. not even being tasteful enough to choose his victims appropriately. Mitnick had to read Markoff's mail, and Elam's, and Kocher's. The FBI was not driving this investigation. it was the victims getting together and getting even. Enough of the polemics, allegory, and marxist pseudobabble. Be concrete. someone tell me how well you know Mitnick and what good Mitnick has done for the world recently. (or what he's done at all besides exercising his adolescent-sized ego.) (or is it Monsters from the Id? I forget...)