From: "Declan B. McCullagh" <declan+@CMU.EDU>
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 1996 00:49:43 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Mitnick: Markoff responds to Platt's CuD "Takedown" critique
Message-ID: <gkxcLeG00YUq85__A3@andrew.cmu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Topic 1119 [media]:  Media Appearances of WELLperns VI, S.F.Bay Area Division
#160 of 296: john markoff (johnm)      Wed Dec 20 '95 (14:49)   557 lines

 
 
 
 
 
 
 Charles is certainly entitled to his opinion about our book, but I thought I
 would take this opportunity to correct his inaccuracies.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
        REVIEW OF TAKEDOWN ON THE COMPUTER UNDERGROUND DIGEST
 
 
 
 
 
        The Mad-Scientist Myth Figure
 
 
 
        A circumlocuitous review of_Takedown_ by Tsutomu Shimomura and John
 Markoff
 
        (Hyperion, $24.95)
 
 
 
        by Charles Platt
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  >           Perhaps it seems strange that a journalist should defend
 
        herself by pleading ignorance of the subject that she chose
 
        to write about. Still, we should give Katie Hafner credit
 
        where it is due: she now seems genuinely repentant.
 
 
 
 
 
        Just for the record, Katie says that her remarks were taken out of
 context here by Charles. For her actual views you might want to look at her
 Esquire article on the subject, which is reprinted in a new paperback
 version of Cyberpunk.
 
 
 
 
 
    >         The same can hardly be said for her ex-husband and ex-
 
        collaborator John Markoff, who must have made well over half
 
        a millions dollars by now, portraying Kevin Mitnick as an
 
        arch-enemy of techno-society. If Markoff regrets the
 
        "darkside hacker" label, he hasn't said much about it.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                            *         *         *
 
 
 
    >         Unlike many hackers, Kevin Mitnick never looked for
 
        publicity. He felt he should be paid for giving interviews,
 
        and when Hafner and Markoff refused to come up with any
 
        money, he refused to talk to them. He became famous--or
 
        infamous--while doing his best to remain obscure.
 
 
 
 
 
     The darkside hacker label was created during the late 1980s by the
 Southern California press. It is a label that I noted, but I didn't create.
 However, he's right I don't regret using it. And also for the record, Kevin
 Mitnick used to drive around in Las Vegas with a stack of copies of
 Cyberpunk in the trunk of his car to give away to admirers. He is on record
 as saying the book is "20 percent inaccurate."
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   >          The key event that catalyzed this strange ascent to
 
        notoriety occurred on July 4th, 1994, when a story by John
 
        Markoff appeared on the front page of _The New York Times._
 
        Headlined "Cyberspace's Most Wanted: Hacker Eludes F.B.I.
 
        Pursuit," the text described Mitnick as "one of the nation's
 
        most wanted computer criminals" and was accompanied with a
 
        suitably menacing mug shot. The story was liberally spiced
 
        with tidbits recycled from _Cyberpunk,_ but if you looked
 
        more closely, there wasn't any actual news. Mitnick had
 
        violated parole a year or so previously, had disappeared at
 
        that time, and hadn't been seen since. That was all.
 
 
 
 
 
        This is really inaccurate. Kevin Mitnick had become notorious
 nationally in the late 1980s as a result of his being arrested for attacks
 on Digital Equipment Computers. A menacing mug shot? It was the only photo
 available. No actual news? Not the way I remember it. The news was that he
 was being pursued by the FBI (three agents full time), the California DMV,
 US Marshalls, telco security, local police, etc. The further news was that
 the FBI had told cellular telephone companies that they believed the
 fugitive had stolen software from at least six cellular phone manufacturers.
 I thought then, and still think, this merited a story. I also think the
 story was a good yarn. Mitnick had succeeded in evading law enforcement for
 more than a year - again.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
             Why was this on the front page of a highly respected
 
        newspaper? Maybe because of the scary implications: that a
 
        weirdo who could paralyze vast computer networks was on the
 
        loose, and law enforcement had been too stupid to catch him.
 
             In reality, though, Mitnick has never been accused of
 
        willfully damaging any hardware or data, and has never been
 
 
 
 
 
        Wrong again. He was accused of doing more than $100,000 damage at US
 Leasing, a SF time sharing company in 1980. Their system was trashed by a
 group that Mitnick was a member of. After that, at various other times he
 cost companies tens of thousands of dollars trying to close the door on his
 attacks. A further point is that I have no control over placement of my
 stories in the paper.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
             In _Cyberpunk,_ he was described as an omnipotent,
 
        obsessive-compulsive, egotistical, vindictive sociopath who
 
        used his computer to take revenge on the world that had
 
        spurned him. He later claimed (in _2600_ magazine) that this
 
 
 
     This is a totally misreading of Cyberpunk. I invite anyone to read that
 section of the book and see if that is the way he was portrayed.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
        was "twenty percent fabricated and libelous." Maybe so, but
 
 
 
 
 
        I guess Kevin acknowledged 80 percent of what we wrote as accurate...
 8)
 
 
 
 
 
                 So far as I can discover, the FBI didn't classify
 
        Mitnick as one of America's most wanted; it was John Markoff
 
        who chose to apply that label. Markoff went far beyond the
 
        traditional function of a journalist who merely reports news;
 
        he helped to create a character, and the character himself
 
        became the news.
 
 
 
        Sorry, but I didn't create the character, Kevin did. He has now been
 arrested six times in fifteen years. Each time, except for this last time,
 he was given a second chance to get his act together. He chose not too. It
 seems to me that he is an adult and makes choices. He chose to keep breaking
 in to computers. He knew what the penalty was. So what's the problem?
 
 
 
 
 
             Unfortunately for Mitnick, this made him the target of a
 
        hacker witch hunt. A few years ago, here in CuD, Jim Thomas
 
 
 
        A witch hunt? Give me a break. It was an article describing a law
 enforcement hunt for a fugitive, who had been arrested five times
 previously, convicted at least three times, and was known to be attacking
 the computers of the nation's cellular telephone companies.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                            *         *         *
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
        This information probably wasn't worth much; Markoff told the
 
        feds that Mitnick could probably be found stuffing himself
 
        with junk food at the nearest Fatburger, whereas in fact
 
        Mitnick was working out regularly, had slimmed down to normal
 
        weight, and had become a vegetarian.
 
 
 
 
 
        Oh please. I was called by Kent Walker, the AUSA on the case during a
 meeting at the Well. He asked me if I thought Mitnick was dangerous. I
 responded that everything I knew about Mitnick had either been in Cyberpunk
 or my July 4 1994 article, ie. in the public. I repeated the story of one
 arrest in which Kevin ended up handcuffed in tears over the hood of the
 detective's car. I gave no other information, nor got any.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
             John Markoff's precise motives remain a mystery. We can,
 
        however, learn something by examining his writing. In his
 
        _Times_ article describing Mitnick's capture, he stated that
 
        the hacker had been on a "long crime spree" during which he
 
        had managed to "vandalize government, corporate and
 
        university computer systems."
 
             These are interesting phrases. "Crime spree" suggests a
 
        wild cross-country caper involving robberies and maybe even a
 
        shoot-out. In reality, Mitnick seems to have spent most of
 
        his time hiding in an apartment, typing on a keyboard. The
 
        word "vandalize" implies that he wantonly wrecked some
 
        property; in reality, Mitnick caused no intentional damage to
 
        anyone or anything.
 
 
 
        This is just not true. Kevin Mitnick was actively sharing system
 vulnerabilities with other people on the net. That is about the most
 damaging thing that could be done to the Internet community.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
             When it came down to it, Markoff's journalism was long
 
        on opinion and short on facts.
 
 
 
 
 
        Sort of like this review, I guess.....  8)
 
 
 
 
 
                            *         *         *
 
 
 
             I have a fantasy. In my fantasy, John Markoff bursts
 
        into a room where Tsutomu Shimomura sits as solemn as a zen
 
        master, peering impassively at a computer screen while he
 
        types a Perl script. "Tsutomu, I have good news and bad
 
        news!" Markoff exclaims. "The good news is, we sold the book
 
        rights for three-quarters of a million. The bad news is, I
 
        haven't got a clue what Mitnick was doing for the past two
 
        years. What the hell are we going to write about?"
 
             Shimomura doesn't even bother to look up. He gives a
 
        barely perceptible shrug and says, "Me, of course."
 
 
 
 
 
        This is weird...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
             Mitnick grew up in a lower-class single-parent household
 
        and taught himself almost everything he knew about computers.
 
 
 
 
 
        Nice try. Kevin took lots of computer classes at various schools.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                            *         *         *
 
 
 
 
 
             Presumably because Markoff felt that some romantic
 
        interest would help to sell the story, this book contains
 
        revelations of a type normally reserved for Hollywood
 
        celebrities or British royalty. While he was pursuing
 
        Mitnick, Shimomura was also pursuing "Julia," the long-term
 
        girlfriend of John Gilmore, one of the first employees at Sun
 
        Microsystems in 1982 who subsequently co-founded the software
 
        corporation Cygnus.
 
 
 
 
 
   The reason we described what happened at Toad Hall on Xmas was that the
 attacks first came from toad.com while Tsutomu and Julia were there. If we
 hadn't have been complete in our description someone would have charged us
 with a cover up. Please remember that David Bank, a San Jose Mercury
 reporter, spent several weeks pursuing the hypothesis that Tsutomu had
 attack his own computers.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
             Kevin Mitnick begins to seem likable by comparison. At
 
        least he shows some irreverence, taunting Shimomura and
 
        trying to puncture his pomposity. At one point, Mitnick
 
        bundles up all the data he copied from Shimomura's computer
 
        and saves it onto the system at Netcom where he knows that
 
        Shimomura will find it. He names the file "japboy." At
 
 
 
 
 
        Yea, That Kevin is a real likeable guy.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
        another point, in a private online communication (intercepted
 
        by Shimomura without any lawful authorization) Mitnick
 
 
 
        Wrong. At the Well, Netcom and in Raleigh, Tsutomu, at all times was
 operating under the exemptions granted Internet Service Providers by the
 ECPA.
 
 
 
 
 
             Well, maybe so, but unlike Shimomura, Mitnick never
 
        claimed to be heroic. Nor did he cause any intentional
 
        "damage." Nor did he "attack," "pilfer," and "vandalize"
 
        computer systems, even though these words are used repeatedly
 
        throughout the book--in the same pejorative style that John
 
        Markoff previously perfected in _The New York Times._
 
 
 
        Perjorative?? Yikes! I mean we could go to the dictionary.....
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                            *         *         *
 
 
 
             All the charges except one have been dropped against
 
        Kevin Mitnick. He may even be out of jail in time for the
 
        Markoff/Shimomura book tour. In other words, the man
 
 
 
 
 
        Wrong. Kevin Mitnick is in jail in Los Angeles facing charges from
 more than six United States Federal Districts. He may go on trial or he may
 plea bargain.
 
 
 
        described in advance publicity for _Takedown_ as a threat to
 
        global civilization will befree to go about his business--
 
        because, in the end, he wasn't much of a threat at all.
 
             Will this create an embarrassing schism between
 
        _Takedown_ and reality? Probably not. Reality has been at
 
        odds with the Mitnick myth for quite a while, but the myth is
 
        stronger than ever.
 
 
 
 
 
        Myth and reality? I have been writing about Kevin Mitnick for a long
 time, since 1981 to be precise, but I didn't create a myth, he created his
 own story.