Kevin Mitnick - Method

 The reason why I chose Kevin Mitnick to write about in my case study is that, his radical change from the past to the present is engrossing. To illustrate, his past was a dark past full of trials and has a list of accusations. However, now Kevin is a confided in a security consultant to the Fortune 500 and governments around the world. Furthermore, as the CEO of Mitnick Security Consulting, Kevin, and The Global Ghost Team™ currently keep a 100% effective history in their capacity to infiltrate the security of any system they're paid to hack, utilizing a blend of technical exploits and social engineering. Not only that but also in his job as Chief Hacking Officer of KnowBe4 he supports and helps produce the world's #1 security awareness preparing and stage to prepare representatives to all the more likely deal with the pressing IT security issues of social engineering, skewer phishing and ransomware attacks (mitnicksecurity,2020).

Kevin Mitnick is a master of social engineering, he claims that he dominated affecting individuals and gave himself the title of Social Engineer. He asserts he had a characteristic inclination for it: his dad's side of the family was in the business for years, and the art of influence and persuasion was in their blood. Combined with his natural inclination for deceiving people, he was bound to turn into a productive social engineer. He found this normal tendency at a youthful age during his bus ticket trick. And later, he practised the skill by using deception, specific language, and manipulation to get what he wanted(KOSTIC,2020). As a result of having this experience, he wrote a book about social engineering that titled The Art of Human Hacking. It is a fascinating and engrossing book on an important topic. Kevin Mitnick takes the peruser on a fabulous excursion of the numerous parts of social engineering. Since social engineering is such a people-oriented topic, an enormous piece of the book is dedicated to sociological and psychological subjects. This is an important area, as far too many technology books focus on the hardware and software elements, completely ignoring the people element (Battah,2010). The social engineer can then use that gap to their advantage. That is all what the author intended to identify in his book.

Kevin Mitnick had many relationships with other hackers like Adrian Lamo and Kevin Lee Poulsen. They all have a long and peculiar history together. They all were convicted of felonies relating to computer hacking:  Poulsen in 1994 (when he was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison, ironically because a friend turned government informant on him, and Lamo in 2004 for hacking into The New York Times. At the point when the U.S. Government was researching Lamo in 2003, they summoned news organizations for any reports reflecting discussions with Lamo as well as with Poulsen and Mitnick. That's because Lamo typically sought media publicity after his hacking adventures, and almost always used Poulsen to provide that publicity (GREENWALD,2010). 

Notwithstanding being sentenced for genuine hacking lawful offences, Poulsen was permitted by the U.S. Government to turn into a columnist covering the hacking scene for Security Focus News. Back in 2002, Information Week portrayed the bizarre Lamo-Poulsen relationship thusly: "To broadcast his work, [Lamo] frequently tapped ex-programmer turned-columnist Kevin Poulsen as his go-between: Poulsen contacts the hacked organization, makes it aware of the break-in, offers Lamo's collaboration, at that point reports the hack on the SecurityFocus Online Web website, where he's a news manager.  When Lamo hacked into the NYT, it was Poulsen who advised the paper's chiefs for Lamo's benefit, and afterwards expounded on it a while later. Poulsen disclosed to me that the above picture was taken at a lunch both of them had along with sentenced programmer Kevin Mitnick back in 2001 as he was his advisor (GREENWALD,2010). 

References: 

MITNICKSECURITY (2020) Who is Kevin Mitnick?. [Online] MITNICKSECURITY. Available from: About Kevin Mitnick | Mitnick Security[Accessed 31/05/21].

KOSTIC, M (2020) The story of Kevin Mitnick - The most famous hacker in the world. [Online] CRIMINAL. Available from: The story of Kevin Mitnick - The most famous hacker in the world | Criminal (vocal.media)[Accessed 31/05/21].

BATTAH, K (2010) Book Review: Social Engineering The Art Of Human Hacking. [Online] BLUEKAIZEN. Available from: Book Review: Social Engineering The Art of Human Hacking | BlueKaizen[Accessed 02/06/21].

GOODIN, D (2012) Turncoat hackers: a brief history of snitching in high-tech dragnets. [Online] ARSTECHNICA. Available from: Turncoat hackers: a brief history of snitching in high-tech dragnets | Ars Technica [Accessed 04/06/21].

GREENWALD, G (2010) The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks. [Online] SALON. Available from: The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks | Salon.com [Accessed 04/06/21].