Comments on: Mitnick: Security depends on workers' habits

Forget about fancy tools, ex-hacker says. Teach your employees not to give information to strangers.

[katamari]

Couldn't agree more.

Mitnick is right on the money. Sure, social engineering is still incredibly effective these days (if you disagree, try looking at the percentage of SCAMS that you'll find both online and offline), but it goes beyond that.

It's all about judgement calls on the behalf of the individual who happens to have sensitive information. Ask yourself, "Does <person> really need to know <tidbit> to do their job?" before handing over anything security-sensitive. Be cautious, but __DO NOT__ be paranoid.

Steve Jobs, too, would probably agree with Mitnick -- you can't solve a social problem using software or technology. The saddest part is that there are so many companies out there trying to solve socially-oriented security problems through technological "solutions". A real bummer...

[felgercarbnaysay]

Mitnick is no genius

It's a shame Cnet saw fit to give any attention to this common criminal. He's right, but he's simply stating the obvious. He spent much of his "career" breaking into systems using the same kind of tricks common scam artist use like calling someone and impersonating someone else to get a password. Not much different than those crooks who call and say they're with... and say they want your credit card number.

Go ahead, listen to him if you want. Don't bothing investing in all those "Fancy Tools" he pooh-poohs. It's precisely those kinds of tools second rate hackers like Mitnick are unable to get past.

Security consultant indeed. Once a scam artist...

Scammer or Legend?

HEre's this debate. Some people (like the guy above me) say Mitnick is nothing more than a common scam-artist. Some say Mitnick is a legend in his own right.

For Mitnick to be caught, well, yeah, that's fine and dandy. You can say "he was never a real hacker" because of that, but that's not true.

And yes, Mitnick HACKED his way in just as much as he did socially engineering. Why else do you think he got away with so much? If he couldn't hack, then the info he was getting would have been useless to him.

However, there's a group more interesting than Mitnick. Wired released an article about a year ago about three blind brothers from Israel who pulled similar hacking feats.