[tptacek]

To the best of my knowledge, Mitnick didn't really code at all. There are (let's call them) intrusion specialists whose skillsets don't really involve systems programming, but rather intuition and tenacity, and there are others who write exploits. My understanding is that Mitnick was the former, and was using tools he got from friends and peers.

[vasco]

In the book he spends a lot of time on the social engineering parts of it to be honest. It's been a few years but I remember him mostly bragging about that rather than developing custom exploits.

[tptacek]

He also comes from an era of intrusions where systems were so bad you didn't really need to code to get into them. For an alarmingly long time, the most effective tool you could use to pop a network was simply `showmount`.

[ASalazarMX]

That time is still today, as people are still the weakest link. A talented scammer can convince people to give them access to their WhatsApp account despite the E2EE, 2FA, and SMS verification codes.

In Mitnik's version, he RTFMs, learned the technical lingo, procedures, and even the names of telco employees.

[devmor]

100%

The majority of corporate breaches are a combination of poor Least Privilege practices and phishing/smishing.

Even with well secured, alert personnel, you often see ISPs and Telcos socially engineered to gain access to an employee account.

[d1sxeyes]

Yeah I think Mitnik’s abilities were mostly around thinking about doing stuff that no-one had considered that you could do. It’s still a big skill, but nowadays, there’s less stuff that no-one has thought about before.

[ajsnigrutin]

He didn't really code in the book either... maybe 5% of the book... he did some script kiddie type exploits, some copying of proof of concepts, and some minor modifications (like modifying the "logon" program to save passwords somewhere in cleartext).

75% of the book is spent social engineering over the phone and 20% doing stuff on phone switches and other equipment.

[jasonfarnon]

the steve jobs of hacking

[giancarlostoro]

I have met the type on my time on the internet. All it takes is having the guts to push through with what others give you, things they themselves know would get them in legal hell.