Mitnick Helps Bust Bomb Hoaxer 403
PhrostyMcByte writes "According to The Register/SecurityFocus: 'Ex-hacker Kevin Mitnick is a hero to the small town of River Rouge, Michigan, after using his tech skills to help officials nab the culprit behind a harrowing series of bomb threats.'" According to the piece, Detective Lt. John Keck "began searching the Internet for technical guidance, which led him to Kevin Mitnick, who'd earlier demonstrated a technique for spoofing Caller ID on the specialty cable network TechTV." Mitnick's comment on the bomb hoaxer? "He wasn't really hacking... he was really just being a jerk."
The "in crowd" gets slap-on-wrist (Score:5, Interesting)
The prankster confessed, and this week pleaded guilty to a single count of making bomb threats. He's not expected to spend any time incarcerated. "They're going to try to come up to some sentence that will put him on track to be more productive," says Keck.
I'll bet five bucks the kid is in the "in crowd". Football season's over, and he's sitting in "gimme an 'A'!" shop class with the other jocks, figuring out what to do after they're done lifting the cheerleaders' skirts. "Hey, I know, let's call in a bomb threat. They'll strip search the geeks while we laugh our a$$ off!"
Here in Texas, 15 year olds who aren't in the "in crowd" get sent to jail for life, and nobody even seems to care. And there are plenty of ridiculous [edweek.org] examples [cnn.com] of innocuous behavior being punished by schools.
And this kid, a serial terrorist, is going to get off with a suspension -- probably because he's some bigwig's son, or else he's on "the team". What a load of crap.
re: move along (Score:5, Interesting)
but i agree the keck saying it was "kind of funny" is stupid.
ed
Re:Mitnick Speaks In Third Person (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Mitnick Speaks In Third Person (Score:5, Interesting)
Now you can pay us to do it all over again thru our security break-in firm.... blah blah.
Schools in texas are ran by idiots. (Score:5, Interesting)
They might not be able to read, but they have a kickass football stadium.
Humm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wounder if the phone companies would have been more helpfull if there actually was a bomb that exploded?
Typical big biz...
Inherent problem with RBOCs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems ridiculous that the cops in Podunk need to know how to request the info specifically.
Before anyone jumps on me about privacy issues and overzealous cops with warrants, in cases where the customer (the school in this case) agrees to have their call records searched, this wouldn't really be an issue.
-PM
Re:The "in crowd" gets slap-on-wrist (Score:3, Interesting)
I read those articles, no one got sent to jail. Just suspended. And as far as I'm concerned that's the best thing that can happen. "What? No school for 2 weeks? WooHoo!" Though, perhaps in the second article they were trying to encourage the students, I sure would have.
Re:The "in crowd" gets slap-on-wrist (Score:3, Interesting)
You seem to have issues....
Wow, talk about projection!
BTW, I don't know about YOUR highschool, but at mine, the "in crowd" might have gotten A's in English or Calculus, but everyone of them would have flunked wood shop hard. I was following you until that line. And do you happen to know if anyone got a video of that kiss in Texas? Just curious....
Re:Broken man (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hackers1 - Crackers 0 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Humm.... (Score:2, Interesting)
1.) They knew what they wanted.
2.) Asked for what they wanted.
3.) Indicated why they wanted it so we could figure oute 1&2.
4.) Don't complain when I ship them a 650meg Cd with details because they couldn't do 1-3, because There is too much information to find what they wanted.
If the police officer needed help to figure out to ask for all the call details for that day with that dialed number, he should most likely start looking for his next job.
Fluff.
Re:move along. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The "in crowd" gets slap-on-wrist (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in my little burg 3 football players beat the crap out of some kid after school and left him unconscious in the gutter. The school took it on themselves to punnish the kids -- they recieved a couple days suspension, oddly they would be back at school in time for the next game. (In this school district the penalty for being in a fight is immediate expulsion).
Re:l33t detectivez! (Score:5, Interesting)
Was Mitnick the only person who could've helped them, due to his ex-con hacker status? Doubtful. Could the phone companies have been better about it? Probably. If something similar happens again, will the cops know better how to deal with it? They should.
Re:l33t detectivez! (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait, the police detective was supposed to just know that he had to ask for a "terminating number"? I don't think so. (OTOH, you're correct for calling out SBC for requiring these "magic words" in the first place).
I look at this detective and see a guy who didn't know what to do, ADMITTED he didn't know what to do, and then found the right person to ask who DID know what to do. The guy seems pretty resourceful to me. I'll give him props, even if he didn't know what a "terminating number" is.
Re:Heh (Score:5, Interesting)
One other thing - breaking the law doesn't exactly make a person a "criminal"; they aren't suddenly some evil hateful person who only does bad things and so on. Defining a person by their actions is easy to do and is considered "reasonable" but usually results in inaccurately classifying someone's whole personality and overlooking other aspects of his or her personality and behaviour.
Re:l33t detectivez! (Score:4, Interesting)
My guess is that the local PD knew it was a local kid, and knew it was a hoax. Of course, they had to treat each call as if it were real, but not worth calling up the State Police, Sheriff, FBI... don't want to run the risk of putting some town bigwig's kid in the fed pen. So the local PD kept the investigation local, used other means to keep the crime and punishment in their own jurisdiction. And wouldn't you know, the accused will not be facing jail time.
Beating Caller ID (Score:5, Interesting)
To start off with - 15 Ways to beat Caller ID
(0) This doesn't count as a way to beat CID, but there's a general
principle to consider when contemplating ways to beat CID.
Generally, the CID signal your target sees corresponds to the owner
of the dial tone you call him from. If you call direct, you dial
from your own dial tone and your line is identified. If you call a
third party, and by whatever means manage to acquire his dial tone,
and from there dial out, it is the number associated with that
second dial tone that your target sees. Some of the ideas following
this were developed with this basic idea in mind.
(0.5) This also doesn't count, but remember that beating Caller ID as
such is only the first layer of your protection. If your calling is
sufficiently annoying or criminal, there is *always* a paper trail
(ANI data, billing data, trouble reports, *57 traces, etc) leading
back to the phone you first called from. That trail is not always
easy or worthwhile to track you down with. Whether or not the trail
is followed depends entirely upon how pissed off your target is and
how much co-operation he can get from the phone company, law
enforcement, etc.
(1) Use *67. It will cause the called party's Caller ID unit to
display "Private" or "Blocked" or "Unavailable" depending on the
manufacturer. It is probably already available on your line, and if
it isn't, your local phone company will (most likely - please ask
them) set it up for free. This is the simplest method, it's 100
percent legal, and it works. But just remember you will not be
invisible to business customers with real time ANI (like on
corporate toll free lines), or to 911, or to the mechanism that *57
triggers.
(2) Use a pay phone. Not very convenient, costs 25 or 35 cents
depending, but it cannot be traced back to your house in any way,
not even by *57. Not even if the person who you call has Mulder and
Scully hanging over your shoulder trying to get an FBI trace (sic).
Janet Reno himself couldn't subpoena your identity. It's not your
phone, not your problem, AND it will get past "block the blocker"
services. So it's not a totally useless suggestion, even if you
have already thought of it.
(3) Go through an operator. This is a more expensive way of doing it
($1.25-$2.00 per call), you can still be traced, and the person
you're calling WILL be suspicious when the operator first asks for
them, if you have already tried other Caller ID suppression methods
on them.
(4) Use a prepaid calling card. This costs whatever the per-minute
charge on the card is, as they don't recognize local calls. A lot
of private investigators use these. A *57 trace will fail but you
could still be tracked down with an intensive investigation (read:
subpoena the card company). The Caller ID will show the outdial
number of the Card issuer.
(5) Go through a PBX or WATS extender. Getting a dial tone on a PBX is
fairly easy to social engineer, but beyond the scope of this file.
This is a well-known and well-loved way of charging phone calls to
someone else but it can also be used to hide your identity from a
Caller ID box, since the PBX's number is what appears. You can even
appear to be in a different city if the PBX you are using is! This
isn't very legal at all.
(6) I don't have proof of this, but I *think* that a teleconference
(Alliance teleconferencing, etc.) that lets you call out to the
participants will not send your number in Caller ID. In other
words, I am pretty sure the dial tone is not your own.
(7) Speaking of
The technique used by the prankster (Score:5, Interesting)
With SprintPCS, you can call your voice mail and one of the options is to place a call. When you place a call using this method, your caller ID information isn't sent. Of course, Sprint still has logs of who you're calling so the only evil deed it's really good for is calling an ex-girlfriend and telling her you think she's fat and no good in bed.
Back in my day, kids that called bomb threats into the school used payphones... And they didn't get caught.
Re:The "in crowd" gets slap-on-wrist (Score:2, Interesting)
I was a fraternity guy in college (Sigma Nu), during my time in college (4 years) there where 62 rape allegations brought against members of my fraternity.
Not a SINGLE one was even found to be true. Most where never prosecuted (the D.A. refused), some where thrown out of court, and the rest went to actual trial.
I had personal knowledge of most of these, and they were always consensual (albeit drunken) sex that turned into rape the next morning. These girls would wake up and say 'oh my god, I slept with that guy last night... my boyfriends gonna kill me.' and then cry rape to cover their tracks. Never caring that they where literally trying to ruin lives.
I say this because in your case you talk about three 'jerks' (showing your bias) being ACCUSED of rape. There is no case in which the accusation tends to be furthest from the truth than rape cases. It's likely (just based on personal experience) that in investigating/prosecuting the case they found that no rape had occured, and the fines stemmed from some lesser crime the teens had commited.
Your whole premise is screwed up really.
Re:The "in crowd" gets slap-on-wrist (Score:5, Interesting)
and still to this day people are suprised when that kid finally cracks and puts a couple of slugs in the back of each of those assholes...
The problem will not go away until the schools officials pull their heads out of their asses.
Re:move along. (Score:5, Interesting)
Very true.
When I worked in banking security my more experienced collegues told me that in the banking industry hundreds of millions of dollars go missing every year to organised criminals. You don't read about it in the papers because the banks don't want you to know about it.
And I'm not talking about petty credit card fraud, I mean sophisticated hacking of the international banking networks to create false transactions and electronically move the money to countries where it can be quickly and anonymously removed from the system in cash or gold.
Actually - he told the cops how to think like cops (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, that is probably good in a subpoena situation. But if a properly identified law enforcement officer was tracking a bomb threat, I'd tell them what they needed to ask for, wait while they got the corrected subpoena, and provide the info. That is, if I worked for the phone company.
I probably shouldn't get involved until such time as I am.
If this had been more serious than a prank,
Re: move along (Score:4, Interesting)
I was told in one instance a big very well known bank lost several hundred million dollars in a single fraud - what must be one of the biggest bank robberies ever - and it never appeared in their annual report or anywhere else. The big banks really want to be see as safe - huge sums of money just disappearing into thin air doesn't look good!
Career benefit from criminal activity. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re: move along (Score:3, Interesting)
Terrorists are that stupid. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:SOMEONE SET US UP THE BOMB (Score:1, Interesting)
"Bomb the US upset someone."
My brother pointed that out the other day. How apropos.
Re:Mitnick Bomb Hoax (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Most rapes are NOT falsely reported (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah- all those MEN (who were also at those parties, also drinking!) should charge the women with rape.
Or is it only rape if the WOMAN is drunk??
Re:Yea!!! Kevin... (Score:1, Interesting)