Kevin Mitnick Helping Secure Presidential Elections In Ecuador 85
hypnosec writes "Kevin Mitnick, who was one of the most wanted computer hacker in the US at one time, is now heading a security consultancy firm – Mitnick Security Consulting, and is entrusted with the task of securing Sunday's presidential elections in Ecuador. Mitnick tweeted, '18 years ago I was busted for hacking. I do the same thing today but with full authorization. How cool is that?' His company will focus on protecting the Net Lock computer system tasked with tabulating Ecuador's elections."
Re:Convicted Felons Securing Elections (Score:3, Insightful)
In the USA a convicted felon is not even allowed to vote.
That is a serious shortcoming of the democratic process in the United States, as US federal and state governments seem hellbent on creating as many of these ineligible voters as possible, by way of, (for example):
Utilization of bullshit forensic "science" [pbs.org] in courtrooms [Torrent] [kat.ph]
Maintaining the highest incarceration rate in the world [wikipedia.org]
Prosecuting kids under child porn legislation for "sexting" [wikipedia.org]
Failure to guarantee adequate job skills training and rehabilitation programs to inmates, thus fostering high recidivism
Overzealous prosecution [wikipedia.org]
The War on Drugs
Further, ex-convicts still have a stake in American society, and as long as they're expected to pay taxes, I believe that they should have a say in how it operates. I think that this is something that should be of concern not only to convicted felons, but to every American who is not above the law, and is therefore eligible to be branded a felon.
Re:Mitnick is a script kiddie (Score:2, Insightful)
Not DNS nor ARP poisoning, TCP spoofing and TCP SYN flooding. The tools to pull off the attack were written for him by another hacker, but knowing all that I still wouldn't classify him as a 'script kiddie'. His strengths were social engineering and telephone/telecom knowledge (someone in the underground with skills in that area would be known as a phone phreak) It's entertaining watching all the posers of today claim that he's a 'script kiddie', put any of them in front of a Nortel SuperNode System or any other switching system responsible for voice traffic, and ask them to perform a wiretap then watch the puzzled look in their eyes as they try to remember if their Hacking Exposed book or SANS training course covered that topic, this wouldn't be a problem for Mitnick.
Yeah he's a bit of a media whore, yes we're tired of hearing about social engineering but a 'script kiddie', no not exactly.