Kevin Mitnick Quotes

I got so passionate about technology. Hacking to me was like a video game. It was about getting trophies. I just kept going on and on, despite all the trouble I was getting into, because I was hooked.

It's kind of interesting, because hacking is a skill that could be used for criminal purposes or legitimate purposes, and so even though in the past I was hacking for the curiosity, and the thrill, to get a bite of the forbidden fruit of knowledge, I'm now working in the security field as a public speaker.

I don't hate technology, I don't hate hackers, because that's just what comes with it, without those hackers we wouldn't solve the problems we need to solve, especially security.

I'm a Luddite with computers, and I'm slightly worried about being hacked as well.

Governments are scared of software.

I'm a hacker, but I'm the good kind of hackers. And I've never been a criminal.

At the end of the day, my goal was to be the best hacker.

My primary goal of hacking was the intellectual curiosity, the seduction of adventure.

If you don't treat [computer and Internet] security like a religious fanatic, you are going to be hurt like you can't imagine.

You fight technology with technology, so you have to stay one step ahead of the criminal. It's very much a chess game - they make a move, you have to make a move.

The one thing that I know from the personal experiences that I've had with hackers and from people in tech who are brilliant at this thing, is there's a lot of angst.

Our adversaries - terrorists, foreign intelligence services, and criminals - take advantage of modern technology to hide their communications; recruit followers; and plan, conduct, and encourage espionage, cyber attacks, or terrorism to disperse information on different methods to attack the U.S. homeland and to facilitate other illegal activities.

I know there are some reasons to suspect me: after all, I have education in computer security and was a hobby hacker in teenage years. But hacking is not my occupation, and I do not have any job within any intelligence, either Russian or some another.

Technology businesses in general are susceptible to hacking. That's why you have to work really, really, really hard with law enforcement, with security experts, internal and external groups, to make sure you're paying attention and addressing security concerns.

Any type of operating system that I wanted to be able to hack, I basically compromised the source code, copied it over to the university because I didn't have enough space on my 200 megabyte hard drive.

I was addicted to hacking, more for the intellectual challenge, the curiosity, the seduction of adventure; not for stealing, or causing damage or writing computer viruses.

Protecting yourself is very challenging in the hostile environment of the Internet. Imagine a global environment where an unscrupulous person from the other side of the planet can probe your computer for weaknesses and exploit them to gain access to your most sensitive secrets.

For about half an hour in mid-1992, I knew as much as any layperson about the pleasures of remote access of other people's computers.

We've already seen digital picture frames pre-loaded with viruses; I'm not eager to have my refrigerator hacked or my alarm clock turned against me.

Hackers often describe what they do as playfully creative problem solving.

I get hired to hack into computers now and sometimes it's actually easier than it was years ago.

I'm interested in helping secure the PC - we need innovation here. It's not just hug your PC, hate the iPhone. In fact I don't even hate the iPhone; I think it's really cool. I just don't want it to be the center of the ecosystem along with the Web 2.0 apps.

The FBI is engaged in a myriad of efforts to combat cyber threats, from efforts focused on threat identification and sharing inside and outside of government, to our internal emphasis on developing and retaining new talent and changing the way we operate to evolve with the cyber threat.

I don't condone anyone causing damage in my name, or doing anything malicious in support of my plight. There are more productive ways to help me. As a hacker myself, I never intentionally damaged anything.

The first programming assignment I had in high school was to find the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead, I thought it would be cooler to write a program to get the teacher's password and all the other students' passwords. And the teacher gave me an A and told the class how smart I was.