Kevin Mitnick Quotes


So what I was essentially doing was, I compromised the confidentiality of their proprietary software to advance my agenda of becoming the best at breaking through the lock.


Citations

Mitnick, Kevin, and William L. Simon. Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker. Little, Brown and Company, 2011.

Related Quotes

At the time, the President thought the accusation about the White House was unlikely and just the accusations of political enemies and he said he would fire anyone who made such a leak. The quote became memorable when it came out that it there were two White House leakers, including the President’s closest political advisor, Karl Rove. Thereafter, the President not only did not fire anyone, but refused to even discuss the matter saying that there were potential criminal proceeding underway.


Stallman and others opposed copywriting of software and felt that computer programs were ideas and as such should not be able to be legally monopolized but they had to live with the law as it was. They started the open source software movement where many programmers developed software and made it freely available to the world. However, there were many companies who would take the free software which was very good, package it with their own brand and sell it. Stallman then created the copyleft concept. This meant that the open source programmers legally copyrighted the program and then created a license that anyone could have for free. But the license only gave them the right to use the software or give it freely to others. Charging money would be a copyright violation. So he and many others since used the copyright law to prevent others from interfering with or making money from distribution and Stallman named it “copyleft” meaning the other side of copyright. Thousands of major programs have been distributed this way. In some areas. It has been so successful that the free software became much more widely used than the products of Microsoft, Oracle or any of the other commercial software developers. Website development has become an example. Not only do many use it because the price is right but much of the open source free software is the best of breed. The Obama White House used a copyleft, free program for the White House website, not because they would save money—the Clinton White House had already licensed excellent commercial software. They chose the open source Drupal package because they thought it was the best available at any price.


Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick
  • Born: August 6, 1963
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: Information Technology Consultant (before, Hacker), Author

Kevin David Mitnick is an American computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker. He is best known for his high-profile 1995 arrest and five years in prison for various computer and communications-related crimes.