If you’re a car connoisseur of any kind, you’ve likely got a unique gift car idea. You meet a bitter divorcee who gives away a former prized car out of pure spite; Or maybe the person you stopped by to change a tire turns out to be a flip-flopping billionaire who rewards you with your accurate description because it was just gathering dust that week, and hey, you stopped by; Your humanity is worth a Dodge Viper to a guy who can one day afford to run a bidet on old moon water, or something.
Well, he can be mine.
As much as we’d like these scenarios to be plausible, they don’t happen that often. The first pop-culture example that comes to mind is John Cusack’s Rob Gordon. Getting a vinyl collection from a tilted ex In “high fidelity“—on the cutting room floor, and in a movie where the same character comically fantasizes about his co-workers spanking a out of the box Douche Tim Robbins with the air conditioner (Go ahead; we both know you want to click on that).
Don’t be afraid; No one gets hurt in this story, but it’s still pretty wild. It would help if you knew the name Kevin Mitnick. He was a hacker turned security consultant who later in life helped shape modern white-hat. How prototypical was Mitnick? He put himself on the proverbial map in 1979 by dialing into a software company’s server and copying its upcoming operating system release in its entirety. Imagine convincing a Microsoft server to cough up an early copy of Windows 12 using little more than a phone number.
Some online criticism implies that Mitnick was more of a social engineer than a “hacker” in the sense that we distinguish him today, but the reality is that a large part of “hacking” still relies on an authorized user making a mistake – usually by revealing sensitive login data. For a reasonably realistic take on modern black-hating, I recommend mr robot; Be careful, that’s the series Heavy.
So, how do we go from old-school hacker to wild gift-car fantasy? In this case, through 14 counts felony wire fraud. That’s where Shawn Nunley comes in.
In the ’90s, Nunley worked for Novell, a now-defunct brand that produced enterprise software—server operating systems, messaging systems, that kind of thing. GroupWise is probably its best-known brand among the general public today, but its biggest target at the time was NetWare, which was the backbone of many corporate/government/academic networks. Naturally, this made it a valuable target for hackers like Mitnick.
“In the ’90s, Kevin was trying very hard to hack Novell’s network,” Nunley wrote. “I was a network administrator. Of course, we didn’t know it was Kevin, but things were happening that made it clear that we were in constant danger. Phones throughout the building were ringing sequentially (war dialing) and all kinds of other signals… We knew something was wrong.”
It was Mitnick who earned his first major score in 1979, using a slightly more sophisticated version of the same strategy.
“Late at home late at night, I got a call from a Novell employee named Gabe Nault,” Nunley wrote. “The ’employee’ wanted direct inbound dial access. Since I was responsible for the inbound connectivity of the entire network, I knew this type of request was unusual and against policy.”
And Mitnick, no amateur, had apparently succeeded in extracting at least some private information from Novell employees before his Hail Mary phone call:
“…This guy had a story about working on a top-secret project called Snowbird (for real) and needing to make some emergency code changes, but he was on vacation at a hotel in Vail,” Nunley continued. “He needed coveted, policy-breaking, direct inbound modem access. Right. He also mentioned his vacation in Vail, which conveniently matched the greeting on Gabe Nault’s voicemail. But it all felt wrong.”
“I played it cool when the feeling of doubt came up,” Nunley wrote. “I said, ‘Hey man, I’d love to help you, but I can’t do what you want at home, so I’ll have to do it as soon as I get to the office in the morning. But if I forget, please leave me a voicemail.’ He agreed, and that was that.
He wrote, “When I got to work, the voicemail was there, and I immediately recorded it on a cassette recorder for safekeeping.” “That recording became the primary evidence in Kevin’s case.”
When Mitnick was captured, Nunnally learned that the voicemails were the only meaningful evidence the Justice Department had against him. At first, he was the prosecution, but after a five-year delay in the trial, Nunley grew tired of the law dealing with his opponent and he stopped working with the DOJ. Shortly thereafter, Mitnick took a plea deal and was released.
When he got out, Mitnick approached Nunnally to apologize. The moment of his burial was also the same immortalized by wiredAnd they became good friends.
Citing legal precedent intended to curb the profiteering of serial killers, Mitnick was barred from selling the story of his legal entanglements for seven years after his release. But Mitnick was able to find plenty of work to teach people about defending against the intrusion tactics he had spent decades perfecting. He went on to establish two consulting businesses, one of which His family still owns and operates it.
When Mitnick passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2023, he left Nunnally a gift — enough to buy her her dream car, a 911 carrera 4 gts.
“I’ve had a great time watching him grow into a real person,” Nunley said of his friend. “I’m really sad that he’s gone because he was a big part of my life for the last quarter century.”
If he’s lucky, his 911 runs will last for at least another quarter century, if not more.
H/T to Zareen! Got a news tip? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com!
