Born in 1963, he is one of the most famous American crackers to serve time in prison. He is now a security consultant and author of security books, including the popular The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security. In 2003, at the DefCon hacker convention in Las Vegas, Mitnick networked with the young hacker community and wound up winning the Hacker Jeopardy contest. In July, 2004, Mitnick signed books at the HOPE 5 hacker convention in New York City and at the Black Hat Briefings and Training in Las Vegas. Mitnick is a cult figure in the Computer Underground. Whenever he is scheduled to speak on various computer security issues at hacker conventions, he usually draws a large crowd and much publicity.

Once on the FBIÂ’s most-wanted criminal list and a past cyber colleague of cracker Susan Thunder, Mitnick was imprisoned in February 1995 on charges of wire fraud and possessing computer files stolen from Nokia, Motorola, and Sun Microsystems. His capture was detailed in the book and movie Takedown (described in more detail in the Schell, Dodge with Moutsatsos book The Hacking of America).

See Also: Black Hat Briefings; Cracker; Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth); Security; Shimomura, Tsutomu; Thunder, Susan and Kevin Mitnick Case.