The Art of Intrusion Quotes

“Every time some [developer] says, ‘Nobody will go to the trouble of doing that,’ there’s some kid in Finland who will go to the trouble.”
― Kevin D. Mitnick, The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers

“Every hacker is to some extent a rebel who lives by different standards and enjoys beating the system.”
― Kevin D. Mitnick, The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers

“knowing you’re smarter than somebody and you can beat them. And that, in our case, it was gonna make us some money.”
― Kevin D. Mitnick, The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers

“While the Texas prison officials remained in the dark about what was going on, they were fortunate that William and Danny had benign motives. Imagine what havoc the two might have caused; it would have been child's play for these guys to develop a scheme for obtaining money or property from unsuspecting victims. The Internet had become their university and playground. Learning how to run scams against individuals or break in to corporate sites would have been a cinch; teenagers and preteens learn these methods every day from the hacker sites and elsewhere on the Web. And as prisoners, Danny and William had all the time in the world.

Maybe there's a lesson here: Two convicted murderers, but that didn't mean they were scum, rotten to the core. They were cheaters who hacked their way onto the Internet illegally, but that didn't mean they were willing to victimize innocent people or naively insecure companies.”
― Kevin D. Mitnick, The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers

“Since most users choose a password that is either a name or a simple dictionary word, an attacker usually begins by setting 10phtCrack (or whatever program he’s using) to perform a “dictionary attack” — testing every word in the dictionary to see if it proves to be the user’s password. If the program doesn’t have any success with the dictionary attack, the attacker will then start a “brute-force attack,” in which case the program tries every possible combination (for example, AAA, AAB, AAC ... ABA, ABB, ABC, and so on), then tries combinations that include uppercase and lowercase, numerals, and symbols.”
― Kevin D. Mitnick, The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers

“In the security community, this letter is known by all as a “get-out-of-jail-free card.” Pen testers tend to be very conscientious about making sure they always have a copy of the letter with them when they’re on or anywhere near the premises of the client company, in case they get stopped by a security guard who decides to flex some muscle and impress the higher-ups with his gumshoe instincts, or challenged by a conscientious employee who spots something suspicious and has enough gumption to confront the pen tester.”
― Kevin D. Mitnick, The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers

“F___k being a script kiddie if you can avoid it — be a hacker.”
― Kevin D. Mitnick, The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers

“Every time [some software engineer] says, “Nobody will go to the trouble of doing that,” there’s some kid in Finland who will go to the trouble. — Alex Mayfield”
― Kevin D. Mitnick, The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers

“10phtCrack. The magic this program performs is taken for granted by those who use it, and I suspect thoroughly hated by a great many others. The l0pht group garnered media attention because they wrote a tool (called 10phtCrack) that quickly cracked password hashes.”
― Kevin D. Mitnick, The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers