Kevin Mitnick, who at the dawn of widespread internet use in the mid-1990s became the nation’s archetypal computer hacker — obsessive but intelligent, shy but mischievous and menacing to an unspecified degree — and who later parlayed his skills into the chief hacking officer of a cybersecurity firm, died Sunday in Pittsburgh. He is 59.
Kathy Wattman, a spokeswoman for the cybersecurity company he partially owns, KnowBe4the cause was said to be pancreatic cancer.
Described by The New York Times in 1995 as “the nation’s most wanted computer outlaw,” Mr. Mitnick has been a fugitive for more than two years.
He was wanted for having illegally accessed about 20,000 credit card numbers, including some of Silicon Valley moguls; causing millions of dollars in damage to corporate computer operations; and stealing software used for maintaining the privacy of wireless calls and handling billing information.
Ultimately, he was caught and spent five years in prison. But no evidence has emerged that Mr. Mitnick used the files he stole for financial gain. He then defends his activities as a high-stakes but, ultimately, harmless form of gaming.
“Anyone who likes to play chess knows that’s enough to beat your opponent,” he wrote in a 2011 memoir, “Ghost in the Wires.” “You don’t have to rob his kingdom or take his possessions for it to be worth it.”
At the time of Mr. Mitnick’s hiring, in February 1995, the computer age was still young; Windows 95 has not yet been released. The Mitnick Affair sparked a disturbing international conversation not only about hacking, but also about the internet itself.
“As a media celebrity, today’s internet is seriously overexposed,” Times columnist Frank Rich complained in March 1995, blaming the furore surrounding Mr. Mitnick.
The most spectacular crimes of Mr. Mitnick is his attempts to avoid capture by the authorities. In 1993, he gained control of phone systems in California that allowed him to wiretap FBI agents pursuing him and confuse their efforts to track him. At one point they raided what they thought was the home of Mr. Mitnick, and they saw a Middle Eastern immigrant there watching TV.
On another occasion, using a radio scanner and software, Mr. Mitnick discovered that he was being approached by FBI agents. He fled his apartment, and when authorities arrived, they found a box of donuts waiting for them.
Mr. had a problem. Mitnick on Christmas Day 1994, when he stole emails from a fellow hacker named Tsutomu Shimomura and taunted him. When he learned of the attack, Mr. Shimomura suspended a cross-country ski trip he was on and volunteered to help track down Mr. Mitnick.
What The Times called a “duel on the net” ensued. Mr. Mitnick is the amoral savant, praising his opponent’s tech skills, while Mr. Shimomura is the freelance gunslinger with a conscience, accusing Mr. Mitnick of violating the codes of the online community.
“This kind of behavior is unacceptable,” he told The Times.
Mr. Shimomura, using software he designed to reconstruct a user’s computer sessions, along with cellphone scanning equipment, proceeded to find Mr. Mitnick.
The FBI finally caught Mr. Mitnick and charged with illegal use of a telephone access device and computer fraud. “He allegedly had access to corporate trade secrets worth millions of dollars,” Kent Walker, an assistant US attorney in San Francisco, said at the time. “He’s a huge threat.”
In 1998, while Mr. Mitnick was awaiting sentencing, a group of supporters commandeered The Times’ website for several hours, forcing it to shut down. A Times technology reporter, John Markoff, also became part of the imbroglio, reporting immediately after the arrest that Mr. Mitnick gained access to Mr. Markoff in retaliation for reporting Mr. Markoff in his activities.
Mr. Mitnick reached plea agreements in 1996 and 1999, which included pleading guilty to computer and wire fraud. He was released from prison in 2000 on the condition that he refrain from using a computer or cellphone for three years without the permission of his probation officer.
After leaving prison, Mr. Mitnick read a statement of self-defense. “My crimes were simple crimes of trespass,” he said. “My case is a case of curiosity.”
Kevin David Mitnick was born in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles on August 6, 1963, and grew up in that city. His parents, Alan Mitnick and Shelly Jaffee, divorced when he was 3 years old, and he was raised by his mother, a waitress.
Mr. Mitnick was a heavyset and lonely boy who, at the age of 12, figured out how to ride the bus freely with a $15 punch card and blank tickets retrieved from a dumpster. In high school, he developed a fascination with the inner workings of telephone companies’ switches and circuits. He pulled pranks on a high level, managing to program the home phone of someone he didn’t like so that every time the line was answered, a recording demanded a deposit of 25 cents.
He showed a willingness to openly break the law, breaking into the Pacific Bell office as a teenager and stealing technical manuals.
In the late 1980s, he was convicted twice of hacking into corporate computer systems, leading to prison time and counseling for computer addiction.
Yet Mr. Mitnick tends to take a surprisingly old-fashioned approach to high-tech theft. He often impersonated authority numbers over the phone and in email, encouraging low-level company officials to hand over the passwords that gave him access to classified information.
The first marriage of Mr. Mitnick, in her early 20s, quickly ended in divorce. In 2015, he met Kimberly Barry at a cybersecurity conference in Singapore, and the two began dating. They married last year, after she learned of his cancer diagnosis. She survived him and was pregnant with his first child.
When Mr. was released Mitnick, The Times reported an “unusual arrangement” in which he was hired by a California college he “victimized” to consult on cybersecurity. Mr. called it. Mitnick to “hire the hacker.”
Today it is common for hackers to find work by exposing the vulnerabilities of governments and corporations. KnowBe4, the company partially owned by Mr. Mitnick, describing itself as “the world’s largest provider of security awareness training.” The company says a cybersecurity training curriculum designed by Mr. Mitnick is used by more than 60,000 organizations.
Writing in The New York Times Book Review about data privacy, journalist and author Amy Webb in 2017 identified the once-hunted hacker with an epithet that would have confused members of law enforcement and newspaper readers in the 1990s: “internet security expert Kevin Mitnick.”
Livia Albeck-Ripka and Orlando Mayorquin contributed reporting.
