Word: shimomura
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
KEVIN MITNICK, 31, STOOD IN THE federal courtroom, his hands cuffed-unable, for the first time in more than two years, to feel the silky click of computer keys. He glanced over at Tsutomu Shimomura, the computer-security expert whose extraordinarily well-guarded personal computer Mitnick had allegedly broken into on Christmas Day. Shimomura, playing Pat Garrett to Mitnick's Billy the Kid, had taken his revenge by tracking the wily hacker across cyberspace-through the Internet, through local and long-distance phone companies and at least two cellular-phone carriers-until he finally traced him to his hideout...
...about the systems he hacked. At a time when American businesses are frantic to set up shop on the computer networks, those networks-and the telecommunications systems that carry their traffic-are turning out to be terminally insecure. One of the things Mitnick is believed to have stolen from Shimomura's computer is a set of utility programs-the electronic equivalent of a locksmith's toolbox-that would make, in the hands of a determined hacker, a potent set of burglar's tools. Given the speed with which such programs can be duplicated and transmitted, it must now be assumed...
...from outside; the trick is to gain "root" status, the top-level access that the computer's administrator enjoys. With root status, a hacker could install a password sniffer or bogus software, like a "back door"-a secret return path into the machine. Mitnick was able to break into Shimomura's Fort Knox-like computer using a spoof...