I was pretty much the government's poster boy for what I had done.
So the ethic I was taught in school resulted in the path I chose in my life following school.
Back in my day, I would probe by hand. Now you can get commercial software that does the job for you.
The perfect PIN is not four digits and not associated with your life, like an old telephone number. It's something easy for you to remember and hard for other people to guess.
For the average home-user, anti-virus software is a must.
New security loopholes are constantly popping up because of wireless networking. The cat-and-mouse game between hackers and system administrators is still in full swing.
My actions constituted pure hacking that resulted in relatively trivial expenses for the companies involved, despite the government's false claims.
You can't go to Windows Update and get a patch for stupidity.
It doesn't work the same way everywhere. The Americans are the most gullible, because they don't like to deny co-workers' requests. People in the former Soviet bloc countries are less trusting, perhaps because of their previous experiences with their countries' secret services.
Both social engineering and technical attacks played a big part in what I was able to do. It was a hybrid. I used social engineering when it was appropriate, and exploited technical vulnerabilities when it was appropriate.
So what I was essentially doing was, I compromised the confidentiality of their proprietary software to advance my agenda of becoming the best at breaking through the lock.
My argument is not that I shouldn't have been punished, but that the punishment didn't fit the crime.
I trust online banking. You know why? Because if somebody hacks into my account and defrauds my credit card company, or my online bank account, guess who takes the loss? The bank, not me.
No way, no how did I break into NORAD. That's a complete myth. And I never attempted to access anything considered to be classified government systems.
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple Inc, which set the computing world on its ear with the Macintosh in 1984.
I did get a huge endorphin rush when I was able to crack a system because it was like a video game.
We have problems with our physical security, operational security through to management.
No company that I ever hacked into reported any damages, which they were required to do for significant losses. Sun didn't stop using Solaris and DEC didn't stop using VMS.
