I don't condone anyone causing damage in my name, or doing anything malicious in support of my plight. There are more productive ways to help me. As a hacker myself, I never intentionally damaged anything.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of ethical behavior and constructive action rather than destructive actions in the name of a cause.
Kevin Mitnick expresses his belief that being affiliated with a cause should not justify harmful or malicious actions. As a hacker, he values creativity and constructive solutions over damage, advocating for a more ethical approach to problems rather than resorting to negativity.
In practice
During a tech conference, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of ethical practices in hacking.
Protecting yourself is very challenging in the hostile environment of the Internet. Imagine a global environment where an unscrupulous person from the other side of the planet can probe your computer for weaknesses and exploit them to gain access to your most sensitive secrets.
Social engineering is using manipulation, influence and deception to get a person, a trusted insider within an organization, to comply with a request, and the request is usually to release information or to perform some sort of action item that benefits that attacker.
Social engineering bypasses all technologies, including firewalls.
Most people assume that once security software is installed, they're protected. This isn't the case. It's critical that companies be proactive in thinking about security on a long-term basis.
I get hired by companies to hack into their systems and break into their physical facilities to find security holes. Our success rate is 100%; we've always found a hole.
I'm still a hacker. I get paid for it now. I never received any monetary gain from the hacking I did before. The main difference in what I do now compared to what I did then is that I now do it with authorization.
Ultimately, users visit your website for its content. Everything else is just the backdrop.
Avoiding complexity reduces bugs.
I love what the Valley does. I love company building. I love startups. I love technology companies. I love new technology. I love this process of invention. Being able to participate in that as a founder and a product creator, or as an investor or a board member, I just find that hugely satisfying.
Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.
India is at the vanguard of figuring out how to exploit technology and innovation on behalf of democratic accountability.
Whatever they announce, they announce. They're in their honeymoon period, and anything they announce gets hype ... They will obviously branch out beyond Internet search, but I think the expectations won't live up to reality.
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