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.
Interpretation
Kevin Mitnick reflects on his evolution from an unauthorized hacker to a professional one, highlighting the ethical shift.
In this quote, Kevin Mitnick expresses his identity as a hacker, emphasizing that his passion for hacking remains unchanged, but the context has shifted from illicit activities to a legitimate profession. This transformation signifies not only a change in the legality of his actions, due to obtaining authorization, but also a deeper understanding of the ethical implications of hacking in the tech industry.
In practice
During a tech conference, when discussing the importance of ethical hacking for cybersecurity.
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.
Hackers are becoming more sophisticated in conjuring up new ways to hijack your system by exploiting technical vulnerabilities or human nature. Don't become the next victim of unscrupulous cyberspace intruders.
For thousands of years, until about 1850, you see humans accumulating more and more power by the invention of new technologies and by new systems of organization in the economy and in politics, but you don't see any real improvement in the well-being of the average person.
Humans don't 'need' math-based cryptocurrencies when dealing with other humans. We walk slowly, talk slowly, and buy big things. Credit cards, cash, wires, checks - the world seems fine.
Every new computer program is basically doing some task that a person used to do. But the computer usually does it faster, more accurately, for less money, and without any health insurance costs.
As we put autonomous cars on the road, connect Alexas to our lights and our thermostats, put ill-protected Internet-connected video cameras on our houses, and conduct our financial lives over our cell phones, our vulnerabilities expand exponentially.
By 2010 computers will disappear. They'll be so small, they'll be embedded in our clothing, in our environment. Images will be written directly to our retina, providing full-immersion virtual reality, augmented real reality. We'll be interacting with virtual personalities.
Calling 'Instagram' a photo-sharing app is like calling a newspaper a letter-sharing book, or a Mozart grand era symphony a series of notes. 'Instagram' is less about the medium and more about the network.
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