Kevin Mitnick Quotes

Penetrating a company's security often starts with the bad guy obtaining some piece of information that seems so innocent, so everyday and unimportant, that most people in the organization don't see any reason why the item should be protected and restricted.

There are two kinds of big companies in the United States. There are those who've been hacked by the Chinese, and those who don't know they've been hacked by the Chinese.

There are two types of companies in the world: those that know they've been hacked, and those that don't.

U.S. computer networks and databases are under daily cyber attack by nation states, international crime organizations, subnational groups, and individual hackers.

We've always had to worry about the electrical grid and nuclear facilities, and they remain a concern; but cyber-terrorism, you know, which is a word that you hear more and more, I think is a reality.

Most of the computer compromises that we hear about use a technique called spear phishing, which allows an attacker access to a key person's workstation. It's extremely difficult to defend against.

Nobody should be too boastful or too proud about their security because there are people who have a major interest in cracking the security of networks, the security of companies.

When Target gets hacked, I don't hear people saying, 'Hey, was it Kohl's? Was it Wal-Mart?' It doesn't matter. There was a hack; you deal with it.

Social engineering has become about 75% of an average hacker's toolkit, and for the most successful hackers, it reaches 90% or more.

'Social engineering,' the fancy term for tricking you into giving away your digital secrets, is at least as great a threat as spooky technology.

It's more than unsettling to realize there are large companies out there developing backdoors, exploits and trojans.

Cyberattacks have become a permanent fixture on the international scene because they have become easy and cheap to launch. Basic computer literacy and a modest budget can go a long way toward invading a country's cyberspace.

I went from being a kid who loved to perform magic tricks to becoming the world's most notorious hacker, feared by corporations and the government.

We face cyber threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, global cyber syndicates, and terrorists. They seek our state secrets, our trade secrets, our technology, and our ideas - things of incredible value to all of us. They seek to strike our critical infrastructure and to harm our economy.

The alarm bells sound regularly: cybergeddon; the next Pearl Harbor; one of the greatest existential threats facing the United States. With increasing frequency, these are the grave terms officials invoke about the menace of cybercrime - and they're not understating the threat.

An element of virtually every national security threat and crime problem the FBI faces is cyber-based or facilitated. We face sophisticated cyber threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, organized cyber syndicates, and terrorists.

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.

Every case involving cybercrime that I've been involved in, I've never found a master criminal sitting somewhere in Russia or Hong Kong or Beijing. It always ends up that somebody at the company did something they weren't supposed to do. They read an email, went to a website they weren't supposed to.

Because there are little to no consequences for conducting cyberattacks, criminals and nation-states are becoming bolder in their threats and behavior. Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are increasingly hacking into U.S. companies and government networks for espionage purposes or financial gain.

Every ISP is being attacked, maliciously both from in the United States and outside of the United States, by those who want to invade people's privacy. But more importantly they want to take control of computers, they want to hack them, they want to steal information.

The truth is, consumer-grade antivirus products can't protect against targeted malware created by well-resourced nation-states with bulging budgets. They can protect you against run-of-the-mill malware: banking trojans, keystroke loggers and e-mail worms. But targeted attacks like these go to great lengths to avoid antivirus products on purpose.

Hacking is exploiting security controls either in a technical, physical or a human-based element.

Every portal coming into this country is being attacked by those who would harvest information, both national security secrets and just the common information of private individuals and private individuals. That crime is going on, every day, on a single entity known as the Internet.

Look at what is happening in China and in Russia. They have units that are specifically targeted cyber warfare. They are carrying it out. Our critical infrastructure is attacked thousands of times a day.

Garbage can provide important details for hackers: names, telephone numbers, a company's internal jargon.