A company can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on firewalls, intrusion detection systems and encryption and other security technologies, but if an attacker can call one trusted person within the company, and that person complies, and if the attacker gets in, then all that money spent on technology is essentially wasted.

— Kevin Mitnick

Any type of operating system that I wanted to be able to hack, I basically compromised the source code, copied it over to the university because I didn't have enough space on my 200 megabyte hard drive.

— Kevin Mitnick

Are hackers a threat? The degree of threat presented by any conduct, whether legal or illegal, depends on the actions and intent of the individual and the harm they cause.

— Kevin Mitnick

As a young boy, I was taught in high school that hacking was cool.

— Kevin Mitnick

At the end of the day, my goal was to be the best hacker.

— Kevin Mitnick

Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls, encryption, and secure access devices, and its money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain: the people who use, administer, operate and account for computer systems that contain protected information.

— Kevin Mitnick

Hackers are breaking the systems for profit. Before, it was about intellectual curiosity and pursuit of knowledge and thrill, and now hacking is big business.

— Kevin Mitnick

I get hired to hack into computers now, and sometimes it's actually easier than it was years ago.

— Kevin Mitnick

I got so passionate about technology. Hacking to me was like a video game. It was about getting trophies. I just kept going on and on, despite all the trouble I was getting into, because I was hooked.

— Kevin Mitnick

I started with CB radio, ham radio, and eventually went into computers. And I was just fascinated with it. And back then, when I was in school, computer hacking was encouraged. It was an encouraged activity. In fact, I remember one of the projects my teacher gave me was writing a log-in simulator.

— Kevin Mitnick