Kevin Mitnick and social engineering

In 1979 a 16-year-old Kevin Mitnick broke into the Ark, a computer Digital Equipment Corporation used to develop its operating systems. According to later accounts, the key step was not code: he persuaded a system administrator to grant him access by posing as a member of DEC's own development team.

Over the next decade and a half he became one of the best-known names in computer crime, and spent years as a fugitive. The FBI arrested him in Raleigh, North Carolina, in February 1995. In 1999 he pleaded guilty to wire fraud, computer fraud and intercepting communications; prosecutors said he had posed as company employees to obtain software that firms such as Motorola, Nokia and Sun Microsystems were still developing.

After about five years in prison he spent the rest of his career on the other side, teaching companies how people like his younger self worked. He died in July 2023.