Kevin Mitnick, one of the most famous hackers in the world, has died at the age of 59.
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“Kevin Mitnick, the hacker long hunted by the FBI in the 1990s to become the nation’s most notorious cybercriminal, but who went on to take on the lucrative job of a cybersecurity consultant, died on July 16,” the company where he worked said in a statement.
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Mitnick had numerous legal troubles in the United States and became the first hacker to be on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Most Wanted Cybercriminals list. The newspaper emphasizes that at the beginning of the era of the ubiquity of the Internet, he was able to hack into the computer systems of such large companies as Motorola, Nokia and Sun Microsystems, causing them multimillion-dollar damage.
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In 1995, the FBI arrested him in North Carolina during a raid on charges of illegal use of a telephone access device and computer fraud, ending the hacker’s more than two years on the run. In 1999, Mitnick pleaded guilty to several counts of Internet fraud and other cybercrimes. Then he was sentenced to five years in prison, but then released in 2000.
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In November 2011, Kevin Mitnick became the chief hacker attack expert and co-owner of KnowBe4, an American computer security training company.
