Kevin Mitnick

Kevin Mitnick is a former social engineer and hacker who eventually got caught and now lives a life of being a cybersecurity consultant who helps businesses make their systems more secure against the people like him who attempt to hack into cyber systems by exploiting the human mind. Social engineers aim to act confident enough to trick the people they are talking to that they are supposed to be there or that they are supposed to have the information they have. He started hacking at a very young age when he, according to him, "tricked the bus driver into revealing where he purchased the punch. I borrowed $15 from my mom and took the bus to pick up the punch at the store. Shortly followed by dumpster diving at the local RTD depot for blank transfers” (Kevin Mitnick). 

Eventually, he got into a fair bit of trouble after hacking into a major phone company's systems and getting caught, then, according to the United States Justice Department, "was convicted by federal authorities in 1988 in Los Angeles for stealing computer programs and breaking into corporate networks. He received a one-year sentence in that case, and a federal warrant was later issued following Mitnick's violation of probation" (Justice Department). While on the run, Mitnick spent a lot of his time hacking other systems to make his money and to stay one step ahead of the police, even at one point hacking police radios to find out when they would come for him. Eventually he was caught after he allegedly "electronically attacked numerous corporate and communications carriers located in California, Colorado, and North Carolina where he caused damage and stole proprietary information" and was thrown in jail for five years following the arrest (United States Justice Department). After he was released, he flipped a switch and became the leader of a cybersecurity firm that aims to stop people just like himself.