Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker

FBI agents—
guys who had the
authority to put me in handcuffs and send me back to jail.
Each time one of these folks called, thinking he was talking to
somebody at the DMV, I would ask for the list of required credentials—
name, agency, Requester Code, driver’s license number, date of birth, and
so on. But I wasn’t really risking anything, since none of them had any clue
that the guy on the other end of the line wasn’t really with the DMV.
I’ll admit when one of these calls would come in, especially from
someone in law enforcement, I’d usually answer it suppressing a grin.
Once I got one of these calls when I was having lunch with three others
at Bob Burns, a classy steakhouse in Woodland Hills. I shushed everyone at
the table when my cell phone rang, and they all looked at me like, “What’s
your problem?” Then they heard me answer, “DMV, how can I help you?”
Now they were swapping “What’s Mitnick up to now?” looks. Meanwhile I
was listening and drumming on the table with the fingers of my left hand to
make it sound like I was typing on a keyboard.
The other people at the table were slowly catching on, their jaws
dropping open.
Once I’d gotten enough sets of credentials, I dialed back into the switch,
temporarily deactivating the call forwarding until the next time I needed
more credentials.

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Finally cracking the DMV put a big smile on my face. It was a
supervaluable tool that was to come in very handy later on.
But I was still desperate to figure out how much the Feds knew, what
evidence they had, how much trouble I was in, and if there was any way for
me to get out of it. Could I still save my ass?
I knew it would be stupid to keep up my investigation of Eric. Yet as so
often in the past, I was intrigued by the seduction of adventure and
intellectual challenge.
It was a puzzle I needed to solve. And I wasn’t going to stop.
Mark Kasden of Teltec called and invited me to have lunch with him and
Michael Grant, the son part of the father-son team that owned the company.
I joined Mark and Michael at a Coco’s restaurant near their offices.
Michael was a pudgy man who seemed very pleased with himself, to the
point of being a bit cocky. The two found it entertaining to draw me into
telling stories about my experiences. I made it clear how successful I had
been at social engineering, which they also used, though they called it
“gagging.” They were impressed that I knew as much as I did about
computers and especially about the phone company. They were even more
impressed by my vast experience in tracking down people’s addresses,
phone numbers, and so on. Finding people seemed to be an important part
of their business, a process they referred to as a “locate.”
After lunch they took me to their offices, on the second floor of a
building in a strip mall. There was an entry area complete with a
receptionist, then a set of individual offices for each of the three PI’s and
three bosses.
A day or two later, Mark dropped by my dad’s to tell me, “We want you
to come work for us.” The salary wasn’t anything to brag about, but it was
plenty enough to live on.
They gave me the title of “Researcher” so as not to raise any suspicions
with my Probation Officer.
I was given my own small office, about as sparse as it could be: desk,
chair, computer, and phone. No books, no decorations, completely bare
walls.
I found Michael to be intelligent, someone I could easily talk to. Our
conversations often boosted my self-esteem because when I showed him

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things I could do that his other employees couldn’t, he would reward me by
expressing his admiration at a “wow factor” level.
What Mark and Michael wanted me to focus on first was a situation they
told me they didn’t understand. Those phone taps I had uncovered on
Teltec’s lines—why in the world would law enforcement be suspicious of
anything they were doing?
They had the names of two people they thought might be working the
case from the other side: Detective David Simon, with the Los Angeles
County Sheriff’s Department, and Darrell Santos, of Pacific Bell Security.
“Do you know how to tap the detective’s phone?” one of my bosses asked.
I said, “Sure, but that’s too risky.”
“Well, see what you can find out about this investigation,” I was told.
I would discover, in time, what the Teltec honchos were hiding from me:
the detective had led a team that had raided the PI firm a few months earlier
for using unauthorized passwords to access TRW credit reports.
Good thing I wasn’t willing to investigate a cop—but taking on PacBell
Security was a different story. It sounded like a fun test of my ingenuity, a
challenge I might thoroughly enjoy.

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