Just deserts? Maybe. The real story, it turns out, is a bit more complicated than the screenplay, as an adversarial pair of books (due out in January) will soon testify. One is “Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, America’s Most Wanted Computer Out-law-By the Man Who Did It,” Tsutomo Shimomura. His coauthor: John Markoff, The New York Times reporter who covered Shimomura’s exploits and went along on the chase. The other is “The Fugitive Game,” by Jonathan Littman, an investigative reporter from San Francisco who brings a unique slant to the cyberdrama: the presence of Mitnick himself, who was often in daily contact with the author right up to his arrest. Not surprisingly, given their diametrical perspectives, the two accounts have sparked debate on the Inter-net–and no small acrimony between the authors. Littman believes his counterparts set out to “get” Mitnick, that they hyped his supposed crimes (and Shimomura’s role in his capture) partly to procure juicy book and movie deals. Markoff accuses Littman of libel, not to mention inaccuracy in his reconstruction of events.
For those who don’t know, Mitnick’s the wunderkind hacker who gained notoriety, at 17, for reportedly breaking into the military’s NORAD air-defense computers in Colorado. (He tells Littman he didn’t do it.) Thereafter came a decade of digital breaking and entering: phone companies, cellular networks, credit bureaus, university and corporate computers. “Takedown” is the firsthand account of how Mitnick was stopped. The tale begins last Christmas, when he allegedly infiltrated Shimomura’s computers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and culminates in his arrest, two months later, in North Carolina. Shimomura is the heroic Cybersleuth, Mitnick the digital Darth Vader, stealing software and tromping through people’s e-mail.
Littman offers a somewhat different take. Here, Mitnick’s at the center, going public for the first time. We watch as he evades his FBI pursuers, monitors their cell phones, reads their credit reports, anticipates their moves-and tells Littman all
Markoff denies he actively assisted the Feds about it. The author doesn’t approve, but he poses broader questions. Government investigators, it turns out, hired a criminal hacker to track Mitnick, maybe entice him into the open. Would this not be entrapment? Then there’s Markoff’s role. As Littman tells it, the Times reporter was obsessed with the hacker. “I’ve thought about trying to catch Mitnick,” he allegedly told Littman on two occasions. “But I guess that wouldn’t be politically correct.” After the attack on Shimomura’s computers, Markoff supposedly joined the chase. He gave authorities information on Mitnick’s background, Littman claims, including an alias Mitnick often used, and acted as a de facto member of Shimomura’s “team.” “Markoff,” he says flatly, “helped catch Kevin.”
The Timesman just as flatly disagrees. “I was an observer,” he says. His lawyers consider the charges “defamatory” and, in a letter to Littman’s publisher, demand that “errors” be corrected before publication. A case in point: a Sprint technician’s description of Markoff working the team’s surveillance gear as they closed in on the hacker. Markoff claims it never happened. Says Littman: “We’re standing by our story.”
Who’s right? Clearly Mitnick was a clever, obsessive hacker. But was he really the Darth Vader of the Internet, as depicted by Markoff (and others in the media, including NEWSWEEK)? Through Littman, he seems more amiable than sociopathic. Mitnick hacked for information and power, not for money or out of malice. That doesn’t make it right, but it also doesn’t make him worse than many other hackers. Next week, Los Angeles prosecutors say, Mitnick is expected to plead guilty to a negotiated charge of computer fraud. The penalty: a jail term of up to eight years or more. Pretty stiff for a media-made “monster.”
