Kevin Mitnick Enters The Pentagon
It was in 1983 that Kevin Mitnick achieved his major coup, a truly impressive hack. At that time he was a student at the University of South California. Using one of the machines at the university, probably a TRS-80 equipped with a Zilog processor at 1.77 MHz, Mitnick gained access to ARPANet, the ancestor of the Internet, which was then reserved for the Army, large corporations and universities.
Mitnick's Early Glories
By infiltrating this network, he gained access to the most protected computers of the time, those of the Pentagon. He had access to all files in the US Department of Defense. There was no evidence of data theft or degradation at the time: Mitnick simply followed his curiosity and tested his abilities.
The intrusion was detected by a systems administrator, who sounded the alert. The investigation led to the author of the exploit, and Kevin Mitnick was arrested inside the university campus. He was tried and served his first real sentence for illegally accessing a computer system, spending six months in a young adult detention center.
