Mitnick: I was Manipulated -------------------------- By Robert Lemos, ZDNet News UPDATED January 21, 2000 3:41 PM PT Just freed from prison Friday, notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick slammed prosecutors and a New York Times reporter for allegedly treating him unjustly in the court and in the media over the past six years. "Prosecutors ... manipulated every aspect of this case, from my personal reputation to the ability of my defense attorney to file motions in time, and even to the extent of filing a 1,700-item exhibit list immediately before a trial," said Mitnick, reading from a three-page statement to reporters gathered near the Lompoc, Calif., prison facility minutes after being released from the medium-security prison. Almost five years ago, federal authorities arrested Mitnick on a 25-count indictment relating to misuse of Pacific Bell equipment for illegal wiretaps and copying proprietary source code from Motorola, Sun Microsystems Inc., NEC Corp. and Novell, among others. "My case is one of curiosity," said Mitnick. "There was no intent to defraud anyone of anything." New York Times reporter John Markoff covered the latter portion of the two-and-a-half-year pursuit of Mitnick and in a July 4, 1994, article called him "Cyberspace's most wanted." Mitnick blames the hype surrounding his elusive flight from authorities and his subsequent arrest on Markoff's article. In addition, the 36-year-old ex-hacker claims that Markoff crossed the line by bringing authorities and computer expert Tsutomu Shimomura together to track him down. Mitnick went as far as to call the article libelous and defamatory. In a Friday morning interview, Markoff stood by his reporting, saying that the allegations were "really disappointing to me because it suggests that in the past five years, and perhaps in the last 20 years, Kevin has not learned anything. What he might have learned from all his time in prison is that it is wrong to break into other people's computers. I don't think it is any more complex than that." Markoff pointed out that Mitnick had been arrested five times in the last 20 years for computer-related crimes. "The problem is, and the reason the judge kept him away from computers, (is that) this is the fifth time that he has been arrested. It's not like they haven't given him chances," said Markoff. Markoff also denied any ethical breach. "I won't get into the specifics on those three cases," Markoff said. "I want to say that I stand by my story, and to note that it was written while Kevin was a fugitive from four law enforcement agencies, and that's why it was written." In court, Mitnick also claims he didn't get a fair shake. Looking tired and much thinner than five years ago, the bespectacled cybercriminal blamed prosecution for blocking his defense from acting on his behalf. "Their method (in) this case was to manipulate the amount of loss to exaggerate the alleged harm," he said. "I've acknowledged since my arrest in February 1995 that the actions I took were illegal and that I committed invasions of privacy. But to suggest without reason or proof, as did Mr. Markoff and the prosecutors in this case, that I had committed any type of fraud whatsoever is simply untrue, and unsupported by the evidence." Damages 'grossly inflated' In total, the prosecution estimated damages at $80 million by including the full R&D costs of the applications and source code that Mitnick copied, even though none of the code was ever sold to another company or is known to have been used by a competitor. "Everybody realizes that those (estimates) were greatly inflated," said Jennifer Granick, a San Francisco defense attorney, who represented hacker Kevin Poulsen in litigation following that hacker's release from prison. (Poulsen is a ZDNet News contributor.) The number may sound familiar. That's because David L. Smith, who plead guilty to writing and releasing the Melissa virus in December, similarly admitted to the prosecutor's assessed damages of $80 million. It's no coincidence: Under federal law that is the maximum amount accounted for by sentencing guidelines. In fact, it is usually the major factor in determining the length of jail time. That leads to a skewed pursuit of justice, said Granick. "The criminal courts are here to deal with societal wrongs," she said. "It is not their primary purpose to recompense the victims." "I hope that the Kevin Mitnick case is the last case of the great '80s hacker hysteria," she continued. "I hope that we won't have the same kind of hype in the future so that people can get a fair shake in the media and in court." The U.S. Attorney's office could not comment by press time.