Feds Ask Help Tracking Mitnick ------------------------------ (AP - January 25, 1995) Federal authorities are asking the public's assistance in tracking legendary "phone phreaker" Kevin David Mitnick, who has been on the run since 1992. "A lot of your normal means of tracking someone down are kind of lost when you're dealing with someone who has the ability to manipulate computer systems," Los Angeles-based deputy U.S. Marshal Kathleen Cunningham told Michael Kirkland of United Press International. The 31-year-old Mitnick, originally of Sepulveda, California, has demonstrated he can gain control of computers to monitor communications and can manufacture false IDs using computers, said Cunningham, adding, "He's always a step ahead of you, very difficult" to catch. UPI notes that as a teen-ager, Mitnick cracked the North American Air Defense Command computer, and used a modem to control the California phone switching centers and similar facilities in Manhattan. The New York Times has reported Mitnick also listened in on calls and reprogrammed the home phone "of someone he did not like so that each time the phone was picked up, a recording asked for a deposit of 25 cents." Several years ago, he was charged with electronically stealing $1 million in secure software from Digital Equipment Corp., which forced the company to spend $160,000 to close up the gaps in its security. He was ordered into treatment by a federal judge in Los Angeles and placed on supervisory probation in 1992, but he vanished from Southern California that year, after officials alleged he had illegally cracked into Pacific Bell's computers. Meanwhile, British authorities reportedly have launched an investigation of Mitnick's suspected illegal access into a computer system at Loughborough University, UPI says. Saying the U.S. Marshal's Service and the FBI are asking the public for help to finding Mitnick, Cunningham said the suspect doesn't appear to be motivated by money. Authorities have tried to get his family to publicly urge him to surrender, but the effort is blocked by "their refusal to acknowledge his problem," she said. "He's not well...He's obsessive about this. He just can't stop." Marshal's Service information "sheet" on the fugitive says, "Although Mitnick is not a typically dangerous criminal, his computer hacking is currently costing millions of dollars in both the public and private sector. Sensitive information illegally accessed by Mitnick would cause continued financial hardship to these various corporations if the information is ever disseminated to others." It adds officials are not sure "to what extent Mitnick may have tampered with local, state or national law enforcement data bases to evade capture," and urges "extreme caution -- but not because he is thought to be physically dangerous." The document warns law enforcement officers, "Please be aware that if Mitnick is taken into custody, he possesses an amazing ability to disrupt one's personal life through his computer knowledge, i.e. TRW's, phone service, etc. Exercise extreme caution in leaving anything about which would have personal information about themselves.