In the late 1990s, federal authorities persuaded a judge that an inmate named Kevin Mitnick could start a nuclear war by whistling tones into a prison pay phone. He spent eight months in solitary confinement on the strength of that fear. Mitnick was born in Los Angeles in 1963 and grew up in the San Fernando Valley, where amateur radio taught him that systems run on protocols and that protocols can be bent. At 12 he talked a bus driver into revealing where to buy the transit authority’s ticket punch, then pulled unused transfer slips from dumpsters and rode the city for free.

This episode follows how that talent for persuasion, later named social engineering, carried him from a 1979 break-in at Digital Equipment Corporation to two and a half years as the country’s most notorious digital fugitive. It covers his capture, the disproportionate punishment that made him a cause, and the pivot that turned him into a teacher for the same institutions that had hunted him. His career makes one argument above all: the weakest link in any system is the person at the keyboard.

• At 16, Mitnick used a dial-in number from a friend to enter DEC’s network and copy its operating system software. The breach led to a 1988 conviction and 12 months in prison.
• Near the end of his supervised release he hacked Pacific Bell’s voicemail computers and fled. On the run he used cloned cell phones to hide his location and listened to the voicemail of the FBI agents chasing him.
• The FBI arrested him in Raleigh, North Carolina, on February 15, 1995. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and computer fraud in 1999 and was sentenced to nearly five years, most of it already served before trial.
• Supporters put Free Kevin stickers everywhere, with help from 2600 magazine. After his release in 2000 he was barred from computers and cell phones and from profiting from his story for seven years.
• He co-founded Defensive Thinking in 2002, testified before Congress, wrote best sellers on deception, and became chief hacking officer at KnowBe4. He died of pancreatic cancer in July 2023 at 59.