Kevin Poulsen

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Kevin Poulsen
Kevin Lee Poulsen (right), pictured circa 2001 with Adrian Lamo (left) and Kevin Mitnick (center)
Born1965 (age 58–59)
Pasadena, California
Other namesDark Dante
OccupationSenior editor at Wired News
Websitehttp://www.kevinpoulsen.com

Kevin Lee Poulsen (born 1965 in Pasadena, California, U.S.)[1] is an American former black hat hacker who is currently News Editor at Wired.com.

Biography

Before segueing into journalism, he had a controversial career in the 1980s as a hacker whose handle was Dark Dante. He worked for SRI International by day, and hacked at night. During this time, Poulsen taught himself lock picking, and engaged in a brash spree of high-tech stunts that would ultimately make him one of America's best-known cyber-criminals. Among other things, Poulsen reactivated old Yellow Page escort telephone numbers for an acquaintance that then ran a virtual escort agency.

His best-appreciated hack was a takeover of all of the telephone lines for Los Angeles radio station KIIS-FM, guaranteeing that he would be the 102nd caller and win the prize of a Porsche 944 S2.[2][3]

When the FBI started pursuing Poulsen, he went underground as a fugitive. When he was featured on NBC's Unsolved Mysteries, the show's 1-800 telephone lines mysteriously crashed.[2][4] He was finally arrested in April 1991. In June 1994, Poulsen pleaded guilty to seven counts of mail, wire and computer fraud, money laundering, and obstruction of justice, and was sentenced to 51 months in prison and ordered to pay $56,000 in restitution. At the time, it was the longest sentence ever given for cracking. He also pleaded guilty to breaking into computers and obtaining information on undercover businesses run by the FBI.

Poulsen enjoyed brief celebrity status in the tech world upon his release from federal prison, and was the subject of the book Watchman: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Serial Hacker Kevin Poulsen, a work which Poulsen himself has decried.[citation needed]

Poulsen has reinvented himself as a journalist since his release from prison, and sought to distance himself from his criminal past. Poulsen served in a number of journalistic capacities at California-based security research firm SecurityFocus, where he began writing security and hacking news in early 2000. Despite a late arrival to a market saturated with technology media, SecurityFocus News became a well-known name in the tech news world during Poulsen's tenure with the company and was acquired by Symantec. His original investigative reporting was frequently picked up by the mainstream press. Poulsen left SecurityFocus in 2005 to freelance and pursue independent writing projects. He became a senior editor for Wired News in June 2005, which hosts his recent (as of 2006) blog, 27BStroke6,[5] which has since been renamed Threat Level.[6]

MySpace investigation

In October 2006, Poulsen released information detailing his successful search for registered sex offenders using MySpace to solicit sex from children. His work identified 744 registered people with MySpace profiles, and led to the arrest of one, Andrew Lubrano.[7]

Role in Bradley Manning case

Kevin Poulsen broke the initial story of Bradley Manning's arrest and published the logs of Bradley Manning's incriminating chats with Adrian Lamo.[8]

Awards

Books

  • Poulsen, Kevin (2011). Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground. Crown. ISBN 978-0-307-58868-5.
  • Poulsen, Kevin (2011). Kingpin: The True Story Of Max Butler, The Master Hacker Who Ran A Billion Dollar Cyber Crime Network. Hachette (Australia). ISBN 978-0-7336-2771-2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |author link= (help)
  • Pendulous, Kevin (2011). Haker: Prawdziwa historia szefa cybermafii. Znak (Poland). ISBN 978-83-240-1659-4.

References

  1. ^ Richard Gissel. Digital Underworld (August 23, 2005 ed.). Lulu.com. p. 222. ISBN 1-4116-4423-9.Kevin Lee Poulsen was born in Passadena, California in 1965. It was claimed that when he was 17 he used his radio shack TRS-80 to attack Arpanet, the predecessor of the Internet.
  2. ^ a b "Kevin Poulsen". livinginternet. 2007. Retrieved 2008-08-23.
  3. ^ "A Crime By Any Other Name..." FREEDOM Magazine. VOL 27 Issue 4. Retrieved 2008-08-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ "Top 10 Most Famous Hackers of All Time". itsecurity. 2007. Retrieved 2008-08-24.
  5. ^ "Wired.com". Blog.wired.com. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
  6. ^ Kravets, David (2012-01-23). "Threat Level - Privacy, Crime and Security Online". Wired.com. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
  7. ^ "MySpace Predator Caught by Code". Wired News. October 16, 2006. Retrieved 2008-08-24.
  8. ^ "The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks". Salon.com accessdate = 2011-06-28. June 18, 2010. {{cite news}}: Missing pipe in: |publisher= (help)
  9. ^ a b "Webby Nominees". Webbyawards.com. 2011-10-28. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
  10. ^ "2010 Top Cyber Security Journalist Award Winners". SANS. 2009-07-24. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
  11. ^ a b "minonline.com". minonline.com. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
  12. ^ "min's 2010 Best of the Web Awards". MinOnline. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
  13. ^ "Digital Hall of Fame: Kevin Poulsen, Senior Editor, Wired.com". MinOnline. 2011-12-08. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
  14. ^ "j-lab.org". j-lab.org. 2011-07-20. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
  15. ^ "Knight-Batten 2008 Winners » Projects » J-Lab". J-lab.org. 2011-07-20. Retrieved 2012-01-27.

Further reading

  • Jonathan Littman, The Watchman: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Serial Hacker Kevin Poulsen, 1997, publisher: Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-52857-9

External links


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