You may have heard about Kevin Mitnick. He is known as the “World’s Most Famous Hacker.” Mitnick was once the worlds most wanted cyber criminal. But after his bout of hacking into some of the most well guarded systems, Mitnick has joined forces with the some of the good guys and his work now consists of exposing vulnerabilities of the most complex operating systems as well as telecommunication devices. In fact, one of Minick’s favorite hacks was as a kid, hacking into a McDonald’s frequency, taking over the ordering system of customers going through the drive-through. With control of the speaker, Mitnick would sit across the street in his car and have some fun.
“I would sit across the street from McDonald’s and I would take their order and tell them that they were the 50th customer so your order is free. Please drive through. Your order is free. – Our weight detection system detected your car is a little heavy so we recommend the salad instead of the Big Mac.”
It hasn’t always been fun and games for Mitnick. Once while in Federal custody, he was placed in solitary confinement, deemed so dangerous that he wasn’t allowed access to a phone – Afraid that by giving him access to a phone, Mitnick could start a nuclear war simply by whistling into it. Although he denied the allegations, Mitnick at one point had to go on record that he did not hack into NORAD’s command nor did he wiretap the FBI. So what does the World’s Greatest Hacker have to say about Obamacare’s Healthcare.gov website?
In a letter submitted as testimony to the House Science, Space and Technology Committee and to panel Chairman Lamar Smith (R) Texas and a ranking member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D) Texas, Mitnick delivered harsh criticism of the website’s security stating that,
“It’s shameful the team that built the Healthcare.gov site implemented minimal, if any, security best practices to mitigate the significant risk of a system compromise. – It is clear that the management team did not consider security as a priority.”
Other security experts have warned about the vulnerabilities of the Obamacare website as well and have testified to Congress that they believe that many attempts have been made at hacking into the site. In fact some experts believe that the site has been compromised and that it is just a matter of time before it has a “Target” effect. Remember the incident regarding Target stores and the breach of cyber security regarding their customers whose private information was compromised while shopping at their stores? Can you imagine the travesty that this would cause on a government website if this same thing were to occur. I for one have never signed into that site. I have read previously that it was a hacker’s dream and to have the World’s greatest hacker confirm this is no surprise. Let’s hope that this will get some attention. If nothing else, we should make this an important issue in the mid-term elections. After all, we tried to delay the launch of Obamacare with the previous challenges when the website didn’t work. However, the Democrats would have nothing to do with the delay. Just like Obamacare, they had to shove it through. Now it’s time for the consequences. Let’s see how they run from this one.
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