Fugitive L.A. Hacker Held in N. Carolina

WASHINGTON — The nation’s most wanted computer hacker--a so-called “electronic terrorist” who once broke into sensitive Defense Department computers and who allegedly bilked cellular telephone companies out of millions of dollars--was captured Wednesday at his apartment in Raleigh, N.C.

Kevin Mitnick, 31, was arrested at 1:30 a.m. in an apartment where he lived alone under a false name, authorities said.

“His obsession was his downfall,” said Deputy U.S. Marshal Kathy Cunningham in Los Angeles. “His obsession to hack using cloned (cellular) phones left us a trail to follow.”

The arrest apparently brings an end to the career of a man whose computer escapades began at Monroe High School, where he learned to break into the Los Angeles Unified School District’s main computers. Eventually, he was able to break into a North American Air Defense Command computer in Colorado Springs, Colo., several years before the release of “WarGames,” a movie about a hacker who nearly starts a war after entering a government computer.

Mitnick also manipulated the telephone system to pull pranks on friends and enemies, authorities said. He disconnected service to Hollywood stars he admired, and a former probation officer said her phone service was terminated just as she was about to revoke his probation.

“He’s an electronic terrorist,” said a onetime friend who turned him in to authorities in 1988.

Mitnick was convicted, served a year in prison and was placed on probation. He fled in late 1992 after the FBI showed up at the Calabasas private investigations firm where he was working. The agents were investigating break-ins of Pacific Bell computers.

Early in his flight, he was nearly captured at a Studio City copy shop, where he showed up to pick up materials faxed from the Department of Motor Vehicles. A chase ensued, but he got away.

The DMV also has issued a $1-million warrant for him, accusing him of posing as a law enforcement officer to obtain sensitive DMV information, including driver’s licenses and photographs.

Over the last two years, rumors of Mitnick surfaced at computer conventions, and authorities once took a man into custody after mistakenly identifying him as Mitnick.

“I think Kevin thought he was uncatchable,” Cunningham said. “But he chose to continue hacking . . . and now he is in a whole lot of trouble.”

Over the past two years, Mitnick had narrowly escaped authorities in Los Angeles and Seattle. His arrest ended what the Department of Justice called an “intensive two-week electronic manhunt.”

In recent months, Mitnick eluded law enforcement authorities investigating complaints from McCaw Cellular Communications Inc. in Kirkland, Wash., that someone was using cellular phones to steal secret electronic serial numbers to break into computers at several university campuses.

Mitnick, who grew up in North Hills, was arraigned Wednesday on charges of violating the terms of his probation for the 1988 California computer hacking conviction, as well as new charges of computer fraud originating in North Carolina. Assistant U.S. Atty. David Schindler in Los Angeles said the government is looking into additional cases in San Diego, Colorado and Seattle.

To catch the man who used the code name “Condor,” the government brought in an expert from a firm he is suspected of penetrating last Christmas.

“We got him,” Tsutomu Shimomura of the San Diego Supercomputer Center said Wednesday morning after the capture, according to Sid Karin, Shimomura’s supervisor.

“The message that is important here,” Karin said, “is that the bad guys are not necessarily more clever than the good guys.”

And although some people paint hackers as the last rugged individualists cruising the information highway, Karin said he believes Mitnick deserves “serious, serious punishment.”

Although authorities were unable to say exactly how much damage he wreaked during his years on the run, the cellular telecommunications industry alleges that Mitnick, who used cellular phones to illegally access computers, cost it millions of dollars.

When police and the Secret Service broke into the Seattle house Mitnick was using last October, they found cellular phones, manuals telling how to clone a phone, and a scanner Mitnick may have been using to track law enforcement efforts to find him.

A cellular phone is cloned by reprogramming its computer chip and giving it a new identification code number, making it appear that calls are being placed from a different phone.

Paychecks from a local hospital, where Mitnick allegedly worked under an assumed name as a computer trouble-shooter, and bank account records show he had been living near the University of Washington for at least three months.

In Seattle, “he was leading a fairly innocuous life,” said Ivan Ortman, a King County prosecutor who said Mitnick used the alias Brian Merrill. “We had no reports from anyone around him about unusual activity.”

“He was just a real quiet, typical person,” said Sherry Scott, a secretary in the Virginia Mason Hospital and Medical Center’s Information Systems Department, where Mitnick worked from June through September. “He never talked about his personal life. He just came and went and did his thing.”

The threat that Mitnick posed was described in a recent circular distributed by federal authorities pursuing the fugitive.

“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,” said an advisory from the U.S. Marshal’s Service issued to law enforcement recently.

On Christmas, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, a national laboratory for computer science, which does research on everything from environmental pollution to AIDS, was attacked by a hacker using unusually sophisticated techniques.

After the break-in, Shimomura, known as one of the nation’s leading specialists in computer security, joined the effort to capture the Condor, who took his nickname from a movie starring Robert Redford as a man on the run from the government.

The Department of Justice cited Shimomura as having offered significant assistance in capturing Mitnick, but authorities refused to say exactly what led them to the hacker.

Johnson reported from Los Angeles and Ostrow from Washington. Times staff writer Josh Meyer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.