[ISN] Besieged by attacks, AT&T dumps celebrity hacker

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/19/att_dumps_kevin_mitnick/

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco
The Register
19th August 2009 

Over the years, Kevin Mitnick has gotten used to the attacks on his 
website and cell phone account that routinely result from being a 
convicted hacker turned security expert. What he finds much harder to 
stomach is the treatment he's getting from his providers.

Over the past month, both HostedHere.net, his longtime webhost, and 
AT&T, his cellular provider since he was released from prison more than 
nine years ago, have told him they no longer want him as a customer. The 
reason: his status as a celebrity hacker makes his accounts too hard to 
defend against the legions of script kiddies who regularly attack them.

The move by AT&T came this week after Mitnick hired a lawyer to complain 
that his privacy was being invaded by people posting Mitnick's account 
information in public hacking forums. It included the eight-digit 
password Mitnick used to authenticate himself online, the numbers for 
his cell phone and land lines, his billing address, and the last four 
digits of his social security number.

"They can't seem to secure my account," Mitnick told The Register. "And 
then instead of doing something about it, they try to kill the messenger 
and want to boot me off their network when all I want them to do is to 
secure my account so no one gets access to my phone records."

[...]


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