The enormous monetary losses Sun Microsystems Inc, NEC America Inc, Nokia Oy, Novell Corp and Fujitsu Network Transmission Systems Inc claimed to have suffered at cracker Kevin Mitnick’s hands were never disclosed to the stockholders in those companies, according to hacker magazine 2600. The magazine says it has obtained copies of letters sent by the companies to Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Kathleen Carson. It claims these prove the FBI prodded companies into inflating their claims as much as possible.
Published on the 2600 web site, the letters reveal Sun’s VP of intellectual property law, Lee Patch, telling Carson that Sun has lost the hundreds of millions of dollars it has invested in Solaris, just because Mitnick copied a portion of the source code. Similarly, Novell says it has lost $75m, since the source code Mitnick stole cost $75m to develop. Nokia, NEC and Fujistu use similarly questionable rules of thumb to arrive at estimates of their losses.
Though these back-of-an-envelope calculations are so sketchy as to seem frivolous, 2600 argues that the sums thus arrived at were a major factor in Mitnick’s long imprisonment without a trial. Others have argued that Mitnick’s previous convictions and his frequent changes of tactic and lawyer also contributed to the delay.
