Kevin D. Mitnick made a name for himself by hacking his way into telephone networks and vandalizing corporate, government, and university computers. For a while, according to assistant United States attorney Kent Walker, "He was arguably the most wanted computer hacker in the world."

Kevin D. Mitnick was born in 1965 and grew up in the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles, California. After his parents divorced when he was three years old, he lived with his mother, who worked long hours as a waitress at a delicatessen. As a youth he had few friends. He rarely saw his father and grew up lonely and isolated.

While in his teens, Mitnick got into phone "phreaking," using electronic techniques to gain illegal access to telephone services. He became friends with other phone phreaks and often hung out with a group that met at a pizza parlor in Los Angeles to...