Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking

8.1. Mitnick Case Study 1: Hacking the DMV

Kevin Mitnick is widely known as one of the world's most notorious social engineers. He has performed some of the boldest and most famous exploits in the world—and the exploit examined here is especially so.

A driver's license can often come in handy for obtaining information on people. Having the target's driver's license number can allow a social engineer to gain all sorts of personal information. However, no free services exist that allow a person to gain access to this personal information. A social engineer or private investigator must go through some lengths to be able to obtain and then use this information on a target.

Kevin Mitnick, in his book The Art of Deception, has a story he called "The Reverse Sting." The following sections provide some background information and analysis of this account.

8.1.1. The Target

In one of Mitnick's greatest stories, he discusses how "Eric" wanted to use the non-public Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and police systems to obtain people's driver's license numbers. He regularly needed to obtain license information on targets. Eric had a method of obtaining this information but feared repeated social engineering calls would render calling the DMV useless or alert the police to his ways.

He needed a different method to access the DMV's network and with some knowledge of the how the DMV works he knew just how to do it. His target was twofold—not only the DMV but also the police would assist him ...