Kevin Mitnick, the legendary hacker, once tried to social-engineer his way into Novell's network by phoning a network admin named Shawn Nunley late at night, posing as an employee who needed "direct inbound modem access" for a top-secret project.
Nunley smelled a rat, played along, and asked the caller to leave a voicemail — which he recorded onto a cassette recorder. As Byron Hurd writes at The Drive, "that recording became the primary evidence in Kevin's case."
After five years of trial delays, Nunley soured on the prosecution and stopped cooperating; Mitnick took a plea deal, got out, apologized, and the two became close friends. When Mitnick died of pancreatic cancer in 2023, he left Nunley enough to buy his dream car — a Porsche 911 Carrera 4 GTS.
"I am truly sad he is gone," Nunley said, "as he was a big part of my life for the last quarter century."
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