The unlikely story of one of the most famous hackers in the world and the gift he left precisely to those who handed him over to Justice
An attempted hacker attack in the 1990s ended in the most unlikely way possible: with an inheritance. Shawn Nunley, then Novell’s network administrator, received enough money from the will of Kevin Mitnick — one of the most famous hackers in history and the man he himself helped lead to prison — enough money to buy the car of his dreams: a Porsche 911 Carrera 4 GTS.
In the 1990s, Nunley was in charge of the network of Novell, owner of NetWare, one of the most targeted corporate systems of the time — and, therefore, a natural target for someone like Mitnick, who had made history in 1979, when he convinced the server of a software company to give him the full copy of an operating system not even released. It was then that the administrator began to notice signs of a persistent threat, such as phones ringing in sequence throughout the building. In one of the attacks, Mitnick called posing as an employee named Gabe Nault, who would need urgent remote access.
To support the story, the hacker claimed to work on a secret project called Snowbird and to be on vacation in Vail, Colorado — a detail that coincided with the message in the real employee’s mailbox. Still, Nunley was suspicious. Without revealing the suspicion, he asked the interlocutor to leave him a message on the answering machine.
The next day, when he arrived at the office, he recorded the message on a cassette tape, according to Nunley’s account reproduced by the website The Drive. The record would become the main evidence used by the American Justice against Mitnick, who was facing 14 counts of wire fraud. At first, the administrator cooperated with the process, but after five years of postponements, he got tired of the way the case was conducted and stopped cooperating with the prosecutor’s office. Shortly after, the hacker struck a deal and was released.
Upon leaving prison, Mitnick sought out Nunley to apologize — a reunion that was even recorded by Wired magazine and that marked the beginning of a friendship of more than 25 years. During this period, the former hacker reinvented himself as a digital security consultant and founded his own company, now run by his family, teaching companies to protect themselves from the same techniques that had made him known.
When he died in 2023 of pancreatic cancer, Mitnick left one last gesture to his former opponent. In his will, he set aside the funds for Nunley to fulfill the old automotive dream.
“It was wonderful to see him become a real man,” Nunley said. “I am really sad for his departure, as he has been an important part of my life for the last quarter of a century.”
