Coming next month in Playboy Magazine: Chasing Mitnick. According to the magazine, “For two years hacker
par excellence Kevin Mitnick eluded the FBI. Now that he has served his sentence, Playboy lands the exclusive story of the man The New York Times called cyberspace’s most wanted.”

Now anyone that reads any article about Kevin knows that this piece will either be greatly exaggerated in his favor or greatly exaggerated not in his favor, but either way greatly exaggerated. And if there’s an opportunity to comment on the article, there will be hundreds of trolls eager to do their usual Kevin-bashing or Kevin-is-so-boring-now or I-hacked-Kevin-Mitnick comments.

But you have to realize one thing about Kevin: most people have never heard much of the true story. If you think about it, Kevin himself never spoke out during his legal proceedings and so far has been barred from profiting from his real story. In fact, much of what we know is from the government’s case and from a few semi-fictional works that have come out. Today Kevin told me that “people really only know half the story–and that’s the boring half.”

Perhaps you can judge a hacker’s abilities based on how good they are at keeping their mouth shut. Anyone can brag but it takes some control to keep quiet even after hearing so many exaggerations and lies. But after years of biting his tongue, this Playboy article is no doubt a small teaser. His upcoming book will tell all–at least all that he can get away with telling. I’m sure the best secrets will die with him.