Kevin Mitnick, a hacker who was as soon as some of the needed laptop criminals within the United States, died on Sunday, in keeping with an announcement shared Wednesday by a cybersecurity coaching firm he co-founded and a funeral house in Las Vegas. He was 59.

His demise was confirmed by Kathy Wattman, a spokeswoman for KnowBe4.

The trigger was problems from pancreatic most cancers, for which Mr. Mitnick had been present process remedy on the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center following his prognosis greater than a 12 months in the past, in keeping with the King David Memorial Chapel & Cemetery in Las Vegas.

After his launch from jail in 2000, Mr. Mitnick started a brand new profession as a safety guide, author and public speaker.

Mr. Mitnick, a convicted hacker, was finest identified for a criminal offense spree through the Nineties that concerned the theft of hundreds of knowledge information and bank card numbers from computer systems throughout the nation. He used his expertise to worm his manner into the nation’s telephone and cell networks, vandalizing authorities, company and college laptop methods. Investigators at the time named him the “most wanted” laptop hacker on the earth.

In 1995, after a greater than two-year-long manhunt, Mr. Mitnick was captured by the F.B.I. and charged with the unlawful use of a phone entry machine and laptop fraud. “He allegedly had access to corporate trade secrets worth millions of dollars. He was a very big threat,” Kent Walker, a former assistant U.S. lawyer in San Francisco, mentioned on the time.

In 1998, whereas Mr. Mitnick awaited sentencing, a gaggle of supporters commandeered The New York Times web site for a number of hours, forcing it to close down.

The subsequent 12 months, Mr. Mitnick pleaded guilty to laptop and wire fraud as a part of an settlement with prosecutors and was sentenced to 46 months in jail. He was additionally prohibited from utilizing a pc or cellphone with out the permission of his probation officer for the three years following his launch.

Mr. Mitnick grew up in Los Angeles as an solely youngster of divorced mother and father. He moved continuously and was one thing of a loner, learning magic methods, in keeping with his 2011 memoir “Ghost in the Wires.” By the age of 12, Mr. Mitnick had discovered easy methods to freely trip the bus utilizing a $15 punch card and clean tickets fished from a dumpster, and in highschool, developed an obsession with the inside workings of the switches and circuits of phone corporations.

By 17, he was burrowing into totally different company laptop methods, and ultimately, had his first run-in with the authorities for these actions; the start of a decades-long cat-and-mouse sport with regulation enforcement.

In his memoir, Mr. Mitnick disputed lots of the accusations leveled towards him, together with that he had hacked into authorities laptop methods.

Mitnick additionally claimed that he ignored the bank card numbers he gleaned in his pursuit of code. “Anyone who loves to play chess knows that it’s enough to defeat your opponent. You don’t have to loot his kingdom or seize his assets to make it worthwhile,” he wrote in his guide.

Survivors embody Mr. Mitnick’s spouse, Kimberley Mitnick, who’s pregnant with their first youngster, in keeping with the obituary.

An entire obituary can be forthcoming.