June 23, 2026
From prison lead to Porsche vibes
A man was gifted his dream car by Kevin Mitnick, who he helped put in prison
The hacker he helped bust later handed him his dream car in a twist commenters can’t stop arguing about
TLDR: Kevin Mitnick, once caught while trying to trick his way into a company network, later gifted his dream car to the man who helped stop him. Commenters are split between calling it a touching redemption story and roasting Mitnick as an overhyped legend kept alive by internet myth.
The internet is absolutely feasting on this one: a man who once helped stop famed hacker Kevin Mitnick from breaking into his company’s systems later ended up getting his dream car from Mitnick himself. Yes, really. What started as a 1990s cat-and-mouse story — with Mitnick allegedly posing as a worker on a “top secret” project to trick his way into access — has now resurfaced as a bizarrely wholesome full-circle moment, and commenters are torn between “that’s beautiful” and “hold on, this guy was never the genius people made him out to be.”
A lot of the crowd went straight for the nostalgia. One user remembered the old “Free Kevin” internet era and said this story adds missing human detail to a man once turned into a near-mythic outlaw. Others were obsessed with the poetic irony: the master manipulator got outplayed by someone who simply trusted his gut, prompting the line of the thread, “He social engineered the God of social engineering.” That joke alone basically won the comments.
But not everyone was sentimental. One former coworker who says Mitnick later worked as a consultant at their company threw in a sharp reality check, claiming his advice leaned too far into movie-style stunts and not enough into the everyday risks businesses actually faced. And then, because the internet can never resist turning legends into memes, another commenter escalated Mitnick into full folk hero mode by joking he could “launch nukes by whistling into a pay phone.” In other words: half redemption arc, half roast, all drama.
Key Points
- •The article centers on Kevin Mitnick, describing him as a hacker who later became a security consultant and an early model for modern white-hat security work.
- •It says Mitnick first gained notoriety in 1979 by dialing into a software company’s server and copying an unreleased operating system.
- •In the 1990s, Shawn Nunley worked as a network administrator at Novell while the company experienced signs of a persistent intrusion attempt.
- •Novell’s NetWare product was widely used in corporate, government, and academic networks, making the company an attractive target.
- •Nunley recounts receiving a late-night phone call from someone impersonating Gabe Nault and requesting policy-breaking direct inbound dial access, a request he found suspicious despite accurate internal details.