AT&T is in the wrong here, and Kevin could rightly sue them. What if Bill Gates became an inviting target for hackers and script kiddies? AT&T would certainly not drop him as a customer. Kevin is a customer like any other, and it’s AT&T’s job to secure their networks on behalf of all its customers, not just those who never get attacked. Let’s say there are 500 people who get attacked 1/500th as much as Kevin Mitnick? Should AT&T kick off those 500 customers too? Since AT&T is incurring costs as a result of hackers, should they ask Kevin to buy a more expensive plan to curtail those costs? Given the general increase in attacks on all networks, shouldn’t they simply allocate a larger fraction of every customer’s fees towards their increasing security costs? At some point it would be expected to pay off in the elimination of successful attacks. It seems to me it would be in the best interest of all involved for AT&T to use this as an opportunity to learn from these attacks and shore up their countermeasures. I have no doubt Mitnick would be a valuable asset to AT&T, if he has kept up on the latest exploits in his capacity as a security consultant.
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