Tsutomu Shimomura

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Tsutomu Shimomura (下村務 Shimomura Tsutomu?) is a Japanese-American scientist and computer security expert based in the United States, who gained fame when he, together with computer journalist John Markoff, tracked down and helped the FBI arrest hacker Kevin Mitnick.

Takedown, his 1996 book on the subject, was later adapted for the screen in Takedown in 2000.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Born in Japan, Shimomura grew up in Princeton, New Jersey and attended Princeton High School.[1]

At Caltech he studied under Nobel laureate Richard Feynman. After Caltech, he went on to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he continued his hands-on education in the position of staff physicist with Brosl Hasslacher and others on subjects such as Lattice Gas Automata.

In 1989, he became a research scientist in the physics department at the University of California at San Diego, and senior fellow at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

In 1992, he testified before Congress on issues regarding the privacy and security (or lack thereof) on cellular telephones.

He is best known for events in 1995, when he assisted with tracking down the "computer outlaw" Kevin Mitnick. Shimomura and journalist John Markoff wrote a book, Takedown, about the pursuit, and the book was later adapted into a movie of the same name.

Mr. Shimomura worked for Sun Microsystems during the late 1990s.

Shimomura presently lives in San Diego.

[edit] Criticism and controversy

Kevin Mitnick's criminal activities, arrest, and trial were controversial, and have caused some computer industry journalists to raise legal and ethical questions concerning the events surrounding him. California author Jonathan Littman wrote a 1997 book about the case called The Fugitive Game: Online with Kevin Mitnick, in which he presented Mitnick's side of the story—a very different version from the events written in Shimomura and Markoff's Takedown.[2]

In his book, Littman made allegations of journalistic impropriety against Markoff and of the legality of Shimomura's involvement in the matter, as well as suggesting that many parts of Takedown were made up for self-serving purposes by its authors. Further controversy came over the release of the movie Takedown, with Littman alleging that portions of the film were taken from his book The Fugitive Game without permission.[3]

Author Bruce Sterling described his first meeting with Shimomura in the documentary Freedom Downtime:

“ It was in front of Congress, and I was testifying to a Congressional subcommittee. And here was this guy in sandals and, like, ragged-ass cutoffs, and the rest of us were done up in ties [...] giving our best sort of 'yes, we're in front of Congress' thing and Shimomura is there in this surfer gear. And he pulls out this AT&T cellphone, pulls it out of the shrinkwrap, finger-hacks it, and starts monitoring phone calls going up and down Capitol Hill while an FBI agent is standing at his shoulder, listening to him. I'm like, 'this fucker's got balls the size of durian fruit!' [...] He was finger-hacking this phone in front of Congress with, like, two FBI agents and John Gage from Sun Microsystems in the room. ”

[edit] Writing credits

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Week 10: "Hacking", North Carolina State University. Accessed October 23, 2007. "Shimomura was born in 1964 in Nagoya, Japan.... He got into an antiestablishment group at Princeton High School and got expelled for it, even though he had won a local math/science contest."
  2. ^ Amazon.com: The Fugitive Game: Online with Kevin Mitnick: Jonathan Littman: Books
  3. ^ Fost, Dan. "Movie About Notorious Hacker Inspires a Tangle of Suits and Subplots", San Francisco Chronicle, May 4, 2000. Retrieved on 2007-04-24.