Kevin David Mitnick (August 6, 1963 – July 16, 2023) was an American computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker. In 1995, he was arrested for various computer and communications-related crimes, and spent five years in prison after being convicted of fraud and illegally intercepting communications. Mitnick's pursuit, arrest, trial and sentence were all controversial, as were the associated media coverage, books, and films, with his supporters arguing that his punishment was excessive and that many of the charges against him were fraudulent, and not based on actual losses. After his release from prison, he ran his own security firm, Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC, and was also involved with other computer security businesses.

Mitnick was born on August 6, 1963, in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California. His father was Alan Mitnick, his mother was Shelly Jaffe, and his maternal grandmother was Reba Vartanian. Mitnick was Jewish, and grew up in Los Angeles, California. At age 12, Mitnick convinced a bus driver to tell him where he could buy his own ticket punch for "a school project", and was then able to ride any bus in the greater Los Angeles area using unused transfer slips he found in a dumpster next to the bus company garage.

Mitnick attended James Monroe High School in North Hills, during which time he became a licensed amateur radio operator with callsign WA6VPS (his license was restored after imprisonment with callsign N6NHG). He chose the nickname "Condor" after watching the movie Three Days of the Condor. He was later enrolled at Los Angeles Pierce College and USC.

For a time, Mitnick worked as a receptionist for Stephen S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles.

Mitnick gained unauthorized access to a computer network in 1979, at 16, when a friend gave him the telephone number for the Ark, the computer system that Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) used for developing its RSTS/E operating system software. He broke into DEC's computer network and copied the company's software, a crime for which he was charged and convicted in 1988. He was sentenced to 12 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. Near the end of his supervised release, Mitnick hacked into Pacific Bell voicemail computers. After a warrant was issued for his arrest, Mitnick fled, becoming a fugitive for two-and-a-half years.

According to the United States Department of Justice, Mitnick gained unauthorized access to dozens of computer networks while he was a fugitive. He used cloned cellular phones to hide his location and, among other things, copied valuable proprietary software from some of the country's largest cellular telephone and computer companies. Mitnick also intercepted and stole computer passwords, altered computer networks, and broke into and read private emails.

After a well-publicized pursuit, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Mitnick on February 15, 1995 at his apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina on federal offenses related to a two-and-a-half-year period of computer hacking that included computer and wire fraud. He was found with cloned cell phones, more than 100 cloned cellular phone codes, and multiple pieces of false identification.

In 1998, Mitnick was charged in the United States District Court for the Central District of California with 14 counts of wire fraud, eight counts of possession of unauthorized access devices, interception of wire or electronic communications, unauthorized access to a federal computer, and causing damage to a computer. As part of a plea bargain, Mitnick pleaded guilty in 1999 to four counts of wire fraud, two counts of computer fraud, and one count of illegally intercepting a wire communication. U.S. district judge Mariana Pfaelzer sentenced Mitnick to 46 months in federal prison plus 22 months for violating the terms of his 1989 supervised release sentence for computer fraud. He admitted to violating the terms of supervised release by hacking into Pacific Bell voicemail and other systems and to associating with known computer hackers, in this case co-defendant Lewis De Payne. He was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, but it was not used as evidence because he pleaded guilty before going to trial.