CRACKS IN THE NET

AMERICA'S MOST WANTED HACKER HAS BEEN ARRESTED, BUT THE INTERNET IS MORE VULNERABLE THAN EVER

KEVIN MITNICK, 31, STOOD IN THE federal courtroom, his hands cuffed-unable, for the first time in more than two years, to feel the silky click of computer keys. He glanced over at Tsutomu Shimomura, the computer-security expert whose extraordinarily well-guarded personal computer Mitnick had allegedly broken into on Christmas Day. Shimomura, playing Pat Garrett to Mitnick's Billy the Kid, had taken his revenge by tracking the wily hacker across cyberspace-through the Internet, through local and long-distance phone companies and at least two cellular-phone carriers-until he finally traced him to his hideout in an apartment complex in Raleigh, North Carolina. And so...

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