Tsutomu Shimomura

(born 1964- ) is a Japanese 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.

Biography

Born in Japan, Shimomura is the son of Osamu Shimomura, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He grew up in Princeton, New Jersey and attended Princeton High School. [ [http://people.engr.ncsu.edu/efg/379/s01/lectures/wk10/lecture.html 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."]

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.

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". [ [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316528692 Amazon.com: The Fugitive Game: Online with Kevin Mitnick: Jonathan Littman: Books ] ]

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. [cite news
title=Movie About Notorious Hacker Inspires a Tangle of Suits and Subplots
last=Fost
first=Dan
date=May 4, 2000
url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/05/04/BU71498.DTL
work=San Francisco Chronicle
accessdate=2007-04-24]

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

Writing credits

* "" (with John Markoff), 1996, Hyperion Books. ISBN 0-7868-6210-6
** French title: "Cybertraque", 1998, ISBN 2-259-18402-2
* "Minimal Key Lengths for Symmetric Ciphers to Provide Adequate Commercial Security", January 1996 (co-authors: Shimomura, Bruce Schneier, Ronald L. Rivest, Matt Blaze, Whitfield Diffie, Eric Thompson, Michael Wiener) ( [http://www.cs.plu.edu/courses/CompSec/arts/minkeylen.pdf pdf] )

External links

* [http://www.takedown.com/bio/tsutomu.html Shimomura biography]
* [http://www.takedown.com/ Web site for the book]
*imdb name|id=0793737|name=Tsutomu Shimomura

References