Kevin Mitnick, who on the daybreak of widespread web utilization within the mid-Nineties turned the nation’s archetypal laptop hacker — obsessive however intelligent, shy however mischievous and threatening to an unsure diploma — and who later used his expertise to grow to be “chief hacking officer” of a cybersecurity agency, died on Sunday in Pittsburgh. He was 59.

Kathy Wattman, a spokeswoman for the cybersecurity firm he partly owned, KnowBe4, mentioned the trigger was pancreatic most cancers.

Described by The New York Occasions in 1995 as “the nation’s most wished laptop outlaw,” Mr. Mitnick was a fugitive for greater than two years.

He was searched for gaining unlawful entry to about 20,000 bank card numbers, together with some belonging to Silicon Valley moguls; inflicting tens of millions of {dollars} in injury to company laptop operations; and stealing software program used for sustaining the privateness of wi-fi calls and dealing with billing data.

In the end, he was caught and spent 5 years in jail. But no proof emerged that Mr. Mitnick used the recordsdata he had stolen for monetary acquire. He would later defend his actions as a excessive stakes however, in the long run, innocent type of play.

“Anybody who likes to play chess is aware of that it’s sufficient to defeat your opponent,” he wrote in a 2011 memoir, “Ghost within the Wires.” “You don’t should loot his kingdom or seize his property to make it worthwhile.”

On the time of Mr. Mitnick’s seize, in February 1995, the pc age was nonetheless younger; Home windows 95 had not but been launched. The Mitnick Affair drove a fretful worldwide dialog not nearly hacking, but additionally concerning the web itself.

“As a media celeb, the web is now critically overexposed,” the Occasions columnist Frank Wealthy complained in March 1995, blaming the hoopla surrounding Mr. Mitnick.

Mr. Mitnick’s most spectacular crimes have been his makes an attempt to evade seize by the authorities. In 1993, he gained management of cellphone techniques in California that enabled him to wiretap the F.B.I. brokers pursuing him and confuse their efforts to trace him. At one level they raided what they thought was Mr. Mitnick’s residence, solely to search out there a Center Jap immigrant watching TV.

On one other event, utilizing a radio scanner and software program, Mr. Mitnick found that F.B.I. brokers have been closing in on him. He fled his house, and when the authorities arrived, they discovered a field of doughnuts ready for them.

Mr. Mitnick bumped into hassle on Christmas Day 1994, when he stole emails from a fellow hacker named Tsutomu Shimomura and taunted him. When he discovered of the assault, Mr. Shimomura suspended a cross-country ski journey he was on and volunteered to assist monitor down Mr. Mitnick.

What The Occasions referred to as a “duel on the web” ensued. Mr. Mitnick was the amoral savant, praising the tech expertise of his adversary, whereas Mr. Shimomura was the freelance gunslinger with a conscience, accusing Mr. Mitnick of violating the codes of the web group.

“This sort of conduct is unacceptable,” he informed The Occasions.

Mr. Shimomura, utilizing software program he had designed that reconstructed a person’s laptop periods, together with cellphone scanning tools, proceeded to find Mr. Mitnick.

Mr. Mitnick was lastly captured by the F.B.I. and charged with the unlawful use of a phone entry system and laptop fraud. “He allegedly had entry to company commerce secrets and techniques value tens of millions of {dollars},” Kent Walker, an assistant U.S. lawyer in San Francisco, mentioned on the time. “He was a really massive menace.”

In 1998, whereas Mr. Mitnick awaited sentencing, a gaggle of supporters commandeered The Occasions’s web site for a number of hours, forcing it to close down. A Occasions know-how reporter, John Markoff, additionally turned a part of the imbroglio, reporting quickly after the arrest that Mr. Mitnick had gained entry to Mr. Markoff’s e mail as revenge for Mr. Markoff’s reporting on his actions.

Mr. Mitnick reached plea agreements in 1996 and 1999, which included pleading responsible to laptop and wire fraud. He was launched from jail in 2000 on the situation that he chorus from utilizing a pc or cellphone for 3 years with out the permission of his probation officer.

After leaving jail, Mr. Mitnick learn out an announcement of self-defense. “My crimes have been easy crimes of trespass,” he mentioned. “My case is a case of curiosity.”

Kevin David Mitnick was born within the Van Nuys part of Los Angeles on Aug. 6, 1963, and grew up in that metropolis. His dad and mom, Alan Mitnick and Shelly Jaffee, divorced when he was 3 years outdated, and he was raised by his mom, a waitress.

Mr. Mitnick was a heavyset and lonely boy who, by the age of 12, had discovered freely journey the bus utilizing a $15 punch card and clean tickets fished from a dumpster. In highschool he developed an obsession with the internal workings of the switches and circuits of phone firms. He pulled pranks at a excessive degree, managing to program the house cellphone of somebody he didn’t like so that every time the road was answered, a recording requested for a deposit of 25 cents.

He confirmed a willingness to violate the legislation flagrantly, breaking right into a Pacific Bell workplace as an adolescent and stealing technical manuals.

Within the late Nineteen Eighties, he was convicted twice of hacking into company laptop techniques, resulting in time in jail and counseling for dependancy to computer systems.

But Mr. Mitnick usually took a surprisingly old style strategy to high-tech thievery. He steadily impersonated authority figures over the cellphone and in e mail, persuading low-level firm officers handy over passwords that gave him entry to secret data.

Mr. Mitnick’s first marriage, in his early 20s, ended rapidly in divorce. In 2015, he met Kimberly Barry at a cybersecurity convention in Singapore, and the 2 quickly started courting. They married final yr, after he discovered of his most cancers analysis. She survives him and is pregnant along with his first little one.

The yr Mr. Mitnick was launched, The Occasions reported on an “uncommon association” during which he was employed by a California faculty he had “victimized” to seek the advice of on cybersecurity. Mr. Mitnick referred to as it “rent the hacker.”

Now it’s commonplace for hackers to search out work by exposing the vulnerabilities of governments and firms. KnowBe4, the corporate Mr. Mitnick partly owned, describes itself as “the supplier of the world’s largest safety consciousness coaching.” The corporate says {that a} cybersecurity coaching curriculum that Mr. Mitnick designed is utilized by greater than 60,000 organizations.

Writing in The New York Occasions Guide Assessment about information privateness, the journalist and writer Amy Webb in 2017 recognized that once-hunted hacker with an epithet that will have baffled members of legislation enforcement and newspaper readers within the Nineties: “the web safety knowledgeable Kevin Mitnick.”

Livia Albeck-Ripka and Orlando Mayorquin contributed reporting.