Re:How would it have helped Mitnick? (Score 1)

Mitnick is quite famous for his successful TCP Hijacking (or maybe more accurately described as TCP SYN / Sequence Number) attack that compromised Tsutomu Shimomura. He is rightly associated with social engineering, but he had technical chops as well.
http://www.phreak.com/archives/security/ip_seq/shi momur.txt