The first phrase is what he did. The second phrase asks you to imagine how silly that sounds in today's world. (i.e. imagine that all it took back then was a phone number)
Kevin was from a different time. Back then security wasn't even an afterthought. He was exploring the shiny new thing of digital worlds, with an attacker mindset, and that was new at the time (and quite unique to a small set of humans back then).
