Book details of 'The Art of Intrusion : The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders & Deceivers'

Title	The Art of Intrusion : The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders & Deceivers
Author(s)	Kevin D. Mitnick, William L. Simon
ISBN	0764569597
Language	English
Published	February 2005
Publisher	John Wiley & Sons

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The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'The Art of Intrusion : The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders & Deceivers':

Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
This book is a collection of stories that Kevin Mitnick got blackhats and intruders to send him. Kevin Mitnick is a speaker and trainer, interested in the betterment of all mankind, and persecuted by the government because he dared to try to tell the unsuspecting public ... something. Thus saith the "Acknowledgements." He is also concerned about the number of people who have attempted to promote and enrich themselves at the expense of the "Myth of Kevin Mitnick." Arguably one of the most assiduous of those is Kevin Mitnick. Chapter one is a very complex and involved story about cheating casinos by accessing and reverse engineering the on-board programming on a slot machine, and then using the information obtained about the machine's workings to predict likely payout conditions. This data is utilized in an intricate scheme involving distractors, convoluted shift operations, and special purpose computers built into shoes. Despite all of this detail, the only "countermeasures" suggested are to use tamper-resistant chips and boards on proprietary devices. Some crackers break into government and military computers, in chapter two's story. (Possibly at the behest of terrorists, maybe on request by an FBI informant. One of the lessons to be learned from this is that if you idolize Kevin you won't get caught: but all your friends will.) Chapter three gives the story of a couple of guys who learned about computers in prison: it's a bit of a relief that, while they were breaking rules, they weren't up to no good. (Lots of countermeasures are listed for this one, most having very little to do with the narrative.) The interesting thing about chapter four is that the story is told from both sides of the fence. Chapter five tells the story of Adrian Lamo. A couple of penetration test stories are in chapter six, neither as interesting as the ones in Winkler's "Spies Among Us" (see reviews). A couple of foreign intruders provide brief anecdotes in chapter seven. Chapter eight describes two targeted intrusions, and a bit about crackers and software piracy "warez" sites. Some details of scanning a network are given in chapter nine. Mitnick basically reprises "The Art of Deception" (see reviews) in chapter ten, with a socially engineered penetration. Some miscellaneous stories are in chapter eleven. In the preface, Mitnick is keen to let us know that blackhats everywhere are dying to get a fraudulent story past the king of social engineering, and so they check out every story for confirmatory details. Most of the stories can't be confirmed in much detail. They sound like good stories, but the particulars are sometimes unlikely. In the prison tale, for example, why could the principals get lots of network adapters and cabling (as well as sound cards), but have such a hard time with modems? If they were able to set up one networked computer with remote access, why not another? Ultimately, as with the earlier book, the tales develop a tiring sameness. Boy meets computer, boy hacks computers, boy either goes to jail or loses interest. The reader will probably lose interest much more quickly. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2005
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Book description:

Hacker extraordinaire Kevin Mitnick delivers the explosive encore to his bestselling The Art of Deception Kevin Mitnick, the world's most celebrated hacker, now devotes his life to helping businesses and governments combat data thieves, cybervandals, and other malicious computer intruders. In his bestselling The Art of Deception, Mitnick presented fictionalized case studies that illustrated how savvy computer crackers use "social engineering" to compromise even the most technically secure computer systems. Now, in his new book, Mitnick goes one step further, offering hair-raising stories of real-life computer break-ins-and showing how the victims could have prevented them. Mitnick's reputation within the hacker community gave him unique credibility with the perpetrators of these crimes, who freely shared their stories with him-and whose exploits Mitnick now reveals in detail for the first time, including: * A group of friends who won nearly a million dollars in Las Vegas by reverse-engineering slot machines * Two teenagers who were persuaded by terrorists to hack into the Lockheed Martin computer systems * Two convicts who joined forces to become hackers inside a Texas prison * A "Robin Hood" hacker who penetrated the computer systems of many prominent companies-andthen told them how he gained access With riveting "you are there" descriptions of real computer break-ins, indispensable tips on countermeasures security professionals need to implement now, and Mitnick's own acerbic commentary on the crimes he describes, this book is sure to reach a wide audience-and attract the attention of both law enforcement agencies and the media.