Ghost in the Wire – Book review

I found the book, Ghost in the Wire” by Kevin Mitnick, Steve Wozniak, William L. Simon, when reading a review by Tony Howlett in a blog entry through an email subscription I have with WindowsIT Pro magazine. The link to the article is http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/fearless-security-blog-20/blog/fearful-security-140786.

From a practical side, Tony sums it up as

…that’s the only thing that we can’t spend technology dollars on to fix. The people element. No matter how many firewalls, IDSs, IPS and malware detectors you have, all it takes is one well meaning employee to bypass it all.

The book is about Kevin Mitnick’ s hacking adventures. Kevin ascribes his successes to social engineering and intelligence. From my reading of the book, I came to see how he learns and refines his craft in hacking. He’s smart, manipulative and has problems identifying appropriate societal boundaries.

Interesting anecdote recounts his meeting Ivan Boesky, who served time for insider trading, in prison. Ivan asked him why he did it for no personal gain, like Where’s the money?”

He was a thief. He entered places illegally and took things that we not his property, so I don’t feel sorry for his imprisonment . What bothers me is how people in his circumstance profit from their illegal activities in today’s world! He’s now a legitimate hacker, has a consulting business and gets paid to talk about himself. I don’t get it?

I wouldn’t read this book again given an opportunity nor would I recommend you waste your time doing so. If you come upon it, flip to the back and scan through the descriptions and pictures of the people in his life.

I guess I would feel uncomfortable interacting with him if I were on a cross-country airplane flight, something about him just wouldn’t seem right. But perhaps it’s only me.

By the way, the systems he hacked were VMS and Unix/Linux (Sun, DEC, PacBell, cellular providers) – Windows (Microsoft)wasn’t mentioned.”