Excellent book. A true-life digital mystery with interesting characters. I was not able to put it down once I started it. I read it a few years ago so I don't remember the details but I remember it was a fascinating look at a cyber hacker and the cyber detective who catches. This book got a poor review on Amazon.com but I really liked it. Mitnick has now written his own book which I'm interested in reading. ( )

This is a very good book about one of my favorite famous hackers of all time (Kevin Mitnick) & he is now a well known legal computer security professional. ( )

The book not only depicts the events that took place as Mr Shimomura tracked a computer hacker that had broken into his computer systems but also background information on life during the weeks that the chase took place. It is quite clear that the author tries to downplay all his own mistakes and instead puts focus on errors by other people that were involved. Contributions by other than Mr Shimomura are downplayed in significance while his own actions are described as genial. The result is that he is painting a quite arrogant picture of himself - supposedly the good guy. It is written to not require any background knowledge on computer security but will probably be more enjoyable and less cryptic if the reader know basic UNIX operating system and network security.

The traces of John Markoffs writing and editing are obvious in the demonizing of the hacker and hacker culture. Any interested reader should not only read this but also Jonathan Littman's "The Fugitive Game" to get a more complete picture. ( )

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