Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Book Review: Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick


When I worked as a reporter on the wiretapping trial of Anthony Pellicano in Los Angeles, there were these long dull parts of the trial that had to do with technically how the actual wiretaps where performed with the half cats and the phone boxes and such. Kevin Mitnick is so into that exact same crap that he’s gone to jail many times for screwing around with it. He didn’t make any money off it, either. It is completely inexplicable to me.
Kevin Mitnick is one of the world’s better known computer hackers, his autobiography Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker is an account of this very phenomena that still doesn’t clarify why he did what he did. The book does give a lot of insight into how he did what he did, which was as much through “social engineering”- or lying to get information out of people working at computer and phone companies, as it was through actual physical hacking. Alas, it was much like Pellicano- you had some very, very gullible people at the phone companies.
Actually, a lot of it was the exact same crap that tended to put me to sleep in Pellicano. Mitnick was into getting information out of the DMV which was a lot of what Pellicano went down for.
When he gets out of jail in the end he gets a happy ending because he makes a fortune in speaking engagements, but he could not have seen this coming and he was in prison for years.
Are phone systems that interesting to you, guy? I’m telling you man, I was nearly asleep when they did the whole bit about the phone boxes in Pellicano. My dad does consulting work for the utilities that gets into some fairly dry stuff, but he gets paid to do it. I’m a certified firearms instructor my grandfather did the M14, even the engineering in guns is more interesting.
WTF?
Don’t get it.
Fairly readable book though.

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