No such thing as ethical hacking | The Fugitive Game: Online with Kevin Mitnick

Good but...... | The Fugitive Game: Online with Kevin Mitnick | Jonathan Littman

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	• The Fugitive Game: Online with Kevin Mitnick Jonathan Littman Little, Brown and Company, 1997 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 59 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

reads like a thriller

This is the best book I read about Kevin Mitnick's exploits, time on the run, and eventual arrest. It reads like a thriller, is true to it's subject material, and is informative too. If you want to know the story behind one of the country's most noted computer hackers, this is the book to read. (Until of course he publishes his memoirs :-)).

No such thing as ethical hacking

Face it, whether you're a white hat or a black hat - hacking is hacking. Alas, the term "ethical hacker" is merely a way for those breaking the law to rationalize their behavior. Littman did a great job of exposing this great debate in the book. In the field of information security, Mitnick is known to all of us as the king of social engineering. Let's be completely honest (even Mitnick and Littman exposed this in the book)... Kevin is not good at hacking but rather at exploiting the human factor. That is - humans are the weakest link in this whole information security thing - not the systems themselves. You want to design a secure system? - educate your users, administrators, managers and executives on how to be wise and vigilant and adhere to a sound security policy.

Thank you to Mr. Littman for showing us the many sides of Mitnick's life. I look forward to reading about Poulsen next in "The Watchman".

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Good but......

Well, maybe it's because I always wanted to live the new economy revolution that happened there in that time and I always wanted to be "connected" even if I was too young and my parents could not understand my point. I'm a bit "obsessed" by this story and not just because there's still something to be clarified, but because the scenario and the period where these events are based mean something in the Internet history. I've red the books, the documents, the reports, the old post messages and nearly everything that is available on the net, and I can say that definitely this book add something more to all of that. I like the author's perspective as well because he wants to understand what's really behind. Of course, as the author's himself said, the book is based mainly on dialogues and interviews with all the people involved in the story, but at the end I hoped there was the chance to extract more details about who really attacked Shimo and why Kevin was handling Shimo's files. I got the feeling that all the phone calls reported were at the end too dispersive and distant from the real secrets of the story. But I believe the author did that to point out what was really behind Kevin's way of behaving, and what really was his point of view, and the book is really successfull in that. Probably what left me a bit disappointed is that I hoped at the very end the author could ask Kevin something more to get more light on all the story after his capture, but probably just my expectations were too high.

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Great read, again.

The same author wrote "The Watchman" which is about Kevin Poulsen. I loved that book and this book.

It's good to read a more reliable story on Mitnick than what came from garbage that John Markoff wrote. You actually get to hear the stories the way Mitnick explains them. He trusted Littman (the author) enough during his hiding time to call him and talk to him for hours at a time and explain what he's done, what he didn't do and his life on the run. You also get to see snippets of how corrupt John Markoff sounds during this entire thing and I don't think Littman even meant to do that.

I do like "The Watchman" a bit better... at times reading the long conversations between Mitnick and Littman can get a bit repetitive or boring... However, most of the time it's very interesting.

I'd suggest reading "The Watchman" first and then reading this book, as you'll notice a whole bunch of tie-in's from the characters in that book and how they relate to Mitnick. I found that fascinating how everyone was linked in one way or another...

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intriguing book!

I saw the movie "Track Down" with Skeet Ulrich and that intrigued me enough to want to read this book.

I really enjoyed this book and found it very informative and fair to the subjects, since it is a true story.

highly recommend if you are interested in computers and those that hack, just from the vicarious thrill, as well as how to protect yourself online!

The Fugitive Game introduces Kevin Mitnick moments before the fugitive hacker surrenders himself to FBI agents who have located him with the help of the so-called cybersleuth, Tsutomu Shimomura. The prologue to Jonathan Littman's book kicks off with the epic climax that came to tantalize movie producers and video game designers and launch magazine covers worldwide. However, this is not another version of Takedown. The Fugitive Game is a compelling, journalistic look at the events that led up to the capture of Kevin Mitnick, and no portion of the folklore surrounding the case is left untouched by the book's critical eye. The real gold of this volume comes from the nearly 200 pages of conversations with Kevin Mitnick himself, most of which were transcribed while he was fleeing from the law. Over the course of Mitnick's flight from justice, Littman documents and examines the public transformation of Mitnick into Public Enemy Number One, mostly through the efforts of the New York Times writer John Markoff. Markoff's involvement in the eventual capture of Mitnick by Shimomura is also scrutinized at length. Littman even questions the now-legendary Christmas Day break-in of Shimomura's computer, citing reports that the "IP spoofing technique," which Markoff claimed was so ingenious, was in fact a well-known method of gaining access to systems for years. This is a brilliant look at a compelling individual and also the manufacturing of media events and the inept efforts of law enforcement to prepare for the next wave of high-tech crime.

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