Great read! | The Watchman: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Serial Hacker Kevin Poulsen

An inside look at hacker culture | The Watchman: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Serial Hacker Kevin Poulsen | Jonathan Littman

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	• The Watchman: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Serial Hacker Kevin Poulsen Jonathan Littman Little, Brown and Company, 1997 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 31 reviews view larger image
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An absorbing story...

Jonathan Littman's The Watchman is well written and engaged me enough to read it in one sitting. I wanted for some time to learn more about Kevin Poulsen having heard about some of the exploits attributed to him. This story accomplishes that in a compelling way and manages to be pertinent years later. This is required reading for anyone wishing to know the darker side of the hacker sub-culture, about Kevin Poulsen, Ron Austin or Justin Petersen and some of their creative mischief and crimes.

Great read!

Computer security is not only part of my job, but a bit of a hobby of mine, so I love reading books like this. This book was fun to read and I read it in pretty much one night. This is a rare feat for me... I barely ever read books in one night, much less a few nights. So that should tell you how much fun the book was to read.

The reason for 4 stars instead of 5? 1) It only comes in a hard cover instead of a paper back? At least, I couldn't find a paper back anywhere! 2) It's obvious (and Poulsen has commented on this) that the author has made up some things that Kevin said or did. However, this is obviously to keep the book interesting and make for a better read... So, don't take everything that the author says to heart, but the underlying story is still pretty much what happened from what I understand and have found to be true, anyway.

Great read, thrilling, exciting and fun. If you like stories about computers, security and hackers.

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An inside look at hacker culture

I had no idea who Kevin Poulson was when I picked up this book. All I knew was that I wanted to read a book which dealt with computer hackers and this book had been recommended to me by a friend of mine. Suffice to say I was not disappointed.

Littman writes a compelling story about Kevin Poulson, who is perhaps the second best known hacker in North America best Kevin Mitnick. And what makes this book such an interesting read is that it is a modern day, and real life, version of the Fugitive. But unlike the Fugitive, Kevin is hunted to tapping in to phone systems and learning much more about the telephone networks than the average, non-telco employee, should be allowed to.

The book is filled with first hand accounts and funny anecdotes of the escapades that Kevin and some of his company managed to pull off. After reading the book, I was left scratching my head in disbelief. It was almost as if the feats Kevin was able to accomplish were too good to be true. But in the end, that's what makes this book so great.

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The ultimate hacker - a true crime story

If you like true crime stories, this one is for you. I wont try and debate the truth of the book, (it's a controversial subject)because I dont know the truth. But I know this is a good story, even if there are a few fabrications here and there.

I am a computer geek at heart, so I especially loved this book. But even my non-technical girlfriend loved it, it's a great story.

The storytelling in this book is magnificent, you really get a feel for his personality right off the bat, and the story is filled with excitement and suspense, and pardon the cliche, is impossible to put down. The first time I picked up the book, I sat and read it to the end, despite my best efforts to walk away from it.

The imagery is great, and you start to feel a closeness and sympathy for Kevin, and you forget at the time he was a criminal. You hope he doesn't get caught, and cringe when he does. You watch him do well, and slip, like an addict who can't take control, and you start to feel an understanding of what it was like for him.

Overall, I would say from a technical standpoint, it's a great read. From a true crime perspective, great read as well. Good all around book that's entertaining from start to finish.

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a decent read but woefully inaccurate

I had Kevin for dinner on 1 July 1999. It seems he was about to marry my wife's first cousin, who--at the time--was an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Neither was I impressed by Kevin's putative depth of knowledge, nor did he indicate that this book bore the least relationship to his exploits. I was just disappointed all around. I believe my wife made her Polynesian meatballs.

Written like a California noir thriller by way of William Gibson, The Watchman brings to life the wildest, most audacious crime spree in the history of cyberspace. Busted as a teenager for hacking into Pac Bell phone networks, Kevin Poulsen would find his punishment was a job with a Silicon Valley defense contractor. By day he seemed to have gone straight, toiling on systems for computer-aided war. But by night he burglarized telephone switching offices, adopting the personae and aliases of his favorite comic-book anti heroes - the Watchmen. When authorities found a locker crammed with swiped telecommunications equipment, Poulsen became a fugitive from the FBI, living the life of a cyberpunk in a neon Hollywood underground. Soon he made the front pages of the New York Times and became the first hacker charged with espionage. Littman takes us behind the headlines and into the world of Poulsen and his rogues' gallery of cyberthieves. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with Poulsen, his confederates, and the authorities, he spins a thrilling chase story on the electronic frontier. The nation's phone network was Poulsen's playground. On Los Angeles's lucrative radio giveaways, Poulsen worked his magic, winning Porsches and tens of thousands of dollars. He secretly switched on the numbers of defunct Yellow Pages escort ads and took his cut of the profits. And he could wiretap or electronically stalk whomever he pleased, his childhood love or movie stars. The FBI seemed no match for Poulsen. But as Unsolved Mysteries prepared a broadcast on the hacker's crimes, LAPD vice stumbled onto his trail, and an undercover operation began on Sunset Strip.

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