Kevin D. Mitnick: The Art of Intrusion

The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers by Kevin D. Mitnick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an interesting book that reminds you, in several different ways, of the importance of defense in depth. A few of the attacks were vague (as warned of by the author who collated the tales), and others just lacked relevant technical details. For example, "the outfit was running a Sun workstation, which is familiar ground for every hacker." - which type of hardware? What was the OS level? Was it unpatched? Still, the stories were entertaining.

My biggest gripe with the book was the lack of date ranges. The book was published in 2004, so I know they're all older than that - but with very few exceptions, I didn't know if an individual tale was taking place in 1992 or 2002. This makes a difference for understanding what types of attacks were being used and how relevant such an attack would still be today.

An overall fun read - not condescending to technical readers, but also provides details on the subject matter for a non expert. My friends and I did get some pretty good discussions out of a few of the stories.

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