"The Art of Intrusion" by Kevin Mitnick & William L. Simon

One would think that a certified computer geek like myself would be a huge fan of the myriad of action movies and novels depicting supra-intelligent hacker-types breaking into all sorts of high security corporations. Unfortunately, most media is so absurd and devoid of any reality that I can hardly even sit through it. For this reason, I am forced to turn to non-fiction for my fix of high tech stories. "The Art of Intrusion" relates the stories of numerous hackers. There is an attempt in each chapter of giving some security advice with regards to the chapter's exploit. But clearly the purpose of the book is more to entertain than to inform, which is the opposite of their previous book, "The Art of Deception." Kevin Mitnick's knowledge of the subject and hackers' willingness to share their stories with such a prolific name, make for a lot of very interesting stories. And while William L. Simon clearly attempts to speak to a wide non-techie audience, he does not do so at the expense of alienating his more informed readers. All in all, I found this book even better than the previous. I look forward to Kevin Mitnick's planned memoirs in the next year or two.