Customer Reviews

The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I remember finding my first issue of 2600, in a bookshop attached to an enormous, secretive government laboratory. Those were in the days after ESS but before the Internet (well, we had NNTP and SMTP and telnet, but HTML hadn't been invented). It seemed so illicit and exciting, I bought every issue I could find for years, and even wrote one article for them.

Over time, I read it less and less, both because the writing was generally bad, and because the revelations were often so weak. The Best Of book fairly reflects the content of the magazine -- it gives a good sense for the passions of a particular technological subculture, but much of what is here is dross.

So many articles were clearly written by people who did not know much, and who punt when they get to difficult work. "The encryption is done by a custom chip and, uh, you might want to decompile the EEPROM and see what's in there." Or they contain only trivial information, made to fill many pages through the inclusion of anecdotes about how the writer came to know the trivial information. (Four pages on how you discovered that ATMs run OS/2? The entire article could have been reduced to four words: "Many ATMs run OS/2.") And then there are the political articles, most of which are screeds about how the government and/or big companies are coming to take your freedom away, and their desire to be paid for your pirated movies proves it.

In some cases, it is hard to imagine how a given article was selected for inclusion in the magazine, let alone for reprinting in the book. An essay on the mathematics of lotteries is particularly weak, using high school level combinatorics to argue that nobody should ever play. The article contradicts a much more interesting essay earlier in the book in which the weaknesses in certain lotteries were revealed and methods for exploiting these weaknesses detailed.

The best material in the book is historical -- the stories of individual hacks, arrests, court battles, etc., by the people involved. Emmanuel Goldstein could have printed just those and had a better book while saving 550 pages.

The hacker ethos is beautifully captured in this anthology. I've often skimmed 2600 at bookstores but it was only when I went through this hefty tome that I realized how deep and rich are the culture and accomplishments of the hacking community.

More than just the cartoonish representation in popular media, the hacking movement is a testament to creativity and innovation. Rightly so, this book is a celebration of cleverness and ingenious engineering instead of the more malevolent applications.

Emmanuel Goldstien and his companions have written alot about hacking over the years, but now most of their writings have come together in tome form.

If there was anything you ever wanted to know concerting what hacking was like before the explosion of the Internet, or how hackers have been portrayed with biased by the media and in some cases the government, this is a must read book.

If you subscribe to 2600: The Hacker Quarterly or if you patiently wait at the book store or mail box for a new issue every three months, you will definitely want to pick up this book.

It will be interesting to see in the future, online hacker zines to try their hand at publishing their writings such as TOTSE and Phrack.

I am attending Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) in NYC this week-end, and have just spent time with this volume. Unlike the individual issues, all of which I have had in my possession over the years, this volume is HUGE, readable, indexed, and priceless. I mean that--PRICELESS.

The publisher is to be saluted for not only putting a great deal of effort along with the editor, the founder of 2600 Magazine and also of the HOPE conference, for making this volume a true reference work. I was immediately impressed by the selection of "best of the best," the organization of the material, the index, and the fact that the publisher moved away from the micro-print that was used to keep costs down on the volume of knowledge being transmitted in the individual journal issues, and instead went for a high-end glossy, "just right" white space presentation that should be in every Information Technology library across the country, and is also a collectible for anyone who pretends to know anything at all about information INsecurity.

If you got this far, this lovely volume, easily worth $60, is a real value at the much lower price being offered, and I hope enough people buy it to occasion a reprint or a second volume.

It merits comment that this is not just a volume of hand-picked items from a single journal. The editor and his closest colleagues created a community of over 30,000 hackers (whom I have always said are like astronauts on the edge with the "right stuff") and this volume LITERALLY represents the 30,000 who were decades ahead of the US Government, which is still--as are corporations and public utilities--largely stupid about information system security, to include our Supervisory Control and Direction (SCADA) systems, all of them on the Internet.

For a really good time on what the Chinese know and can do that we cannot, see my Memorandum, easily found online, <Chinese Irregular Warfare oss.net>. They brought Dick Cheney's plane down over Singapore in Feburary 2007, and when he got off to stretch his legs, told him exactly what they could do, and what the US would not be allowed to do. Thus did the power of the information age move East.

Other great Hacker books (the last one is the ultimate public hack, taking back the power):
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, Twentieth Anniversary Edition
The Hacker Crackdown: Law And Disorder On The Electronic Frontier
The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders & Deceivers
The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage
Cybershock: Surviving Hackers, Phreakers, Identity Thieves, Internet Terrorists and Weapons of Mass Disruption
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Three DVDs, the first based on the real-life of the editor of this book:
Hackers
The Net
Live Free or Die Hard (Unrated Edition)

There are two sets of hackers: these, and the ones who came out of the Homebrew Garage Club (Lee Felsenstein, Eric Hughes, etc) and tended to created businesses rather than live free. Bill Gates is certainly in that number, as are Stewart Brand and others. The most famous Free/Open Hacker in the first group is Richard Stahlman, whose book on the origins of Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) is most recently complemented by Yochai Benkler's book on Wealth of Networks. With a tip of the hat to Nat at O'Reilly, open source software is Darwinism, while malware and proprietary software are Intelligent Design that is not so intelligence. VISTA by Microsoft is the biggest scam in history, for the first time forcing documents to be uniquely tied to the Microsoft operating system and not processable anywhere else. It is time for Microsoft to die, or come to its senses and put its money into F/OSS while monetizing the transactions. Bill Gates has called F/OSS communist. In my view, that makes Bill Gates a fascist. My money is on F/OSS.

2600: A Hacker Odyssey is an invaluable tome of knowledge, history and perspective on the hacker culture. It covers several topics of hacking, social engineering, telephones, security and more. If you're familiar with 2600 magazine, this is a must have. If not, get caught up with articles going all the way back to the beginning. Magazine Editor and author Emmanuel Goldstein and his crew have gone out of their way to organize such a great resource.

This is a great book. I am very glad that I bought it. You won't be disapointed.

I have followed 2600 for years, but am by far not old enough to have been there for the start of it, this ... I hate to call it a book, but it is... book fills in a lot of very interesting and important history of the estranged phreaker/haxxor communities alike through republishing many of the key articles featured in the magazine/news letter as well as some extended back history on the whole shebang that was probably know to very few before this book came out. Understanding the histories of your favorite subject is important, it keeps you from repeating mortal mistakes, and teaches you what kind of things to look for in future exploits and conquests... hopefully ones without malintent. Hacking and prheaking is about the quest for knowledge, hopefully if you are of the mindset to cause anarchy, destruction, or 'own' someone, this book will set you on the right path... plus it is much more challenging to make something than to break something, though, the latter is often part of the process for the first.
But regardless of your ideologies, this is an important book to consume if you are in any way interested in the dark underbelly of computers, networks, or phone systems.

I would like to first point out that information in this book and others does not mean that someone should go into someones system or other types of areas. Informing people on potentials that may hurt them in the future does not mean or imply someone will steal or hurt another. It's mealy for security. For example if you told someone their sneakers were untied that doesn't invoke a reaction that you wanted to steal them!
The problem with any form of security is it assumes that people breaking generally cannot think. It's been said that locks keep honest criminals out. Of course the other problem with this is if there's no forced point of energy that could nullify insurance claims!

I listen to 2600's Off the Hook and Off the Wall radio shows (streaming, wbcq, wbai, wusb). I encourage people to do so because they are brining up things that frankly most of the media won't. For example practically all locksets on the market are compromised via "bump keys" not a peep came out of the major media on this. Top rated mainstream locks are about 15 minutes for someone to open! Like it or not the more we obtain new technology the more we better get used to using it.

Getting into this book it has quite a large amount of articles going back decades. Much of this stems from the concept that somehow someone has created something that cannot be opened. Never assume something cannot be done with a piece of electronics!

I've experienced a number of interesting related things. I worked for a company that hosted all internal finance documents on a server that granted access not only to everyone in the building but everyone in the company! No password required! At the very least put a password, restrict access to certain terminals etc. I also worked for a major retailer that had back doors into their own systems from a hr portal people could view at home. Huge amounts of data could be found on policies and procedures that the management did not want people to know. All of this was access one could get at work without passwords so it wasn't even violating a law.I should say that I myself was hacked a number of years ago. Someone ended up saying I was selling a motorcycle on ebay using my account! Not cool but it was a learning experience.

Also 2600 makes good points as that it seems that we are no longer simply buying products but buying licenses. But since a license is an agreement it technically is NOT an agreement when there's only one party engaging.The innovations that have been achieved with technology should not be used by the government to data mine people and/or for companies to dictate their usage.

Most people believe that the products and services they buy and use will work properly and have (hopefully) integrity. When that trust is taken away it means everything is compromised. If a building collpases you can physically determine as to why but with a network it is not always apparent.

I highly recommend this book because it reinforces the mindset that technology is supposed to be free and open to use.

For anyone who has any interest in technology, this will be a great investment. I've only begun to dig in and already the stories are interesting - stories from an era before my time! The book is organized by decade. The stories are varied and quite fascinating, most of them also amusing or just plain hilarious. I look forward to reading more of it.

If you are a nerd or really into computers, this is a must. It will help you to understand and better appreciate the technology that today is taken quite for granted, simply because it's no longer impressive compared to what's out there now on the cutting edge, and because today's younger generations grew up with it. But think on this: any search website provides you with search results for the ENTIRE INTERNET in less than a second. Every second of every day, people travel through the air all over the entire world. Satellites communicate tirelessly with almost anything and provide us most of the everyday pleasures which we also take for granted - streaming video, online games, and phone service, just to name a few. Video conferencing is common and affordable, allowing you to talk to loved ones face-to-face from the other side of the world. Phones can now function as your media player, personal planner, and portable gaming system all in one. Many phones and other small devices today are orders of magnitude more powerful than the first mainframe computers, which took up an entire room of a building.

If any of this got you thinking or even curious about technology, give this book a read. You don't need to be a "hacker" to understand it. Most of the articles are written for (and sometimes, by) people who are not themselves hackers.

Overall, a great value and great stories contained within.

This books contains selected articles from the magazine 2600. It is not to be read as a technical guide, but as an anthology and history book about the culture of hacking. The book covers the history of hacking, from the early 1960's to the present. I would suggest this book to anyone looking for references on culture.

Please, don't buy this book if you expect a technical guide. Expect the stories of a community, the collective voices of thousands of people, sharing their ideas, challenges and guidance.