Customer Reviews

Stealing the Network: The Complete Series Collector's Edition, Final Chapter, and DVD

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I have just finished a marathon session of reading "Stealing the Network: The Complete Series Collector's Edition" and I have a very conditional review of it: It's a must-have if you don't already own the previous editions of these guilty pleasures. If you are already a fan, however, prepare to be let-down by the compilation.

The stories of the Stealing the Network series entertain in the same way that "war stories" from fellow hackers and security professionals often keeps a more intimate audience's interest: by mixing intriguing situations with juicy technical detail that can serve as a useful take-away. No one will accuse these books of containing fine literature, but that's not really the point. The stories are well written enough to keep you wanting to know what will happen next, while the technical information is as accurate as you're likely to see in fiction. Segments involving hacking are written and illustrated with enough attention to detail and length to serve as introductory educational tutorials for the topics (including web application hacking, reverse engineering, and wireless security). Most of these scenarios are believable as parts of larger-scale operations.

The first book of the series consists of independent short-stories based around characters of the authors' creation. The other three books in the compilation tell an over-arching story of a larger "operation", which involves many characters and their independent stories. The second book, "How to Own a Continent", is probably my favorite, along with the first ("How to Own a Box"), for keeping things simple, technical, and focusing on the individual stories. The third book, "How to Own an Identity" suffers from having worse editing then the rest of the series, and may lose some readers' interest. The fourth book ("How to Own a Shadow") reads a lot better, and wraps the overall story up well, however it focuses only on a relative handful of the series' characters.

As a compilation, this Collector's Edition leaves much to be desired. While the original description for this edition described the books contained within as being "author-annotated", this is not the case. The individual books are reproduced exactly as they were in their original editions, with no additional commentary from the authors, and with all the same problems as the originals. For example, screenshots in the first chapter of the first book are the same illegible black squares that were in the original edition of the book published 7 years ago. The annotations along with other features described in the original description (emails, photographs) that would provide a lot of interesting background material, would have made this compilation a must-buy.

The extra content that you are receiving is a brief new forward by Jeff Moss, and a "Final Chapter" by Ryan Russell. The new chapter is about 20 pages long, and gives the story-line a proper ending. I won't ruin anything about it, but I will say that I enjoyed it. Syngress has promised in the description of the book to make this content available separately in electronic form in six months.

The included DVD is described on the back-cover copy as being "full" of behind-the-scenes stories. In reality, you will only find 20 minutes of interviews with a few of the authors. I enjoyed these interviews, however, much like the print companion, I felt like more should have been done. Also beware that there are problems with the audio on the DVD. When played on my MacBook, there was noticeable crackling/popping in the audio of the DVD. The same noise was present, but less noticeable when played through a stand-alone DVD player through a television.

To summarize, I like the books, and find them as entertaining as I did when they were originally published, and I like the new hardcover binding. I do think that it is unfortunate that the "Stealing the Network: The Complete Series Collector's Edition" does not meet its potential to be more than the sum of its parts. There seems to have been intent at some point to add value to the set, but it wound up simply being a rough concatenation of the individual books.

If you haven't read these books, then I very much recommend picking up this set. It's 1,000 pages of interesting stories and technical material. If you already have the previous editions of the Stealing the Network Series, however, you might find it hard to justify paying for them again.

review Stealing the Network: The Complete Series Collector's Edition.

I loved this book. After receiving it, I could not put it away. This is a fiction book based on the current reality of network security. I think it should be called the Network Theft Bible. Why? This book consists of the four previously published books in the Stealing the Network series with the added final conclusion chapter. I also enjoyed the bonus DVD that came with the book.

Each fictional story provides true to life examples of how it could be done in real life, breaching the realm of matrix fiction and database reality. At first when I started reading, I didn't realize all of the stories were fiction. Many of the chapters pointed out gaps in my knowledge of network security.

Stealing the Network would be a great addition to any network security or IT training curriculum. It gives readers the grim reality of the future in IT security. In the right hands, this book could help hack-proof your network, or at least give you a fighting chance. As long as you read between the lines and comprehend the Easter eggs hiding in the examples and scenarios. This book is a great resource for ideas and tools to succeed in your position in network security.

Disclosure: The publisher of the book provided a free copy for this review.
thank you to Yarbrough, Melanie at TechTarget, ITKnowledgeExchange.com
for sending me this book for review...

As someone both technical and new to this series of books, I found the stories fascinating and hard to put down. Completely unlike any technical book I have ever read, and that is a good thing. Don't let the fictional story fool you -- you will find almost as much info here on relevant tools as you might in books that offer how-to tutorials, maybe even more since this book offers great insight into the minds of hackers trying to penetrate your networks, not just information on the tools they will use to do so. If this book were a movie, you might here the narrator whisper during the opening credits, "Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent... and the guilty." One of the few books I have read in years that I literally could not put down.

This was an excellent string of stories that made me lose quite a bit of sleep reading. I couldn't put it down until I was finally finished.

My only regret was the way the book ended. It turned too Hollywood for my tastes. That doesn't matter much, because the first part's, How to Own the Box, definitely my favorite, quality completely outweighed the slight deviation from "reality" towards the end.


All-in-all, for those that don't already own this series, this is the perfect gift for that special hacker in your life.

This book feels somewhat like The Greatest Hits collections that accomplished musicians release every once in a while, combining their good old material with a new bonus track to sell once again to devoted fans. Except the authors must be convinced that their previous books were so good, they all were their greatest hits.

The bonus track (The Final Chapter) is really what I was most interested in, having read the previous books and having been annoyed by the abrupt ending of the last one. I'm not going to say what exactly the ending is, but I must say I would feel better about the world in general if this chapter was never published. It finishes the story in a rush and is terribly anti-climatic. There were two pages of writing that described a single second worth of "climax" but it was so utterly disjoined from the story that it simply failed to make any impression.

As for it being a compilation of previous books in one package, I suppose it might make economical sense to buy this one on sale for <$60 than to get 4 of them separately. Other than that, there is no reason to get it.