Customer Reviews

Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw-By the Man Who Did It

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(49)

 

 

It's a breezy read, which is pretty amazing, given the number of obscure details that Shimomura feels compelled to share, such as his lunch menu. Still, when you team up an experienced author with a brilliant subject matter expert, it shouldn't be a surprise that the result is something which demands attention.

The definitive story of Kevin Mitnick has still not been told--this is an interesting story, but it is hardly conclusive. Furthermore, given the author's attitude--he's got an ego a mile wide--it's difficult to accept everything in this book at face value. Certainly, Shimomura and Markoff had every incentive during their journey to work towards creating an exciting story. A critical reader must consider the possibility that they manipulated events in order to increase sales of their expected book. It is certainly possible that this did not happen, but how can you know?

A greater understanding of what Mitnick represents is important in developing an ability to think in useful information security ways. He's become such a cultural icon--a criminal genious in the eyes of one side, and a victimized innocent on the other. Neither of these simplistic views is accurate. I believe that Mitnick probably is a genius, but not in technical terms. He's truly one America's great con-men, and his story teaches us a great deal about how gullible normal people can be, and how easy it is for a smooth-talker with selfish motivations to manipulate normal people. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from a study of Mitnick, although the writers of this text provide minimal assistance in helping the reader draw useful conclusions about the story. They are much more concerned with showing how incredibly clever Shimomura is, purportedly tracking Mitnick from ISP to ISP across the Internet, and eventually right to his doorstep with a junior G-man RDF unit.

A Mitnick story that I believe is much more balanced is Jonathan Littman's book, "The Fugitive Game : Online With Kevin Mitnick," which is unfortunately out of print. While Littman's personal relationship with Mitnick--Mitnick apparently just likes him--also should be a datapoint in your evaluation of what actually happened, I think he takes care to make any potential bias clear, and to avoid it.

Littman raises some interesting questions about Shimomura. I summarize my feelings about the purported Mitnick attack on Shimomura like this: 1) Shimomura makes it widely known that he has software on his Internet server that is of interest to hackers. 2) He leaves an incredibly obvious security hole open on his Unix server that any Unix newbie would have known to plug. 3) He sends the syslog (system logging) data to another host, which just so happens to be REALLY TIGHT. If he's capable of capturing syslog records in such a secure and non-compromisable way, why did he leave r-services running on the server with the source code? We will probably never know if he actually created a honeypot with the intention of entrapping Mitnick and writing a book about it, but what he did was fully consistent with such a plan. Fascinating, huh? I guess you'll need to read the book to make up your own mind, but if that is what really happened, how do you feel about subsidizing it through reading the book?

We'll also never know if Mitnick was really the one who hacked into Shimomura's Sun box using a technique that was previously considered theoretical. Somebody did, and Mitnick certainly was aware of it, but I personally don't believe that Mitnick is technically capable of writing such hack code himself, and I'm not sure that he was the one to perform the exploit. The best description I know of this exploit is found in Stephen Northcutt's book, "Network Intrusion Detection."

So it is an important story that can help you develop a better understanding of Internet security, and both security experts and non-specialists could benefit from having a realistic view of the significance of Mitnick. For the time being, this is the most detailed book available, and as an autobiographical account of one the participants in Mitnick's takedown, the book will always have a certain historical significance. But be an especially critical reader with this one. Think through the motivations of the authors, and consider the possibility that Mitnick is a genius at social engineering, but only an average technician. If that's the case, then what really did happen? Read Shimomura's account, and make up your own mind.

Shimomura comes off as a completely annoying egomaniac who downplays the contributions of others and inflates his own achievements. Why he's considered an "elite security expert" when he was hacked by old, known techniques, and boasts that he doesn't use a firewall, is beyond me. However, Shimomura did the world a favor in helping catch and stop Kevin Mitnick. In Jonathan Littman's fascinating book The Fugitive Game, Mitnick's best friend Lewis De Payne is quoted as calling Mitnick "a sociopath." If the choice is between rooting for a bratty diva or rooting for a sociopath, I'll pull for the bratty diva. The self-obsessed Shimomura allows co-author Markoff to treat us to WAY more personal details than we want to know about him, but the second half of the book delivers a few useful insights into backtracing hackers. This is a slog of a read, recommended only if you are a security professional or hackers are your favorite topic. To make it more fun, try reading it side by side with the superior yet conflicting account in Littman's The Fugitive Game -- and decide for yourself who you believe.

I've read just about every book on hacking & related topics, and this one really ranks at the very bottom end. Looking for information, perspective, or even technical clues? Forget it. The right choice for the elderly who know nothing about the net and are hooked on those 70ies good-hunts-bad tv serials.

I hated this book. Wading through the endless tripe about food and girlfriends really made Takedown a chore to read. Shimomura can't resist an opportunity to make himself seem like a God while everyone else is a complete dolt. His beratement of his own graduate student protege was thoughtless and cruel. I finally concluded that "Julia" is his loving name for his right hand. I can't imagine that anyone would want to be around so irritating a person.

In Takedown, Tsutomu Shimomura tells the story of his pursuit and the eventual capture by Federal agents of Kevin Mitnick, the fugitive hacker whom Shimomura believes attacked his computers on Christmas Day 1994.

Shimomura, a computational physicist and highly-regarded computer security expert was lionized in New York Times accounts by high-tech writer John Markoff, who is co-author of the book.

The book is written as Shimomura's first-person account of the events surrounding the attack and the ultimate capture of Mitnick in Raleigh, North Carolina on February 15, 1995.

Shimomura's account starts with, and often returns to, the chronicle of an awkward and messy personal relationship with Julia Menapace, a programmer, as she struggles to leave mutual friend John Gilmore for Shimomura. Interspersed is the account of Shimomura's discovery and high tech pursuit of a hacker who launches a very sophisticated attack on his home computers.

Attacking a renowned security expert at the National Super Computer Center certainly falls into the class "tugging on Superman's cape". The attack is a state-of-the-art assault using "IP spoofing", a technique which renowned experts had theorized, but which had never been observed (or, at least, reported) previously.

Incredibly, the attack is launched from toad.com, one of John Gilmore's computers at Toad Hall, his stately San Francisco Victorian home. Even more incredibly, Shimomura and Menapace are present at Toad Hall while the attack takes place, though their interest is not in the many computers in the toad.com domain.

Shimomura dismisses any notion that he might have been involved in attacking his own machine, a tack pursued by San Jose Mercury News reporter David Bank. Indeed, the great space given to the Shimomura-Menapace seems to have been offered by way making clear how Shimomura came to be on the very premises from which his own machines were hacked.

This is an important point: Shimomura later says that Mitnick had the skills to use, but not actually engineer the attacking software. Shimomura almost certainly does, and the toad.com coincidence is too much to believe without the context of his developing relationship with Menapace.

The trail of Shimomura's stolen files (including code that turns a celular telephone into a scanner capable of finding and eavesdropping on any conversation in a given cell site) leads a chase through cyberspace to The Well, a famous San Francisco BBS and Internet provider, and on to Seattle, Denver, San Jose and ultimately to an apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Shimomura emerges as a demanding, often intolerant taskmaster who chastizes colleagues, FBI agents and others as he single-mindedly pursues his quarry. The descriptions of the chase, replete with Shimomura's own clever hacks of systems at The Well and Netcom are fine stuff and well-paced.

Ultimately Shimomura gets his man and the real fun begins. A central tenet of the Littman book is that Shimomura and Markoff conspired to publicize Kevin Mitnick's hacking to take advantage of rampant Internet hype, the better to profit from lucrative book and movie deals.

It has been noted that Markoff, while highly respected, was not overly quick to point out his role in the affair in his Times' dispatches. Markoff was a victim of Mitnick's hacks and had been a longtime acquaintance of Shimomura's.

Mitnick has been described as a sad, computer-obsessed loner undeserving of the infamy generated by Markhoff's NYT stories. John Gilmore and others point to Shimomura's own hacking abilities. Did cyber-frontier correspondant Markoff single out the Shimomura/Mitnick affair as writers of an earlier epoch seized upon the OK Corral?

Takedown answers these questions with a straightforward "no" while Fugitive Game says "yes". The reader will be left to make up his/her own mind, but this tale is perhaps not through. Takedown, and the events surrounding its creation, stand as an object lesson in the strange new spaces that are beginning to open on a wired planet.

Takedown appealed to me as a story of overzelous CIA agents and computer crackers working for the government "taking down" threats to the internet and persoanl privacy. I thought I would be able to cheer on the Shimomura as he fought to protect the freedoms of america. I was petrified at what this guy did. He basically walked over the personal freedoms of anyone who got in the way of his inflamed ego, and sent Kevin to jail for copying cds! Then the guy never even gets a trial or bail hearing! I found myself reading this book and feeling sour all the way about the guys I was supposed to be cheering on untill I was hoping Shimomura went to jail. Also, it was written terribly, and later I found out that John Markoff never interviewed Kevin once! The whole things just shameful.
-JJ, Systems Analyist

I can't blame Tsutomo Shimomura for writing page after page of uninteresting and unrelated narrative in this "thriller," but I can blame the publishers for leaving it in. Most of the book proceeds in a plodding, second-by-second account of Shimomura's life during his pursuit of Mitnick. This might have been a good formula if either (a) - Shimomura's life were interesting (it isn't), or (b) - he was skilled enough to make it seem interesting (he isn't).

The book actually manages to build some excitement as authorities begin to close in, but the conclusion of Mitnick's take-down is a let-down.

By the way, did John Markoff read this book before he allowed his name to be included as co-author? It doesn't even seem like anyone edited it.

Every couple of pages I had to open the book to the back cover and whack the picture of Shimomura with my fingernail. This man's ego is so immense that it taints every facet of the story. He wants the reader to think he is incredibly cool by sharing pointless and unintersting details about his personal life. Is he smart? You would think so, considering his track record. But the reality is that he is quite stupid to think that writing an homage to himself wouldn't be received with contempt by most open-minded readers. This book is simple to describe: Shimomura is a genius with an enviable lifestyle, and everyone else is so stupid they might as well give up and stay the hell out of his way. Tsutomu, a Samurai? May I suggest you fall on your sword?

Had this book been fictional, it would have been enjoyable, if a little simpleminded and predictable. But to see this book portrayed as nonfiction, as the true story of a motley group of rough-around-the-edges but idealistic white-hat computer experts, seems like wishful thinking. The consistent idiot portrayals of FBI and other law enforcement personnel, coupled with the consistent genius of the authors, left me rolling my eyes.

It's very distracting to the reader that the entire story reads like propaganda in favor of the principal authors, whipping up an exciting chase more to stir up emotions (and perhaps a movie deal). Maybe in future years there will be a little more skepticism on the part of the public and we'll all realize that the good guys aren't all that spotless, and the bad guys were never really as bad as they were made out to be.

The tracking and capture of Kevin Mitnick could have been summarized in one, maybe two chapters. Instead, Shimomura wrote a very disorganized autobiography with an occasional paragraph about the tracking/capture of Kevin Mitnick. I'm guessing the editors knew this, but opted for a novel, instead of a magazine article.

Don't let the title fool you - the author was simply a self-involved victim that became part of the group that captured Mitnick, this time. Mitnick has been caught a few times before, without the author's help.

Tsutomo - I don't doubt that you are a highly skilled programmer, but there are undoubtedly better ones in the world. Keep that in mind when you deal with your friends and coworkers. If you truly have the attitude you show in your novel, I can't imagine why you still have any friends.