The Art of Intrusion
by Kevin D. Mitnick, William L. Simon · first published 2005
75% recommend19% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
A collection of social engineering and security war stories rather than a how-to. It is a fun read that shows where real vulnerabilities lie, especially how people, not technology, are the weak point.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Hacker extraordinaire Kevin Mitnick delivers the explosive encore to his bestselling The Art of Deception Kevin Mitnick, the world's most celebrated hacker, now devotes his life to helping businesses and governments combat data thieves, cybervandals, and other malicious computer intruders. In his bestselling The Art of Deception, Mitnick presented fictionalized case studies that illustrated how savvy computer crackers use "social engineering" to compromise even the most technically secure computer systems. Now, in his new book, Mitnick goes one step further, offering hair-raising stories of r
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If you're looking for other stories, The Art of Deception (Mitnick specific) and The Art of Intrusion (not all Mitnick) have a ton.
on “Kevin Mitnick has died” ↗You can try some Kevin Mitnick's books. "Ghost in the wires" is his biography with a lot of fun stories, recommended. "The art of intrusion" is about more technical hacking, lot of war stories from all over the world. "The art of deception" is about Social Engineering, I have not read it yet... but looks amazing.
on “What to read?” ↗If you are into this kind of stuff, I'd highly recommend Kevin Mitnick's book 'Art of intrusion'. The first chapter describes how a group of engineers (I'd think somewhere in the 80s, early 90's) reverse engineered a popular Las Vegas poker machine, and managed to walk away with milions in profit.
on “Show HN: Hacking slot machines with a buttonhole camera and brute-force search” ↗For techie non-fiction stuff, I liked both of Kevin Mitnick's books, probably The Art of Intrusion more. They feature (probably slightly fictionalized) stories of creative thinkers who exploited systems, for evil or otherwise. it was very interesting to see how these creative people used their intelligence…
on “Ask HN: My Birthday's Tomorrow, I Need Book Recommendations” ↗For some interesting reading, go pick up a Kevin Mitnick book like Art of Intrusion. It's not a technical how-to but a collection of social engineering stories that are fun reads. Gives you a lot more insight into where the real vulnerabilities are.
on “Ask HN: How did you get started in Network Security/Penetration Testing?” ↗It's also for security. If you've read Kevin Mitnick/Irea Winkler books like Art of Intrusion or Corporate Espionage (1997!) they say monitoring a competitor job ads is great to learn about: 1. Current trends. 2. Infrastructure And more, I can't recall....great books too.
on “Apple deleted a job listing that hints at plans to cut Qualcomm and Intel chips” ↗The Art of Deception and The Art of Intrusion by Mitnick were interesting to me when I read them a long time ago. They really show how important humans are to a system. You can have high tech security equiptment and all it takes is someone to go…
on “Ask HN: Favorite computer science, software engineering papers and essays” ↗Interesting but it ended so.. abruptly! I was hoping for a LOT more. I think if you're interested in this subject area you must get a copy of Ghost In The Wires, and The Art of Intrusion by Kevin Mitnick.
on “A team paid to break into top-secret bases” ↗Art of intrusion - Kevin Mitnick
on “Ask HN: Favorite true story tech book?” ↗…Frontier - Katie Hafner & John Markoff Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology - Steven Levy Ghost In The Wires - Kevin Mitnick The Art of Deception - Kevin Mitnick The Art of Intrusion - Kevin Mitnick Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand It's Not About The Bike - Lance Armstrong Ultramarathon Man - Dean Karnazes Charles…
on “Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?” ↗…optimizing their standing in the system, are they not? I guess I am also not quite the "real world" systems hacker, because often it seems to entail taking advantage of somebody else? Ever since I read "The Art Of Intrusion", I remember it's lessons in all sorts of situations. Like today I was standing in line for cinema tickets, which were likely to be sold out before my turn. It would have been fun to try something, but…
on “Please share your (non-computer) system hacker stories” ↗The stealing the network series is awesome. I just read "The Director" which was decent. There are a lot of non-fiction books that read the same as a fiction though; Ghost in the Wires, The Art of Intrusion (really fun read), Fatal System Error, and of course if you haven't read Cuckoo's Egg, you should. Reamde by Neal Stephenson is also good.
on “Ask HN: Books Like “Stealing the Network” or “Jeff Aiken Novels”” ↗…Fatal System Error Founders at Work Masters of Deception Cuckoo's egg (one of my favs) Art of Social Engineering The Watchmen Hackers: Heroes of the Computer revolution (new one put out by O'reiley) The Art of Intrusion (loved) The Art of deception (meh) As you can see mostly security related. Most of the books on the list, do have a lot of "should read" qualities in there, but also fall heavily into the "want to read"…
on “Ask HN: Reading Non-Fiction” ↗The Art of Intrusion - Kevin Mitnick http://www.amazon.com/Art-Intrusion-Exploits-Intruders-Decei...
on “Ask HN: What are you reading right now?” ↗…finding flaws in the pseudo-random number generators used to select random cards. These people have given anonymous interviews and an entire description of their adventure to Kevin Mitnick for his book The Art of Intrusion. They also claim to have never been caught, thanks in part to the fact they stopped exploiting it after they won "enough" money! http://www.amazon.com/Art-Intrusion-Exploits-Intruders-Decei...
on “Use a Software Bug to Win Video Poker? That’s a Federal Hacking Case” ↗