Ghost in the Wires - Kevin Mitnick

Book Review/Summary:

For those of you’ll who don’t know who Kevin Mitnick is, I’ll tell you’ll a bit about him. Kevin is considered to be the most notorious hacker on the planet. Sun Microsystems, Nokia, Motorola are some of the big companies he hacked into. He was so good that he talked Motorola employees to give him the source code. And all this he did with the help of technical hacking skills and social engineering (social engineering in the context of information security, is the psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information.) It is said that at one point in time Kevin had trade secrets worth more than a billion dollars. But Kevin wasn’t into hacking for money; he was in it for the pure adrenaline rush it gave him. People, who have seen the movie “Catch Me If You Can”, often find a resemblance between Kevin and the lead character played by Leonardo Dicaprio, with the exception that Kevin didn’t do it for money, which the Courts found difficult to accept when Kevin was arrested.

In this book, Kevin has described his journey from where he started, his initial hacks, to hacking multiple large organizations, running away from the FBI, beating the FBI on occasions to finally getting arrested. He has described in detail how he hacked companies, tricked employees to reveal confidential information, the methods and techniques he used, and the cat and dog chase that he and the FBI had. This book is a pure edge of the seat thriller, where we find ourselves cheering for Kevin on occasions.

Kevin like most children in their younger days was a big fan of magic. He was fascinated by the art of deception and enjoyed manipulating people into doing what he liked. During his younger days, he spent time reading and studying the book,” The Big Brother Game”, which taught him how to social engineer his way with people. Kevin soon realized that if he knew the right lingo, he could trick anyone into revealing the information he wanted. And the strange thing is, it worked in most of the cases. Kevin tricked phone companies, and on occasions, even police officers to reveal information and codes nobody else had access to.

For his very first hack, Kevin was punching his own bus transfers and commuting for free by the bus on the streets of California. And from there on began his hacking journey. He was just a teenager when he gained access to all the files of the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). After that, he tried to create a fake administrator account into one of the local research companies, and that’s when he was caught by the authorities for the first time.

From there on, Kevin started hacking extensively. He was 17 when he was first sent to the juvenile detention center. However, even that didn't stop him. Soon after his release, he got back to hacking. Getting caught again after some time, he was sentenced to three years of probation.

From there on, Kevin had multiple encounters with the law agencies. On occasions, he even listened to the calls made by the agencies. Soon Kevin was on the run and went to Las Vegas, where he created a fake identity by the name of “Eric Weiss”, the real name of Magician Harry Houdini, who was Kevin’s childhood hero. From Vegas, Kevin went to Denver and from there to Seattle. Kevin had a close encounter with the FBI in Seattle and thus decided to relocate again and went to Raleigh, North Carolina, where he was finally caught.

During Kevin’s trial, he was denied a bail hearing and even the right to check the evidence. This shocked his lawyer, who had never seen anything like this in the history of American Law, and thus the “Free Kevin” movement was born.

After the trial, Kevin decided to change his ways and was helping law agencies with computer security-related problems. He also started getting calls from multiple other agencies for the same, and thus after he was released, he started working as a consultant. He even gave talks as a leading Cyber Security Expert and has written the famous book, “The Art of Deception” as well.

This book is a true blue thriller and enjoyable for every single person who loves to read a good chase story. For my fellow technology geeks out there, this is a must-read as you’ll enjoy reading how Kevin hacked and talked his way into multiple systems. So do give it a read.

Happy Reading.