The Cyberthief And The Samurai

Kevin Mitnick was the most wanted hacker in the world. He was called "The Condor," and "Mr. Cyberpunk." He was a rebel. A loner. A poor kid from California thumbing his nose at society as he hacked into phone companies, international corporations--and possibly even the U.S. Military Command. The FBI couldn't stop him. And they sure as hell couldn't catch him. Then Kevin Mitnick did the "impossible." He got into the personal home computer of the man considered by many a master of cybersecurity, Tsutomu Shimomura. That computer held data for advanced security systems and top secret intrusion and surveillance tools. Shimomura--a modern-day intellectual samurai--decided Mitnick had to be stopped. He had the high-tech gadgets and the brains to do it. Now the leading expert on computer crime made it a matter of honor to bring America's most notorious computer criminal to justice. But the Information Highway is the perfect place to run, hide and get away with dirty tricks... Let the battle begin.

The true story of Kevin Mitnick, a loner who hacked into phone companies, international corporations, & possibly even the U.S. Military Command. When he got into the personal home computer of Tsutomu Shimomura, a master of cybersecurity whose computer held data for advanced security systems & top secret intrusion & surveillance tools, Shimomura decided Mitnick had to be stopped. But the information highway is the perfect place to run, hide -- & get away with very dirty tricks.

New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.

In Sunnyvale, California, in 1979, Jeff Goodell's family lived quietly on Meadowlark Lane, unaware that their town was soon to become ground zero in the digital revolution. Over the course of the next decade, as Silicon Valley boomed, the Goodell family unraveled. Splintered by their parent's divorce, Jeff and his siblings careen toward self-destruction, while their parents end up on opposite sides of the technological divide: their mother succeeds beyond her wildest dreams at "a small company with a dopey rainbow-colored logo," called Apple, while their father refuses to keep up with the times and loses his landscaping business. Affecting and personal, Sunnyvale is a portrait of one family's fate in a brutally Darwinian world. It is also a thoughtful examination of what has happened to the American family in the face of the technological revolution.

Manipulative communication—from early twentieth-century propaganda to today’s online con artistry—examined through the lens of social engineering. The United States is awash in manipulated information about everything from election results to the effectiveness of medical treatments. Corporate social media is an especially good channel for manipulative communication, with Facebook a particularly willing vehicle for it. In Social Engineering, Robert Gehl and Sean Lawson show that online misinformation has its roots in earlier techniques: mass social engineering of the early twentieth century and interpersonal hacker social engineering of the 1970s, converging today into what they call “masspersonal social engineering.” As Gehl and Lawson trace contemporary manipulative communication back to earlier forms of social engineering, possibilities for amelioration become clearer. The authors show how specific manipulative communication practices are a mixture of information gathering, deception, and truth-indifferent statements, all with the instrumental goal of getting people to take actions the social engineer wants them to. Yet the term “fake news,” they claim, reduces everything to a true/false binary that fails to encompass the complexity of manipulative communication or to map onto many of its practices. They pay special attention to concepts and terms used by hacker social engineers, including the hacker concept of “bullshitting,” which the authors describe as a truth-indifferent mix of deception, accuracy, and sociability. They conclude with recommendations for how society can undermine masspersonal social engineering and move toward healthier democratic deliberation.

This timely handbook traces the development of cyber capabilities from their roots in information warfare and cryptology to their potential military application in combat. Cyber warfare is gaining prominence as a serious tactic in military conflicts throughout the world. And, as the most network-dependent nation on earth, the United States is the most vulnerable. Military expert and author Paul J. Springer examines the many facets of cyber combat—from the threats of information exposure that American civilians encounter on a daily basis, to the concern of keeping up with the capabilities of China and Russia, to the inherent dangers in ignoring cyber threats. This essential reference—the only of its kind to include an overview of other cyber warfare literature—emphasizes the importance of cyber operations in modern conflicts, detailing the efforts that have been made by government agencies to create networks that are secure. Noted experts in the field weigh in on the problems of attribution during a cyber attack, the detection of cyber intrusions, and the possible solutions for preventing data breaches. The book features profiles of theorists, commanders, and inventors; as well as organizations dedicated to cyber attacks, including government and military operations, industrial cyber security companies, and academic centers.

Modern forensic science has significantly affected historical debate over some well-known past crimes or mysteries, utilizing modern DNA, nuclear, and chemical analyses to reexamine the past. This book takes an in-depth look at 20 significant cases where investigators have applied new forensic techniques to confirm, dispute, or revise accepted historical accounts. Among the cases included are the murder of King Tut, the validity of the Vinland Map, the authenticity of the Hitler diaries, Joan of Arc's ashes, the bones of Anastasia, arsenic and the death of Napoleon, and the dating of the Shroud of Turin, plus 13 more.

How Control Exists after Decentralization Is the Internet a vast arena of unrestricted communication and freely exchanged information or a regulated, highly structured virtual bureaucracy? In Protocol, Alexander Galloway argues that the founding principle of the Net is control, not freedom, and that the controlling power lies in the technical protocols that make network connections (and disconnections) possible. He does this by treating the computer as a textual medium that is based on a technological language, code. Code, he argues, can be subject to the same kind of cultural and literary analysis as any natural language; computer languages have their own syntax, grammar, communities, and cultures. Instead of relying on established theoretical approaches, Galloway finds a new way to write about digital media, drawing on his backgrounds in computer programming and critical theory. "Discipline-hopping is a necessity when it comes to complicated socio-technical topics like protocol," he writes in the preface. Galloway begins by examining the types of protocols that exist, including TCP/IP, DNS, and HTML. He then looks at examples of resistance and subversion—hackers, viruses, cyberfeminism, Internet art—which he views as emblematic of the larger transformations now taking place within digital culture. Written for a nontechnical audience, Protocol serves as a necessary counterpoint to the wildly utopian visions of the Net that were so widespread in earlier days.

The practice of computer hacking is increasingly being viewed as a major security dilemma in Western societies, by governments and security experts alike. Using a wealth of material taken from interviews with a wide range of interested parties such as computer scientists, security experts and hackers themselves, Paul Taylor provides a uniquely revealing and richly sourced account of the debates that surround this controversial practice. By doing so, he reveals the dangers inherent in the extremes of conciliation and antagonism with which society reacts to hacking and argues that a new middle way must be found if we are to make the most of society's high-tech meddlers.

New York Times–Bestselling Author:“Should be ready by anyone who owns a microwave, or an iPod, or a table lamp, which is to say everyone.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year Coal is still a significant source of power in the United States—and coal mining is still a deadly and environmentally destructive industry. Much of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere each year comes from coal-fired power plants, and in recent decades air pollution from coal plants has killed more than half a million Americans. In this eye-opening call to action, Jeff Goodell explains the costs and consequences of America’s addiction to coal and discusses how we can kick the habit. “[A] compelling indictment . . . powerful.” —The New York Times Book Review “Goodell’s description of the mining-related deaths, the widespread health consequences of burning coal and the impact on our planet’s increasingly fragile ecosystem make for compelling reading, but . . . are not what lift this book out of the ordinary. That distinction belongs to Goodell’s fieldwork, which takes him to Atlanta, West Virginia, Wyoming, China and beyond.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Goodell does a first-rate job of balancing environmental concerns with interviews from the human faces associated with ‘Big Coal’.” —Library Journal