home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: 04 Aug 91 19:54:15 EDT
- From: Gordon Meyer <72307.1502@COMPUSERVE.COM>
- Subject: File 4--Newsweek review CYBERPUNK
-
- "Inside the Head of the Hacker"
- Reviewed by John Schwartz, NEWSWEEK July 29,
-
- ((Moderators' note: the following is a excerpt/adaptation from
- Schwartz's review. Interested readers should review the complete text
- of the article.))
-
- ... [ John ] Markoff's story [ on Morris' Internet worm ] was the
- first of a journalistic flood. But for all the ink spilled over the
- Cornell graduate student's case, little insight into his personality
- emerged. Computer-security experts would later try to paint Morris as
- a menacing rebel; Abu Nidal at the keyboard. Some journalists probed
- the irony of a computer-security expert's son-turned-security-threat,
- ham-handedly coming up with a dark psychological portrait, an Oedipus
- Techs.
-
- If you ever wanted a clearer picture of the nerd who brought down the
- network, a new book, "Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer
- Frontier," delivers him, and the entire Morris family, up in rich
- detail. ...
-
- "Cyberpunk" throws a spotlight on two other computer fanatics whose
- acts took them over the line of law. One is Kevin Mitnick, an
- obsessive system cracker... The other, West German Hans Hu\"bner,
- attempted to sell information from his Internet trespasses to the
- KGB... Like the Morris story, each is told in a full context that,
- while not justifying criminal acts, goes a long way toward explaining
- them.
-
- Though readers who know a modem from a Model T have a head start, the
- authors offer lucid explanations of just enough technology to make the
- stories work, even for the computer illiterate. If the prose
- sometimes seems a bit workmanlike, there's plenty of juicy detail to
- keep the narrative moving. Hafner and Markoff, like the dedicated,
- intense cyberpunks they illuminate, appear to have stopped at nothing
- to hack their way into the cyberpunk subculture.
-
-
- Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253
-