Ghost in the Wires

After reading a book I like to compare my impression to the impressions other people have. For “Ghost in the Wires” there are certainly a lot of negative reviews. I was a bit surprised. Although they are not wrong. I personally wouldn't weight the flaws so strongly.

It is true, in my opinion, and throughout the book occurring, that Mitnick is a bit whiny and some what narcissistic. He constantly praises himself for having met this or that girl. Which does absolutely nothing for the plot and is almost every time a one- or two-liner sentence. And oh god, the step master workout routine. A few chapters in he wines about how his wife could leave him. Although he does nothing to change his way of living and keep out of jail and then rattles on about how he feels betrayed. He constantly wines about his poor mom and gram having to suffer because of his exploits and their consequences but does again nothing to change himself. Somewhere in the book, I think, he mentions his hacking being pathologic. Maybe that could be an explanation, but read for yourself.

That being said. I still think it's an interesting book about social engineering other people and how a justice system could not keep up with the development of computers and the internet. Is the book about hacking? Not so much. There are some random parts thrown in, where he explains a few things. But most of the time it's very vague. To gain access to information and source code he uses not hacking but social engineering people (some reviews say it's con artistry). Then he looks for exploits in the code and uses them. Later on he uses exploits to gain information about exploits other people have found. So it's not so much him hacking to find and use exploits and more of him using exploits from a tool box to gain access to new/more exploits to keep his toolbox up to date. What I'm trying to say is, that is not so much hacking in my opinion. But maybe it's just not the main focus of the book and therefore not explained that well.

My review sounds now a lot more negative than how I felt about the book. It's a good read with it's downs and if you are not that much bothered by some of Mitnick's personality quirks and/or interested into phone phreaking you should read it.