Hack Attacks Encyclopedia: A Complete History of Hacks, Cracks, Phreaks, and Spies Over Time / Chirillo, John

Hack Attacks Encyclopedia is a collection of hacker goodies in print and on CD-ROM. Gleaned from file repositories old and new, the collection includes handy, potentially naughty utilities--process listers, password crackers, and port scanners, among others--and scores of text articles. The text articles explain how to extract value from systems of various kinds (mostly the North American telecommunications network and various kinds of computers). Reading articles about how to get free calls from (1980s-vintage) payphones is interesting, and articles (some quite old) written by hackers about themselves and their community reveal a lot of truth.

In order to appreciate this book, you have to take note of the word History in its subtitle. That word appears because the articles in this book, though many of them make excellent reading, deal largely with old technologies and well-known attacks for which defenses now exist. Interesting problems that contemporary hackers may have solved--such as how to get free satellite Internet access, how to defeat ATMs' "service fees," how to defeat password protection on Windows XP, and how to get an overwhelming number of positive reviews to appear for your book--aren't covered. This book is all about the exploits of the past. Articles about how to get free phone calls on old pulse-signaling public phones aren't of much practical value anymore, and viruses for the Amiga computer are of purely academic interest these days (though virus source code, several examples of which appear here, shows up in few other books). Therefore, don't buy this book so much for how-to information as for its history lessons and entertainment value. Read it for its first-hand look at hacker culture.

That said, Hack Attacks Encyclopedia would be a lot better if John Chirillo had looked at his considerable collection of text files and software and unified it with a running narrative. Good historians and documenters of cultures don't just present primary sources without annotating them. They use their knowledge and skill to derive meaning from the primary sources, and perhaps make some predictions about the future. --David Wall

Topics covered: Hack attacks--which is to say, tools and techniques for getting services and information you're not really supposed to have--through the ages (mostly in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s). Emphasis falls on "harmless" hacker exploits, such as getting free phone calls, rather than on "black-hat" stuff like shutting down Web servers for no real reason. A large glossary explains technical terms and hacker lingo.
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