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| The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey | 
 enlarge | Author: Emmanuel Goldstein
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $21.40
You Save: $18.59 (46%)
New (30) Used (5) from $21.40
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 6871
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 888
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.1
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 7.2 x 2.1
ISBN: 0470294191
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.8
EAN: 9780470294192
ASIN: 0470294191
Publication Date: July 21, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Hardcover. Perfect condition. Never used. Great book.
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Product Description
Since 1984, the quarterly magazine 2600 has provided fascinating articles for readers who are curious about technology. Find the best of the magazine’s writing in Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey, a collection of the strongest, most interesting, and often most controversial articles covering 24 years of changes in technology, all from a hacker’s perspective. Included are stories about the creation of the infamous tone dialer “red box” that allowed hackers to make free phone calls from payphones, the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the insecurity of modern locks.
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| Customer Reviews:
Fifteen Years of Extreme Hacking on the Edge, Under-Priced! July 19, 2008
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
I am attending Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) in NYC this week-end, and have just spent time with this volume. Unlike the individual issues, all of which I have had in my possession over the years, this volume is HUGE, readable, indexed, and priceless. I mean that--PRICELESS.
The publisher is to be saluted for not only putting a great deal of effort along with the editor, the founder of 2600 Magazine and also of the HOPE conference, for making this volume a true reference work. I was immediately impressed by the selection of "best of the best," the organization of the material, the index, and the fact that the publisher moved away from the micro-print that was used to keep costs down on the volume of knowledge being transmitted in the individual journal issues, and instead went for a high-end glossy, "just right" white space presentation that should be in every Information Technology library across the country, and is also a collectible for anyone who pretends to know anything at all about information INsecurity.
If you got this far, this lovely volume, easily worth $60, is a real value at the much lower price being offered, and I hope enough people buy it to occasion a reprint or a second volume.
It merits comment that this is not just a volume of hand-picked items from a single journal. The editor and his closest colleagues created a community of over 30,000 hackers (whom I have always said are like astronauts on the edge with the "right stuff") and this volume LITERALLY represents the 30,000 who were decades ahead of the US Government, which is still--as are corporations and public utilities--largely stupid about information system security, to include our Supervisory Control and Direction (SCADA) systems, all of them on the Internet.
For a really good time on what the Chinese know and can do that we cannot, see my Memorandum, easily found online, . They brought Dick Cheney's plane down over Singapore in Feburary 2007, and when he got off to stretch his legs, told him exactly what they could do, and what the US would not be allowed to do. Thus did the power of the information age move East.
Other great Hacker books (the last one is the ultimate public hack, taking back the power):
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, Twentieth Anniversary Edition
The Hacker Crackdown: Law And Disorder On The Electronic Frontier
The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders & Deceivers
The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage
Cybershock: Surviving Hackers, Phreakers, Identity Thieves, Internet Terrorists and Weapons of Mass Disruption
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
Three DVDs, the first based on the real-life of the editor of this book:
Hackers
The Net
Live Free or Die Hard (Unrated Edition)
There are two sets of hackers: these, and the ones who came out of the Homebrew Garage Club (Lee Felsenstein, Eric Hughes, etc) and tended to created businesses rather than live free. Bill Gates is certainly in that number, as are Stewart Brand and others. The most famous Free/Open Hacker in the first group is Richard Stahlman, whose book on the origins of Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) is most recently complemented by Yochai Benkler's book on Wealth of Networks. With a tip of the hat to Nat at O'Reilly, open source software is Darwinism, while malware and proprietary software are Intelligent Design that is not so intelligence. VISTA by Microsoft is the biggest scam in history, for the first time forcing documents to be uniquely tied to the Microsoft operating system and not processable anywhere else. It is time for Microsoft to die, or come to its senses and put its money into F/OSS while monetizing the transactions. Bill Gates has called F/OSS communist. In my view, that makes Bill Gates a fascist. My money is on F/OSS.
Technology that works July 23, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
I would like to first point out that information in this book and others does not mean that someone should go into someones system or other types of areas. Informing people on potentials that may hurt them in the future does not mean or imply someone will steal or hurt another. It's mealy for security. For example if you told someone their sneakers were untied that doesn't invoke a reaction that you wanted to steal them!
The problem with any form of security is it assumes that people breaking generally cannot think. It's been said that locks keep honest criminals out. Of course the other problem with this is if there's no forced point of energy that could nullify insurance claims!
I listen to 2600's Off the Hook and Off the Wall radio shows (streaming, wbcq, wbai, wusb). I encourage people to do so because they are brining up things that frankly most of the media won't. For example practically all locksets on the market are compromised via "bump keys" not a peep came out of the major media on this. Top rated mainstream locks are about 15 minutes for someone to open! Like it or not the more we obtain new technology the more we better get used to using it.
Getting into this book it has quite a large amount of articles going back decades. Much of this stems from the concept that somehow someone has created something that cannot be opened. Never assume something cannot be done with a piece of electronics!
I've experienced a number of interesting related things. I worked for a company that hosted all internal finance documents on a server that granted access not only to everyone in the building but everyone in the company! No password required! At the very least put a password, restrict access to certain terminals etc. I also worked for a major retailer that had back doors into their own systems from a hr portal people could view at home. Huge amounts of data could be found on policies and procedures that the management did not want people to know. All of this was access one could get at work without passwords so it wasn't even violating a law.I should say that I myself was hacked a number of years ago. Someone ended up saying I was selling a motorcycle on ebay using my account! Not cool but it was a learning experience.
Also 2600 makes good points as that it seems that we are no longer simply buying products but buying licenses. But since a license is an agreement it technically is NOT an agreement when there's only one party engaging.The innovations that have been achieved with technology should not be used by the government to data mine people and/or for companies to dictate their usage.
Most people believe that the products and services they buy and use will work properly and have (hopefully) integrity. When that trust is taken away it means everything is compromised. If a building collpases you can physically determine as to why but with a network it is not always apparent.
I highly recommend this book because it reinforces the mindset that technology is supposed to be free and open to use.
A book on the history of hacking by the people who wrote the magazine on hacking August 24, 2008
Emmanuel Goldstien and his companions have written alot about hacking over the years, but now most of their writings have come together in tome form.
If there was anything you ever wanted to know concerting what hacking was like before the explosion of the Internet, or how hackers have been portrayed with biased by the media and in some cases the government, this is a must read book.
If you subscribe to 2600: The Hacker Quarterly or if you patiently wait at the book store or mail box for a new issue every three months, you will definitely want to pick up this book.
It will be interesting to see in the future, online hacker zines to try their hand at publishing their writings such as TOTSE and Phrack.
An important part of the history of computing August 25, 2008
The hacker ethos is beautifully captured in this anthology. I've often skimmed 2600 at bookstores but it was only when I went through this hefty tome that I realized how deep and rich are the culture and accomplishments of the hacking community.
More than just the cartoonish representation in popular media, the hacking movement is a testament to creativity and innovation. Rightly so, this book is a celebration of cleverness and ingenious engineering instead of the more malevolent applications.
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