Ghost in the Wires

Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin Mitnick

We don’t recommend reading this if you are looking to gain some new relevant technical skill from a fairly casual read that we would redirect your interest towards Sandworm. This story follows Kevin Mitnick from boyhood scoundrel who was a pain to his local phone company to a man who had to use every last hacker tool in his arsenal to stay one step of the FBI. Even though Kevin is the criminal throughout this story we couldn’t help but root for him to succeed.

While Kevin Mitnick is undoubtedly highly skilled and goes into expansive detail into how he committed his computer crimes you won’t learn any technical skills that would be useful, because he started encountering the law when much of the internet was still called ARPANET. So while you may not learn how conduct SQL injection hacks within Ghost in the Wires you will learn some high-level social engineering techniques as Kevin was able to talk administrators into doing almost anything for him. Social engineering is the hacker skill that most CISO fear the most, because you can’t truly form firewalls to prevent them getting access. All Kevin Mitnick needed in order to execute a successful social engineering attack is reach a sympathetic ear, something he managed to accomplish with frightening regularity.

If you want to read a well written narrative about the early days of hacking and learn about some social engineering techniques then we recommend this book. Your level of hacking/cybersecurity skills is irrelevant as most of the technical jargon is interesting but outdated.

Team Recommendation: Good Read