Hacker News Books

Kevin Mitnicks autobiography "Ghost in the Wires" is very good. Although it's non-fiction, it read like a cyberpunk spy novel.

I wasn't a huge fan of "Ghost in the Wires"... The book was a decent read but Mitnick comes off as uncaring and short-sighted.

Well I didn't read many books this year but absolutely loved 'Ghost in the wires' by Kevin Mitnick.

"Ghost in the wires", his auto-biography, was also a great read. It was very entertaining, and certainly worth a re-read when I have the time. It reads like a cyberpunk thriller set in the 80's and 90's, except it's not fiction.

Robinson Crusoe, swedish translation by May Bylock is probably the book i have read the most since the beginning of elementary school. Very short, can be read in a day.

Ghost In The Wires by Kevin Mitnick is a very interesting book that i recommend too.

Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker (2011), by Kevin Mitnick.

You should read the book "Ghost in the Wires" by Kevin Mitnick. It will really open your eyes as to what is possible with phones.

I found "Ghost in the Wires" by Kevin Mitnick and "Kingpin" by Kevin Poulsen to be decent reads.

I recently read Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick and it was fantastic! He talks about his journey and evasion of the FBI while he was on the run

Ghost in the wires is a reallly interesting autobiography by Kevin himself

I don't read much computer related books but I recently started 'Ghost in the wires' from Kevin Mitnick and it is awesome so far.

> It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted.

That actually makes great sense as identity spoofs, or at least that's what I read in Kevin Mitnick's Ghost in the Wires, are most easily done under the name of deceased infants near your own year of birth.

Great story!
I listened to his audiobook 'Ghost in the Wires' a few years back. It's a fantastic read (listen)!

https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wires-Adventures-Worlds-Wanted/...

Paragraph 3 of TFA: That story appears in Mitnick's new memoir, Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker.

I'm going to recommend you the last one I read and loved so much: Ghost in the wires by Kevin Mitnick. What a legend OMG!

I can't speak to "Ghost in the Wires", however a book that contemporaneous to "Takedown" that does a better job, I think, is "The Fugitive Game", by Johnathan Littman: https://www.amazon.com/Fugitive-Game-Online-Kevin-Mitnick/dp...

Talking about Kevin Minnick, I can really recommend his book Ghost in the Wires, both for the story and the numerous great examples of social engineering https://henrikwarne.com/2015/12/27/social-engineering-from-k...

> You might also be interested in stories which are based on non-fiction, but are written in a story telling kind of way, greatly adding to suspense. In that category I read the books Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick and Kingpin by Kevin Poulsen [1]. If you're interested in following a suspenseful hacker story I can recommend them both.

Another excellent book along those lines is "The Cuckoos Egg" by Clifford Stoll. (And he's awesome person too.)

Oh, that's my favorite subject, I love reading autobiographies of awesome people =)

Here are my favorites:

- Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman

- Ghost In The Wires by Kevin Mitnick

- Catch me if you can by Abagnale

- iWoz by Steve Wozniak

- Losing my Virginity by Richard Branson

- Without their Permission by Alexis Ohanian

All of them are absolutely awesome and enlightening and entertaining. Also I can highly recommend listening them as audiobooks, very convenient.

I'm about half way through Ghost in the Wires and this sounds exactly like something he'd do. "Hi, this is so-and-so and I'm with this-and-that. Could you send me a copy of the source code? I'm all over your phone line" The book is a continuous stream of anecdotes like this. Love it.

I don't know if it's and audiobook, but I really enjoyed The Cuckoo's Egg, by Cliff Stoll. If you're a unix person, you probably won't learn anything, 'cept some history, but It's still a great story.

If not, how about Super Mario, the story of Mario and Nintendo through the years?

You can also try Ghost in the Wires, Kevin Mitnick's autobiography.

Finally, the excellent Exploding the Phone tells the story of the rise and fall of phone phreaking, and has a lot of interesting information on the phone network of the time.
None of these are especially technical, but they are fantastic reads, and presumably fantastic listens.

Ghost In The Wires was definitely my favourite read of 2012. I'm keen to read a few more in your list. Ta for posting!

I think this is a great idea!! I would really love to see book suggestions from HN users, it is always very interesting and valuable to me.

Here's the best books that I've read in the past few months:

> Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale

I remember disliking the movie, but the book is brilliant and hilarious. Autobiography of one of the boldest, horniest, and most brilliant con artists.

> Ghost In The Wires by Kevin Mitnick

On the same topic, autobiography of a great hacker. Extremely clever and awesome. I bet people here will love it.

> Zero to One by Peter Thiel

Very intelligent and inspiring book about startups and new technologies. A lot of new and great ideas, I've enjoyed it a lot.

> iWoz

Autobiography of Steve Wozniak. Also wonderful and super positive and inspiring story.

> Trust me, I'm lying.

Book about how modern social media is being manipulated. Short and interesting. Makes you think differently about what you read on the internet.

> On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

Theory of how human mind works. Must read for everyone who is into AI, but also a great book for everyone else.

Ghost in the Wires.

Reading of Kevin Mitnick's exploits and benign (to me) curiosity was inspiring as I was testing out my own hand at hacking and social engineering in college. His approach to SE allowed me to get over the fear of dealing with individuals in my job hunt and to generally see people more as people (strangely enough).

The book is full of excellent anecdotes on the joys and consequences of sincere curiosity. To this day it still inspires me to ask "What is behind x/ if I push/pull/turn/fuzz this x" and "What happens if I just ask for x"

I grew up as a huge Mitnick fan, and I still am. He was vilified and used as the poster boy for all computer hackers, phreakers, and the lot - unfairly I think. Takedown was one of the most dry and dull books I've ever read, and John Markoff should be ashamed of himself. Read Mitnick's book, Ghost in the Wires. So much better.

> "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach"

I think it is one of the best books written on any topic ever period.

It is kinda advanced but also brilliant, and was a turning point in my decision to master hacking.

> Now I am reading "Two Scoops of Django" and enjoying it A LOT.

It's closer to a beginner/intermediate level, and it brings me a lot of joy and excitement about programming.

> Another one is "Hackers & Painters", of course. PG is brilliant, nuff said.

His book "ANSI Common Lisp" is definitely on the top of my reading list, I've already started and it is great.

> Just to mention, a little less technical book is "Ghost In The Wires" by Kevin Mitnick, a famous hacker.

I'm listening the audiobook now and it is really inspiring, entertaining and fantastic.

The stealing the network series is awesome. I just read "The Director" which was decent.

There are a lot of non-fiction books that read the same as a fiction though; Ghost in the Wires, The Art of Intrusion (really fun read), Fatal System Error, and of course if you haven't read Cuckoo's Egg, you should.

Reamde by Neal Stephenson is also good.

It would be foolish to dismiss this guy based on a belief that someone that good would not be working independently. Maybe he's got a record that governments and security firms don't want to touch. Maybe he's philosophically opposed to working with governments. Who knows?

At the moment, I'm reading Kevin Mitnick's Ghost in the Wires (awesome book, by the way). He pretty much owned the entire phone system in California. In some cases, he was able to do things even phone company techs were not able to do. About halfway through the book he describes how he was able to tap the people tapping his own phone lines. What he pulled off was absolutely massive. The phone companies didn't even want to report some of it because of how ridiculous they would look for letting it happen. And as good as he was, no employer wanted to touch him with a 10 foot pole.

My point is that unbelievably huge breaches can be and have been pulled off before. As for him announcing it publicly, I can only speculate on his motives. Maybe he wants to see them squirm. Maybe he's feeling a bit invincible right now. I don't know. But I sure wouldn't dismiss him as full of shit because the claims are so audacious or for the fact that he's bragging about it. We do know that a breach occurred and the victims sure as hell aren't going to reveal the full extent.

Data and Goliath - Bruce Schneier (very good, preaching to the choir in my case though)

Dune - Frank Herbert (been waiting more than 20 years to read this. If you haven't seen the movie from 2001 highly recommended, else not)

The Psychopath Code - Pieter Hintjens (psychology book, highly recommended, allowed me to understand a whole lot more of the "toxicity" in society)

Python for Informatics - Charles Severance (too easy for crowd here, and for me, but quite good for newbie programmers. Note: Python 2.x; not 3.x!)

Ghost in the Wires - Kevin Mitnick and William L. Simon (good humor, great suspense, likeable main character)

Kingpin - Kevin Poulsen (a less likeable main character but nevertheless suspenseful)

And a bunch of cookbooks which I won't bother you with, I didn't fully complete any of them either.

I'm very happy that all the books I read were a hit, but did not read nearly as many as I wanted to. To restate, I can recommend all of the above. But they're not all new from 2016 (if that was the intention I apologise).

I really enjoyed Ghost in the Wires (basically Mitnick's bio). I had first read Takedown by Tsutomo Shimomura which told of Mitnick's pursuit by the guy who ended up help to catch him. "Wires" was the other side - what Mitnick did when he was on the run - and his side of how he was finally caught. Really interesting stuff. It was like the Rashomon effect[1].

http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wires-Adventures-Worlds-Wanted/d...

http://www.amazon.com/Takedown-Pursuit-Capture-Americas-Comp...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_effect

LoTR is not something I can recommend. When I read it, it was a miserable trek, and I read obsessively. It was a book written by somebody who cares more about the language then they do they story, and it shows.

That's not necessarily bad, but unless you share that point of view, I'd give it a miss.

Anyways, in the same vein as Ghost in the Wires, I recommend The Cuckoo's Egg and Exploding the phone, which are both fantastic.

The correct answer really depends on what you're into, and what kind of person you are. There are a lot of subcategories in fiction (just like there are in non-fiction).

Lord of the Rings is much more than mere fiction. It is possibly interesting from a linguistic PoV as it contains an entirely new language called Quenya developed by Tolkien. It also contains a lot of subjects which are relevant IRL.

Without getting further into LOTR I agreed with another poster on Dune and attempted to explain the subjects it touches in another reply to your post.

Problem with both of these (as well as say GoT) is there are movies made of them.

You might also be interested in stories which are based on non-fiction, but are written in a story telling kind of way, greatly adding to suspense. In that category I read the books Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick and Kingpin by Kevin Poulsen [1]. If you're interested in following a suspenseful hacker story I can recommend them both.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13240924

I feel the article is not quite fair in its coverage of Hackers. Sure, the movie gets many things absurdly wrong, but it also depicts social engineering (calling a security guard and tricking him into telling the hacker a modem's phone number), dumpster diving in hopes of finding interesting documents and guessing passwords. These could be straight from Kevin Mitnick's memoirs, Ghost in the Wires (which came out years later). I think the movie might actually get more things right than it gets wrong.

Thanks for the book recommendations! As a SW dev who recently (a year and a half ago) moved into finance (from telecom), I’ve been trying to educate myself as much as possible in the domain - I find it quite fascinating. Below is a list of books I’ve read and MOOCs I’ve taken, but it would be great to hear what your top recommendations are for books to read (I’ve noticed that your high-quality comments here on HN). Thanks.

Books:

Liar’s Poker,
The Quants,
Flash Boys,
Against the Gods,
The Complete Guide to Capital Markets for Quantitative Professionals

MOOC courses:
Financial Markets (Coursera),
Computational Investing (Coursera),
Mathematical Methods for Quantitative,
Option Pricing (EdEx - got too difficult at the end)

EDIT: Thanks for the pics, really great! Lots of good CS books there too! Sidenode: I just finished "Ghost in the Wires" a week ago - great read.

My bookshelf is shown here: http://henrikwarne.com/2015/04/16/lessons-learned-in-softwar...

Ghost in the Wires compares favorably, also being a personal memoir, although from the other side of hacking.

Exploding the Phone takes an ousider's perspective, having been written by a relative outsider, and the information having been gathered from interviews with those involved. However, I would say it's better than Ghost in the Wires, being a better told story overall. It's also pretty much the definitive history of the phone phreaking scene, AFAICT. Phil Lapsley put a lot of work into getting his interviews, and reading up on the tech. Read it, if only so that you'll stop believing people when they tell you how awesome John Draper is.

I don't have any friends who haven't read it who would appreciate it, but Clifford Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg is both a highly entertaining thriller, a fascinating look at how computer security was, and is, viewed, and a highly personal story about a man trying to figure it all out. It's very funny, entirely true, and taught me a lot.

Oddly, a lot of people hated the various more personal aspects of the book, as you see Cliff's friends, and his life as a whole. While that's valid, calling it a flaw in the book is, I think, inaccurate. The book as much a story a story about Cliff as the shadowy hacker on the other side of the wires, and that's a big part of its charm, IMHO.

Ghost in the Wires, and Exploding the Phone are also good, and true stories.

SURELY YOU'RE JOKING MR. FEYNMAN BY RICHARD FEYNMAN

-I loved this book for its humor, everyday practicality, how relatable it felt even without having a background in physics or knowledge about the pranks and experiments he conducted. As well as the book being well-written in the sense that it reads as if you're sitting on the couch with him as he's telling you stories about his life, all with a child-like sense of wonder and enthusiasm about the world.

THE $12 MILLION STUFFED SHARK BY DON THOMPSON

-I'm interested in the high-finance and fine-art worlds and this book discussed how they both go together - money and art - in an informative, quick-paced way.

THE BUY SIDE BY TURNEY DUFF

-For its humor, honesty, and how well written it was in terms of it being a page turner while also providing you with an insightful account about the high-finance industry.

MOLLY'S GAME BY MOLLY BLOOM

-It was an entertaining, quick-paced read about the private, high-stakes poker industry with an assortment of participants.

MONEYBALL, LIAR'S POKER & THE BIG SHORT BY MICHAEL LEWIS

-I thought they were all entertaining reads, while also being insightful about their respective subjects.

STEVE JOBS BY WALTER ISAACSON

-It was an illuminating read to me.

- - -

Separately, these books are on my list to read if anyone has opinions about them:

-Ghost in the Wires by Kevin
Mitnick

-Principles by Ray Dalio

-A Man For All Markets by Edward Thorp

When I read Kevin Mitnick's Ghost in the Wires, what impressed me was how he'd combine social engineering with technical hacks. For example even if people did call their boss or Kevin's alleged employer (the utility company, a partner company, whatever), he would have set up their phone system to send the call to himself. I'm sure that social engineering alone gets you a long way, and I'm sure that Kevin was good at it, but when your electronic communications aren't trustworthy you can really do a number on people! How are you even supposed to defend against that?

I used to work at a large organization with annual security training requirements for all employees. It consisted of hours of ridiculous scenarios where the correct answer was always "don't open attachments from people you don't know and report anything suspicious to IT." I've often thought that requiring everyone to read "Ghost in the Wires" would be a much more effective way to show people how social engineering and phishing would actually work.

- "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" - probably the most influential book I've read in my life, profoundly changed the way I think. It's a collection of LessWrong essays on science and rationality.

- "On Intelligence" and "I am a Strange Loop" - how mind works.

- "Rework", "Zero to One", "Start Small, Stay Small" - insightful startup advice.

- Fun autobiographies: Ghost in the Wires (Kevin Mitnick), iWoz (Steve Wozniak), Catch me if you can (Frank Abagnale), Just for Fun (Linus Torvalds), Elon Musk, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

- How companies work: Creativity Inc (Pixar), In the Plex (Google)

- On writing: Art of fiction/nonfiction by Ayn Rand, Story by Robert McKee, Save the Cat, Step by Step to Standup Comedy.

- Other: The Selfish Gene, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Serious Creativity, Hackers & Painters, Hacking Growth, Angel (on angel investing, by Jason Calacanis).

Also collections of essays by Paul Graham [1] and Scott Alexander [2]:

[1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/2no0sqybnxurpcd/Paul%20Graham%20-%...

[2] https://www.dropbox.com/s/i43lqpdyd4qa255/The%20Library%20of...

Assuming you mean breaking into systems, while I'm not immersed in that culture, I did enjoy Kevin Mitnik's Ghost in the Wires. It may be a bit dated, but some of the stories of early phone phreaking and social engineering was a fun ride -- and helps add a decent level of paranoia to answering phone calls today! Kevin Mitnik is a legend. He might not be the best of all time or today, but he is up there.

You can try some Kevin Mitnick's books.

"Ghost in the wires" is his biography with a lot of fun stories, recommended.

"The art of intrusion" is about more technical hacking, lot of war stories from all over the world.

"The art of deception" is about Social Engineering, I have not read it yet... but looks amazing.

Computer history is one of my favorite topics, so I've read a lot over the years. Here's my list:

>> Classic computer history:

- "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution", Steven Levy

- "The Innovators", Walter Isaacson

- "Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley", Adam Fisher [innovative format, tons of interesting tidbits after you get used to the style. Read only after the other two above]

- "The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story", Michael Lewis

- "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs", Alan Deutschman

- "Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made", Andy Hertzfeld

- "Masters of Doom", David Kushner

- "Idea Man", Paul Allen

- "Where Wizards Stay Up Late", Katie Hafner

>> Entertaining stories, but less historical value:

- "Ghost in the Wires", Kevin Mitnick

- "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley", Antonio Garcia Martinez

- "Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal", Nick Bilton

>> On my to-read queue:

- "How the Internet Happened", Brian McCullough [just started; very promising]

- "Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age", Leslie Berlin

- "Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of WWII", Liza Mundy

- "Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer", Paul Freiberger / Michael Swaine

>> Others worth mentioning (but just read a few chapters):

- "The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray", Charles Murray [about Cray Computers]

- "Racing the Beam" [about Atari]

- "Commodore: A Company on the Edge" [about Commodore]

>> Bonus:

- "Art of Atari", Tim Lapetino [great as a coffee table book, particularly if you grew up in the 80's :) ]

Ghost in the wires by Kevin Mitnick.

I read "Ghost in the Wires" (a book about Kevin Mitnick's life) a month or two ago, and it's astonishing how well he knew the system. He was doing stuff like the above, but also getting around the callback as well (I don't recall exactly what he did, but it was something along the lines of conning the line workers to divert an exec's phone number for testing purposes just long enough to get the callback). That was just one of many times he pulled these sorts of stunts for curiousity's sake.

Ghost in the Wires - Kevin Mitnick

Some of the middle era SV history books are quite good, although they cover the combination of hardware, software, and startup stuff.

Fire in the Valley,
Dealers of Lightning,
Where the Wizards Stay up Late by Katie Hafner,
Soul of a new Machine by Tracey Kidder,
The Dream Machine.

There are histories of Apple, Microsoft, and many smaller (and now gone) companies and/or projects.

Showstopper (Windows NT),
Insanely Great (Macintosh),
Defying Gravity (Apple Newton),
In the Plex (Google),
Hackers (by Steven Levy),
Ghost in the Wires.

More philosophical type stuff
In the beginning was the command line
Dreaming Code,
Coders at Work

There's many worthwhile books about the history and culture of programming and hacking not listed, but this might be a useful starting point.

Here are some that I've enjoyed reading:

Steve Martin - Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

Kevin Mitnick - Ghost In The Wires

Kenneth Roman - The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising

Walter Isaacson - Steve Jobs

Alan Deutschman - The Second Coming of Steve Jobs

James Wallace - Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire

Alice Schroeder - The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

Richard Branson - Losing My Virginity

Have you read Ghost in the Wires? Mitnick was insatiable.

Signal and the noise by Nate Silver(Very nice read. Chapters on climate change and GDP forecasting were a bit slow, but everything else was a page turner)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/159420411X

Why I left Goldman Sachs by Greg Smith (Good insight into the 2008 financial breakdown and a look into the day to day operations of Goldman Sachs)
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Left-Goldman-Sachs-Street/dp/14555...

The Hobbit
http://www.amazon.com/Hobbit-There-Again-Illustrated-Author/...

Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques(Great intro into data mining)
http://www.amazon.com/Data-Mining-Concepts-Techniques-Manage...

Programming Collective Intelligence(You can play around with actual implementations of the concepts in the previous book)
http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Collective-Intelligence-Bu...

Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick (Was really nice to see the details behind Mitnick's adventures)
http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wires-Adventures-Worlds-Wanted/d...

On War By Clausewitz(Really enjoyed this book.)http://www.amazon.com/War-Carl-von-Clausewitz/dp/1448676290

Here's the best books I've read in the last year or so:

>> Computer History & biographies:

The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story, Michael Lewis

The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman

Machines of Loving Grace, by John Markoff

The Innovators, by Walter Isaacson

Ghost in the Wires, by Kevin Mitnick

Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft, by Paul Allen

Creativity, Inc, by Ed Catmull (reading)

>> Startups:

The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz

The Founder's Dilemmas, Noam Wasserman

The Launch Pad, by Randall Stross

>> Other books:

Trilogy: Off to Be the Wizard (series), by Scott Meyer

Search Inside Yourself, Chade-Meng Tan

Joy on Demand, Chade-Meng Tan (reading)

I just finished reading his new book Ghost in the Wires and it's better than his previous publications, because it's far more technically oriented.

I was disappointed by this NPR interview though. It's typical fodder for the white wine and brie demographic. Very general and promotional, like an audio blurb (which is exactly what this is supposed to be anyway). Mitnick just talks about a few of his exploits and explains what his motivation is. Most HN readers probably know all that.

Hmm... there have been a few, and I'd have to look through my "read books stack" to remind myself exactly which ones fell into 2011 and not prior years... but offhand, I'd mention:

Fiction:

Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson

Zero History - William Gibson

11/22/63 - Stephen King

The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss

The Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss

Non-fiction:

Ghost in the Wires - Kevin Mitnick

The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene

The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin

Not Even Wrong - Peter Woit

The Lean Startup - Eric Ries

Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

Built To Last - Jim Collins

Business Model Generation - Alexander Osterwalder

Started, but unfinished, may yet make the list:

Simulacra and Simulation - Jean Baudrillard

Reamde - Neal Stephenson

The Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene

For a historic account of US phreaking (not Mitnick-specific), check out the book "Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell". Its worth as much as its long title. It even contains a historic account of the US (and international) phone system and how the monopolies came around. I read it because it was all just before my time (I'm mid 30s now). People who were blind phreaking by whistling. Insane!

(Mitnick-specific I can also recommend the docu Freedom Downtime and the book Ghost in the Wires but I've seen both already covered in other posts.)

This movie is known as Takedown in the rest of the world, and it is not fun to watch, nor does it cover Mitnick's side of the story: "Track Down (also known as Takedown outside the United States), is a 2000 film about computer hacker Kevin Mitnick, based on the book Takedown by John Markoff and Tsutomu Shimomura."

Watch the documentary Freedom Downtime by Eric "Emmanuel Goldstein" Corley and read Mitnick's book, Ghost in the Wires. Written by Mitnick after his probation terms were expired. Dude's got humor, and its written in a way which is both fun and suspense. Whether it is accurate, who knows, but it is from his perspective.