Ghost in the Wires

My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker

By: Kevin Mitnick, William L. Simon

Narrated by: Ray Porter

Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

Kevin Mitnick was the most elusive computer break-in artist in history. He accessed computers and networks at the world’s biggest companies—and however fast the authorities were, Mitnick was faster, sprinting through phone switches, computer systems, and cellular networks. He spent years skipping through cyberspace, always three steps ahead and labeled unstoppable. But for Kevin, hacking wasn’t just about technological feats—it was an old fashioned confidence game that required guile and deception to trick the unwitting out of valuable information.

Driven by a powerful urge to accomplish the impossible, Mitnick bypassed security systems and blazed into major organizations including Motorola, Sun Microsystems, and Pacific Bell. But as the FBI’s net began to tighten, Kevin went on the run, engaging in an increasingly sophisticated cat-and-mouse game that led through false identities, a host of cities, plenty of close shaves, and to an ultimate showdown with the feds, who would stop at nothing to bring him down.

Ghost in the Wires is a thrilling true story of intrigue, suspense, and unbelievable escape and a portrait of a visionary whose creativity, skills, and persistence forced the authorities to rethink the way they pursued him, inspiring ripples that brought permanent changes in the way people and companies protect their most sensitive information.

©2011 Kevin Mitnick. Foreword 2011 by Steve Wozniak (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Intriguing, insightful, and extremely educational into the mind of one who truly mastered the art of social engineering with the use of a computer and modern-day technologies. I strongly believe that one can learn a great deal about protecting themselves once they understand how another one perpetrates the crime.” (Frank W. Abagnale, author of Catch Me If You Can)

A Lesson in Security

Having an awareness in Information Security, I found this book to be entertaining. Certainly Kevin Mitnick, the author/protagonist is not by any means a heroic character. While he asserts he never hacked for financial gain in spite of the fact that he possessed huge amounts of credit card and other "personally identifiable information" the fact remains that he stole intellectual property, personal identities, telephone connectivity, etc. He needed to be caught and incarcerated, which in fact did occur. To him hacking was an addiction, an irresistible urge to beat the system, break through locked doors and unlock security measures designed to defeat him and people like him. Whether or not the listeners of this book believe he is rehabilitated or remorseful, the fact remains that he served time in prison and paid his debt to society.
For me, the value of this book is that it illustrates just how dependent we all are on information systems, and how vulnerable we are to the lax security at the gatekeepers of our most personal information. We need to do a lot better, and hopefully Mr. Mitnick is now helping us as opposed to hacking us.
I found the book engaging from a technical standpoint while it demonstrates just how easy it is for some to steal information, sometimes merely for the asking. As Mitnick stated, "like taking candy from a baby."

Learn From Successful People

Some Audible reviewers dislike that Kevin Mitnick in his book “Ghost in the Wires” is repetitive “every hack seems to be the same” and that the book celebrates immoral behavior “breaking the law”.

When I talk, read or listen to successful people, a common characteristic is that they have discovered an approach that generally works and repeat it over and over. Sounds boring, but it leads to becoming an expert, great satisfaction with your life and at times wealth.

As far as breaking the law, well I leave it to readers and listeners to decide for themselves.

Such an interesting story

I still have a hard time believing this is not a spy novel, but a biography of a real person who really went through these events. Highly recommend this to anyone in IT or computer science/engineering.

Fascinating

I found this book totally fascinating. If you are under the age of 40 a lot of the things mentioned in this book, like rotary phones, brief case cell phones & pagers, maybe foreign to you. However it is an amazing story of one of the first hackers, Kevin Mitnick.

Kevin starts as a teenager, messing with the speaker at a local drive through by saying wild things to the customers. From there he progresses to what was then called Phone Freaking, using social engineering to get the information he wanted to get the information. It's all a huge game to him, just how far can he get before someone says "hey, wait minute...".

Mitnick spend over 30 years social engineering his way to hack into some of the largest companies in the US. Never doing anything malicious, just having fun to see if he can. He also spends 30 years running from the FBI until he is finally caught.

If you are even a little bit of a geek, you'll enjoy this book.

Enjoyable for Hacker Geeks

I am not sure how a general audience will respond to this book, but I am a bit of a hacker geek (although I refrained from Mitnick’s more provocative activity) and I greatly enjoyed this book. I enjoyed programming and hacking on RSTS/E and VMS and appreciated the details of social and software techniques. These details (including many details that don’t transfer well to audible) will be tedious at best to readers not intimate with Unix and VMS. Trust me, they are actually quite funny.

Although parts of this book may be tedious to many, there is a lot to be learned by anyone. Everyone should see and understand the social engineering techniques he describes. Everyone needs to understand these techniques and learn to defend against them.

Mitnick does not claim to have been a software hacker. He did VERY LIGHT software hacking and cracking. He mostly was a detail oriented social hacker. He got people to let him copy and inspect their software. In some cases what he did violated the law (and Mitnick was convicted and served five years in prison). Yet, he claims he did not profit from any of his hacks, and was not selling or blackmailing or destroying anything. He mainly just was testing if he could do it, and getting new software source code so he could find more exploits to get into more systems.

As one can tell from the reviews, many people intensely dislike Mitnick and many consider him a common criminal. It is highly likely Mitnick does not tell the whole truth in any of his books and occasionally lies. I would argue that he winks and nods enough that clever readers will have a very good idea about what he did do (although he says he didn’t for legal reasons).

The narration is excellent with very difficult material. The upbeat narration makes the book more fun.

OK, I was stumped

Great listen, but my audio has a line of gibberish at the beginning of each chapter. I thought it was reverse audio -- but reversing the clip with the tools in Audacity software did not help. Looking at the book visually on Amazon reveals a text message in code. Chapter 1 leads with: Yjcv ku vjg pcog qh vjg uauvgo wugf da jco qrgtctcvqtu vq ocmg htgg rjqpg ecnnu? Googling "Yjcv ku vjg pcog" points to others who have cracked a quite simple code. In audible, however, rest assured you are not hearing words spoken in any intelligible language -- in forward or in reverse; nor is any person or demon speaking in tongues. I'd love to know what Ray Porter said when he was told to narrate that stuff.

Great Listen

Would you consider the audio edition of Ghost in the Wires to be better than the print version?

This is the kind of story you find yourself going out of your way to listen to. Great read and a great story!

Coolest tech story ever

If you could sum up Ghost in the Wires in three words, what would they be?

Really cool story.

What did you like best about this story?

The story combines elements of science (psychology), suspense, action humor and drama. I picked up the book because it's tech related and because I had heard of this man back in the '90s but never payed attention. I thought it would be a nice and slow book about someone's criminal life...NOPE.
This book is just non-stop excitement. The character is multi-dimensional and his accomplishments impressive.

What does Ray Porter bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Ray Porter has top notch voice quality. He conveys the author's emotions in such way I thought for a moment it was the author himself narrating his own story.

I certainly hope to hear his voice again in future books!

If you could give Ghost in the Wires a new subtitle, what would it be?

How to really use a computer.

Any additional comments?

This book is excellent even for non-tech people who are looking for a good cat-and-mouse police story.

Fascinating

This is a fascinating look into the mind of a famous hacker. I enjoyed hearing Kevin Mitnick's side of the story. He is clearly a brilliant guy whose addiction/ insatiable curiosity got him into a lot of trouble. I love the dramatic story of how he got into that trouble, and how he evaded capture. He sometimes lost my sympathy when he was less than generous in describing how other people had betrayed him, or didn't live up to his standards, or were easily deceived. After listening to the audio for a while I watched a few interviews with him and found him to be a little less arrogant than the performer's interpretation led me to believe. I wish he had done the performance himself. Other than that, the story was fantastic and I will probably listen to it again.

Reads like a detective story - wait it is one!

Any additional comments?

I don't know why I liked this book exactly, maybe it was the suspence, the thrill of "will he make it", "can he get away with it", or maybe it was to hear how a perfectly "normal" kids facination can grow into a major problem for himself and society. But it also shows how society's fears can infringe on the individuals rights. I guess this story is slightly one-sided but what the hack - ehh - heck its a very good story. Having knowledge of some of the systems mentioned in the book I feel it gets an important message accross; technology is only as "fail proof" as the humans put in charge of it.