Book Reviews

Stealing the Network: How to Own the Box

written by: Ryan Russell, Tim Mullen (Thor), FX, Dan Kaminsky, Joe Grand, Ken Pfeil, Ido Dubrawsky, Mark Burnett, and Paul Craig
Published 2003 by Syngress with a foreward by Jeff Moss.. ISBN: 1-931836-87-6

Stealing the Network is a refreshing change from more traditional computer books. The authors have created fictional stories based on non-fictional concepts that could really happen to our computer systems today. The realistic fiction approach makes the book much lighter to read and actually entertaining. I also believe this approach makes the true methods behind the fictional stores much more memorable then memorizing thousand page textbooks.

I'm leery of books that are written by multiple authors because the writing style always seems to keep me off beat from jumping around, however in this book it works out well since the book is organized as a series of short stories. Each individual story describes somebody involved in information security, either somebody trying to access a system, or a person trying to keep the bad guys out.

If you are looking for a step-by-step guide to locking down your computer and network this is not the book for you, this is more for people who already have at least a basic understanding of information security to see from another perspective. Stealing the Network looks at other reasons why people can break in. Everything from being told to go to industry conferences to not collecting access cards when an employee leaves the company. To me what this book left deepest in my mind is to trust nothing, and assume even less.

After the ten short stories of how hacking is really done there is a nicely done appendix along with Ryan Russel's "Laws of Security", which finishes this fictional book in a very non-fictional way. The laws cover most of the problems with current IT infrastructure, but does not go in-depth with what I believe is the biggest security hole, the user. Many of the stories touch on this fact but that's about the extent of it. I believe this may be because there are not any easy solutions to human behavior. The book says it the best with "people are lazy".

At 328 pages in pretty large text this is a great easy read. The book would be better though with a lower price tag. However if you work with or around computers and the Internet this book is very enlightening, if not completely informative.-

Table of Contents
  • Acknowledgements
  • Contributors
  • Forward
    1. Hide and Sneak
    2. The Worm Turns
    3. Just Another Day at the Office
    4. h3X's Adventures in Networkland
    5. The Thief No One Saw
    6. Flying the Friendly Skies
    7. dis-card
    8. Social (In)Security
    9. BabelNet
    10. The Art of Tracking
  • Appendix - The Laws of Security