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Mitnick Calls for Hacker Stories
ram writes "Famed hacker and master social engineer Kevin Mitnick has been commissioned to write a new book following the success of his first text The Art of Deception. The new book, tentatively titled 'The Art of Intrusion' will tell the stories of real hacks, with the names of attackers obscured to protect them from the authorities and their victims. Mitnick has called on retired hackers to come forward with their stories, offering a $500 (283) prize for the best story that makes it into the book, and a $200 payment for all stories that make the final draft."
Because, he was considered a martyr. I remember 2600 was reporting that the original sentence (total amount of charges) could add up to 465 years in prison, or some astronomical number. He was extremely brazen in his ability, and it really isn't that interesting of a story. I prefer better stories. For example, when Wired reported about the LOD wars, Phiber Optik, etc.. I don't ever remember Mitnick being on the front cover, though.
For Serious: Another "wild one" often passed around whas that he could phreak the phone system by whistling into the handset.
Yup! they seriously thought he could blow a consistent and exact 2600Hz (amongst other requisite frequencies) with just his mouth.
As opposed to, for example, hypothetically, some cheap crappy plastic whistle from a box of Captain Crunch.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I can't be arsed to find a link but it's not hard to track down. He was found guilty of cloning cell phones and was serving time for that while awaiting the trial for his PC hacking stuff. There is info on some US gov sites as that kind of info is available to the public.
The whole "Free Kevin" movement was likely led by a series of un-informed angsty 12 year olds.
The copyright for happy birthday is currently owned by AOL Time Warner - Congratulations - you've broken the DMCA.
)
(http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.htm
http://www.underground-book.com/ this style of book has been done before (in australia anyway) and with relative success. The best part about that book was how the author made it available for the public to d/l. an interesting read ...
Please tell me which law I broke, exactly?
Copyright. The copyright on Happy Birthday is not expired. and it won't for another couple of decades (unless copyright laws change again).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Seriously, though, publishers do just what you've suggested:
1. Commission someone to write a book for you.
2. Publish.
3. Give the author a tiny little bit of the money, and keep the rest.
4. Profit!
There's no ??? because it's a well-established model, but the the Profit! is optimistic... many books don't earn enough money to pay for the author's advance. It's the blockbusters that pay for the flops, and the flops that create enough volumes to convince customers that a bookstore is any good.
Mitnick is following the journalistic model, though, because he isn't asking people to submit finalized text for him. He's going to write the book from the source material he's given.
hacker (from http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/apme/tools/)
[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe]
1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users' Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.
evil ??
I doubt that would help with a book about hacking, since many of the crimes are reasonably against the country itself. However, Mitnick is acting as a journalist, which gives him a certain amount of protection when it comes to proecting his sources. I wouldn't risk it if I had a prior conviction and was on probation, because for him even the contempt charge sometimes used to pressure journalists is a really serious thing, but he's not exactly afraid of authority.
Yada, yada, NAL.
That's the model that Scott Adams has been using for about 15 years with Dilbert. He ran out of ideas after the first two years but at that point he was popular enough that people sent him screwy stuff that was happening in cube-farms. Now I admit he is brilliant at putting them in a humorous context, but they're not necessarily all his ideas.
This sig best viewed in a drunken stupor.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
AGREED. I published a book and paid out a much greater sum to contributors than what Mr. Mitnick is offering. Especially for the components that will make is book interesting to a wider audience. The key with publishing is to attract as large as an audience as possible - which the anecdotal stories will certainly help to do because they give the masses an insight into the hidden world.
In general, royalties for U.S. sales are 5-10% of the sale price of the book from the publisher - usually 50-55% off of the cover price. Foreign sales often yield a fixed price per unit sold. Really geeky books have an audience of 5,000-10,000 readers. Mass market geek books 2-10 times that. The anecdotes will push this book well beyond that. I rant, but do the math and you'll see that $200 and $500 is very exploitive.
It sounds like this book is going to be about crackers and cracking and not hackers and hacking.
Common usage tends to blur the meaning between the two concepts but I thought here on slashdot at least there was some instance that the two not get confused.