The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick, with William L. Simon, Wiley, £19.95/$27.50, ISBN 0471237124 Reviewed by Wendy M. Grossman
IT TOOK Google a split second to find the National Crime Information Center manual on an Ohio law-enforcement site. An it’s just as Kevin Mitnick says: the manual is full of codes and instructions for retrieving information from the FBI database. Does it matter, since only authorised people have access to the database? Sure it does, if you like to engage in the sport he calls “social engineering”.
Mitnick, of course, earned notoriety for his hacking exploits. This book doesn’t talk about his escapades, for which he has served a jail term, but focuses on teaching companies how to defeat someone like him.
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Let’s say I call you, working away at the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, and say something like, “I’m trying to do an MW on [deported felon’s name], and the computer keeps crashing. Can you see if it works for you?” If you knew MW was lingo for modifying a record, wouldn’t you think I was a fellow worker in trouble, and wouldn’t you feel inclined to help?
This is Mitnick’s social engineering, and The Art of Deception is full of specific examples of the ways apparently innocent bits of information can be stitched together to mount a comprehensive attack on an organisation’s most prized information.
