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This isn't necessarily a bad thing as Hacker Attack is relentlessly practical. It covers the more colourful hacker history including phone phreaking, but on the other hand it doesn't pretend it's all done with code--there's a lot on social engineering, straightforward fraud, incompetence and wishful thinking as a substitute for security here.
His heart, though, is firmly in cryptography. The largest section of the book deals with cryptographic approaches to privacy, secrecy and security and it's here you will find the most actual code, including lots of his own. This is fun. The risks to data, though, come from system penetration whether it comes via social engineering, trojans, viruses or whatever. In this area Mansfield appears to have been blinded by Microsoft. For instance, the simplest way to prevent script-based e-mail virus attacks in Windows is to ditch Outlook and use almost any other e-mail program. In page after page of suggested fixes this one is ignored despite being the only effective solution.
Nevertheless, Hacker Attack makes a technical subject both accessible and fun. Even better, if you put its suggestions into effect your system will be a great deal more secure. --Steve Patient
Book Description
Best of all, this book provides simple but powerful solutions to all these security needs. It's all on the book's CD. Protect yourself right now with firewalls, anonymisers, and virus-guards. This is without doubt the most readable and interesting book about computer security ever written. You'll enjoy reading it, and you'll be safe after you've followed its advice.
