I wrote this review back in November of 2011. While cleaning out my blog’s draft folder I realized I’d never gotten around to posting it. Since it’s a good tech/geek read, I figured it was better late than never.

Ghost in the Wires

I went on vacation recently and needed a book for the rather long plane ride. After reading a sample chapter of Kevin Mitnick’s new autobiography, my interest was piqued. I had remembered reading about him and the “Free Kevin” movement back in ’98, and at the time I didn’t understand why people were getting behind this guy. He did a bunch of bad stuff, why should he be free? Since it’d also probably cover some interesting computer security topics, I figured it be both educational and entertaining. I picked up a copy and by the time I was arriving home, my hopes had been met.

Mitnick gained massive media attention in the mid-to-late 90’s when he was on the run from the FBI for various hacking related offenses. He was eventually captured, and spent 5 years in prison. In his new autobiography, “Ghost in the Wires”, he chronicles his escapades and details how he compromised so many systems. Surprisingly, it mostly through something called Social Engineering, which can loosely be defined as “the manipulation of people to get them to do what you want”.

Mitnick’s tales typically involve him just calling up his target, and simply convincing them to give him certain information or do certain things for him. For example, he was able to compromise the Social Security Administration by pretending to be an investigator from the Inspector General’s Office. He convinced a staff member there of his status, and for several years was able to use her to get privileged information. Here’s an excerpt of where he discusses the ruse:

I said, “We’re going to be needing assistance on a continuing basis,” explaining that while our office was working on a number of fraud investigations, we didn’t have access to MCS — short for “Modernized Claims System,” the amusingly clumsy name for their centralized computer system.

From the time of that initial conversation, we became telephone buddies. I was able to call Ann and have her look up whatever I wanted — Social Security numbers, dates and places of birth, mother’s maiden names, disability benefits, wages, and so on. Whenever I phoned, she would drop whatever she was doing to look up anything I asked for.

Mitnick comes off as smart and very curious, and a lot of his stories are very interesting, but it’s hard to like the guy. He ends up causing a lot of people grief and some of the decisions he makes made me want to facepalm. He continues to hang out with his best friend after the guy steals his wife (this same friend later tries to offer him up to the FBI), he strings along “Eric” even though he suspects the guy is working for the FBI, and he continues to do high profile system break-ins while he’s on the run. Though then again, if he hadn’t made these nutty decisions, there probably wouldn’t be a book to read.

The book starts off a little slow, but takes off once Mitnick goes on the run from the FBI for 2 years. During this time he assumes several identities, lives in a hand full of cities, and breaks into numerous systems. He gleefully details the social engineering tactics he used to do all of this, but when it comes to the technical aspects of his crimes, the book does a little bit of hand waving. The lack of detail in this department was apparently due to a disagreement between Mitnick and his co-writer. Mitnick wanted more detail, while his co-writer wanted to keep the story moving. They comprised, so there are a few side boxes for the more technically inclined, but you typically just get the general idea of what happened.

Overall I thought the book was a fascinating read and a valuable look into how a very successful individual was able to break into many different systems. If you’re into computer security, or looking for a non-fiction thriller, this is something to check out.

Audio Processing with Web Audio

HTML5’s web audio API is pretty cool. Last year I had some fun experimenting with it, and since then I have been meaning to loop back and play around with it some more. So when I was offered a review copy of Audio Processing with Web Audio, my interested was piqued and I decided to see what it had to offer.

The book is setup to be a primer for web audio (in Packt terms an “instant” book). It contains a mere 63 pages, and reads like one long chapter. Overall it turned out to be a nice introductory book, but it’s does have a few flaws that take it down a notch.

As the book starts, you’re directed to setup your development environment and to download a zip of the code examples. This zip contains a total of 8 examples, broken out into 6 “recipes”. You can see a list of what they are below.

Recipe 1_1: Initialization exercise
Recipe 2_1: Playing Audio Files from an Audio Buffer
Recipe 3_1: Playing Audio in a Loop
Recipe 4_1a: Setting Volume
Recipe 4_1b: Setting Volume (refactored to use new template code)
Recipe 5_1: Scheduling Audio Playback
Recipe 5_2: Automating Audio Parameters
Recipe 6_1: 5-band Equalizer

For what I assume were space restrictions, the first two recipes in the code example packet were not discussed in the book. This makes the book slightly awkward since the first recipe covered, the one on looping sound (3_1), makes references to text written for these recipes and doesn’t cover concepts that would have been discussed for those examples. Thankfully it’s easy to pick up what you miss from the example code, but it’s an unfortunate editing snafu.

In the looping sound section you’re walked through the creation of the recipe via code samples with explanations, and once it’s done you’re given a deeper discussion of why things worked the way they did. The next two recipes are done in the same vein, and cover volume and automating audio parameters. The example code works smoothly and the author does a great job of explaining all of the little nuances that go with the code.

The final recipe is on building the 5-band equalizer. It’s billed as an advanced example, and it sort of feels like you go from a nice walk through the world of web audio, to a brisk sprint. I really didn’t know what was going on. I don’t know much about sound theory, so the different filters and concepts were all very foreign. I imagine this chapter was included so those more familiar with sound concepts would feel they got something out of the book, but it’s a little confusing for developers not tuned into how sound works.

Looking over the example packet, one other example titled “Scheduling Audio Playback” was cut from the book. However, unlike the first two examples, this exclusion isn’t really noticeable. Still, it leaves me thinking this book could have been a lot more interesting if it had been expanded by 20 or 30 pages. However, I’m glad they included all of the examples in the code packet, since it gives the reader some jumping off points after they’ve finished the text.

Overall it’s a nice introductory book. It has some flaws, but it comes with some good example code and does a good job on the majority of topics it tackles.