Hacker Attack!: Shield Your Computer from Internet Crime - Softcover

Mansfield, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0782128300 ISBN 13: 9780782128307

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 2000

Synopsis

Hacker Attack! is the only book about computer security that is at once entertaining, understandable, and practical. You′ll be fascinated as you read about hackers, crackers and whackers––people who spend their time trying to break into your computer, spreading computer viruses, or peeping (and recording what they see!) as you surf the Internet or send email.

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.

Note: CD–ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

About this title

Review

Hacker Attack is aimed at PC enthusiasts rather than businesses or paranoids, and the emphasis is firmly on home PCs running Windows. Mansfield writes with an easy, friendly style designed to make technical issues seem straightforward, but he does tend to reduce issues to the black and white of tabloid journalism with a similar cavalier attitude to providing provenance for his gaudier "facts".

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

Synopsis

Providing information on how to identify, avoid and eradicate computer viruses, this text goes on to explain how to protect data with professional encryption techniques. The CD contains a demo of BlackICE Defender to protect the reader's computer agains hackers.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0782128300
• ISBN 13: 9780782128307
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320