Hacking Books

Nutshell review - If you are new to the field or perhaps a manager who wants to get a quick, high level overview of the wireless hacking field then this will serve as a starting point. More detailed and extensive books such as Wi-Foo: The Secrets of Wireless Hacking are available for further research.

Valuable in my work as a consultant, installing and troubleshooting WiFi networks. The "ethical hacker" is a valuable tool.

I just installed my own home-based-business wireless network in May, and I have found this book to be incredibly useful in setting up security and also figuring out the odd interruptions and accessibility anomolies that tend to happen with wireless. I like to use this book to quickly find information about basically any security-related wireless topic. It is written clearly and explains what the various codes and messages mean. Of course the messages generated through a wireless system will look geek-like. However, the writing in the book is not geek-speek. This would make a good reference book for anyone in any size of organization to have if they use wireless. It is especially great for those with home wireless systems, as well as small- to medium-sized businesses that typically do not have staff solely dedicated for information security. If you rely upon yourself or others who are not technical to secure your wireless network, then you would definitely benefit from this book.

Hacking Wireless Networks for Dummies is a terrible book. If you are a regular person with social skills you have likely noticed that computer guys do not know how to communicate. They enjoy being geeky and learning all the techno speak of certain topics so they can try and sound smart. This is exactly what this book is 387 pages of. The authors are classic computer geeks who love their nonsense talk.

Nothing is really explained. This is a "Dummies" book. That would suggest to me that the authors are going to drop the geek babble and talk like humans. They do not. Fortunately I have the computer knowledge to follow techno babble. What is unfortunate is these guys are very inaccurate. They babble on (they repeat sections of the book MANY times, cut and paste style) almost as if they just wanted to fill pages. Many of the tools discussed are known not to work. They recommend Linux and Unix tools knowing full well the "Dummie" audience will not be able to use this info.

The entire book is more of a 387 page advertisement for why wireless is insecure (the first chapter is an advertisement). You will not know how to hack anything after reading this book. The 387 pages could have easily been pared to 150. Take out all the repetition and nonsense (they babble on about garbage throughout the book)

I used to like and recommend Dummies books years ago. However I haven't found many in the last few years that really cover a topic well. It seems like they simply want to put the title on the shelves. The content is not a concern. If you are a regular person this book will put you to sleep. If you do manage to get thru it you will learn very little. If you are a computer expert this book contains absolutely nothing that you cannot find in any forum on the net. There is no useful info in this book. Internet forums are free and up to date. A few Google searches would provide more value then this 387 pages of repetitive nonsense.

If you see it in the bargain bin for $1 ... PASS.

This is the real specialty the authors of this book have mastered...
I am astonished at how many positive reviews this horrible, stinky title has received ... how many friends do this guys have? In fact this has got to be one of the worst tech book I have ever read, a total waste of money and paper.
My advice is , avoid this book, and any other book form the same authors, like plague! You will learn NOTHING from them.
The authors go on and on babbling about how unsecure wireless networks are, and are nonetheless unable to clearly indicate you any technique to take advantage or to protect form this weakness. All you get (apart from the boring and repetitive author's ruminations) are a few screenshots of NetStumbler (hey man, I can see by myself what it looks like, teach me how to use it instead ..), one screenshot of Kismet running on a linux xterm and a list of some of its command options (come on do you think that a beginner would ever be able to figure out how to use a open source tool like Kismet all by himself?)
Ah we also get a little advertisement for a couple of non-free tools like AiroPeek ... like a beginner should spend money on that? And , wait, there is no tutorial or intro on those tools as well. Just the usual couple of screenshots to make the book look good if you flip through it at the bookstore.
Seriously, I know this is hard to believe, but this pathetic excuse for a book is just a series of boring trivialities
For example ... did you ever think about the fact that installing a non-authorized, non-encrypted access point in your office network might actually be a security risk? I am sure you didn't, but thanks to this beautiful book you know, as the author spends pages and pages rambling and babbling about this absurd topic!
Years ago the "For Dummies" series used to be the right choice if you needed a humorous, tutorial-like but solid intro to a 'foreign' technology, but now the title is not a joke anymore.
"Hacking Wireless Networks for Dummies".. true to its title!

This review is a collaborative writing project completed by the students in a "Technology and Ethics" class at DeVry University in beautiful Colorado Springs, Colorado. It is based on a quick look at the book under consideration.

This book has several virtues. It provides a simple step-by-step process to keep hackers out. It also provides supportive links where you can download software to protect your hardware as well as business information. The simple wording allows you to concentrate on your work while helping you protect what you are working on.

Although this book is outdated, it would still be helpful in setting up a security policy. The illustrations in this book would not be suitable for some business environments; however they would be useful for the individual computer user.

I would recommend this book to beginners in the computer technology field. This book comes with a useful CD-ROM that contains software and added resources.

This new expanded edition of Halting the Hacker came out in 2002 and is nearly double the size of the original edition. It takes the insight of how hackers attack systems from Pipkin's first edition and delves into the details of how to protect your Unix and Linux systems.

Real-life stories about hackers and companies who were hacked are sprinkled throughout the book making it an easy read for anyone, not just techies. The tools discussed (and which come with it on the included CD-ROM) makes it a valuable resource for everyone who deals with Unix/Linux systems.

Highly recommended!

I got this book to become more familiar with network security. It goes over some good topics and really helps you to understand the "secure your system" concept. However, this book is a basic overview for the network manager and I would suggest that you find some other book to go with if you wanna buy it..

This isn't a heavily technical book. Unlike many of the other security books I've reviewed, this isn't full of tcpdump traces and the like. It is, however, a really excellent overview of security that can introduce a system administrator or a general manager to the subject.

There are actually a very few pages that deal with things like disabling unused services, but that's just 14 pages from a 337 page work, and those are really more illustrative than specific. Instead, this covers the who, the how and the why of hackers, the legal climate, and includes examples of actual incidents.

Perhaps a good indication of the target audience is the Glossary, which includes definitions for "back door", "client/server", "Kerberos", "newsgroup" and "Trojan horse".

If you are looking for programmer level information, this isn't what you want. On the other hand, this is much more technical and focused than something you might read in Newsweek or your Sunday newspaper.

Recommended for business owners and managers who need to understand computer security even though others may actually implement it, or as a base introduction for technical people with no previous exposure.

It is ironic that the advent of the computer promised to dramatically reduce paper usage; today's 1,000-page-plus computer-security tomes have probably single-handedly deforested whole regions of the earth. A happy exception to this trend of titanic texts is Halting the Hacker. Which is relatively concise yet highly informative.

It provides a good overview of core information security issues and concepts. It takes a big-picture approach to information systems security, not bogging down the reader in arcane minutiae.

Halting the Hacker delves into more intricate details and includes a CD-ROM with many security tools.

Overall, it is valuable for anyone needing to know about information systems security without sacrificing a forest in the process.

Sure, make an outdated license.. get busted and go
to jail. Try drinking at a place that doesn't
ask for ID. Duh?

This book has nothing to do with other ID. This book is ALL about making fake driver's license.

Granted this book goes into nice detail on how to design and make them but it fails to let you in on some details. New York and Florida have PLASTIC driver's license. With a Florida license it looks like a credit card with a black data strip in the back. The police officers, when they pull you over, will swipe your card through their machines and pull up all of your information. The idea was to save on time when pulling someone over to write up a ticket. With New York licenses, the cards of made of a flexible plastic with the picture digitized on them. Getting your hands on either of these materials would be highly difficult. All it would take is one astute person from that state or someone who regularly sees multiple state IDs to catch on that its not a real ID.

This book is excellent. I have read every book on manufacturing false identification out there. No other book guides you through the process of manufacturing fake ID as completely as this one does. From finding the proper supplies, to tips on how to use the ID so you won't get busted, it is all in here. I especially liked the chapter on evaluating your finished ID. If you are even thinking about trying to make a fake ID, BUY THIS BOOK!

The previous reviewer is half-right . . . . the book does not even come close to focussing on making "Other IDs". It's all about making fake driver's licenses--PERFECT fake driver's licenses. That's why I bought it and that's why I'm VERY happy with the purchase. If you want to make a fake driver's license, this is the book for you.

This is the first book of this nature i bought, and can honestly say its awesome. It tells you everything you will need to make a novelty license including, different printers, paper, computer software, templates, etc and where to get these items, it goes ionto great detail and walks you step-by-step through the whole process.

This book is written by an academic who is so far behind the times that he spends a good chunk of the book writing about, "Hackers," the movie from 1995. Huh? The writing does not flow and the information is outdated. If you want to know about hacker culture go to 2600 - dot - org. Good thing I checked it out from the library.

While people in previous reviews have complained that a) the prose is dense, and b) it's out of date, I can say as an academic who has waded through most of the academic literature on hackers and hacker culture that Thomas's prose, although indeed academic, is in contrast cystal clear. As well, his take on hackers is, in my opinion, more thorough and balanced than almost any other account I've seen.
What reviewers who want to either "watch the movie" or read an exciting book like "Cyberpunk" instead miss is that Thomas deconstructs both of these phenomena -- hackers in fiction and hackers in bombastic nonfiction, to create a portrayal of hacker culture in the popular media as well as in "real life." His aim is not just to talk about hackers but also the perception of hackers. Yes, it's outdated (although how it could not be is difficult to say), but the truth is that most of the paradigm-setting portrayals of hackers were produced in the mid 1980s - mid 1990s, and as such the movies, fiction, journalism etc. from this time period are still quite relevant. It is not complete -- I fault him for instance for only fully deconstructing a few movies -- but it is by far the most complete in terms of showing both sides (fiction and reality, not hackers and law enforcement) that I have seen.
I would urge people, like the reviewer below, who are interested in hacker culture to visit sites like 2600; I would also urge them to read this book -- please! -- in addition to or instead of books like "Cyberpunk" and "The Cuckoo's Egg."

As others have mentioned in their reviews, this book was written by a highly academic author. Thus, the content is geared towards a college educated audience, or at least bright highschool students. As a computer engineering student, I found this book to be intruiging. Several hacking related movies were analyzed, and although slightly dated, these examples further the understanding of hacking history. The anecdotes are often amusing, and the main points of each section are deeply supported with sources and logical reasoning. Thomas's overlying message is that the media cruelly slants the image of the benevolent hacker into one of a violent evil genius. I'd recommend this book to anyone above average computer user level, or those who have an interest in learning about computer history, and hackers in general.

This is a cultural and political study of hackers as researched by an academic, and as a former academic myself, I can tell you a bit about how this process works. A professor takes a subject of general interest and beats it senseless by applying intellectual theory, and constructs the study for other professors who are more concerned with accepted research methods, rather than knowledgeable general readers who might have an interest in learning more about the subject. Here, Douglas Thomas uncovers a number of fascinating aspects of hacker culture. These include the recent increase in political activism by hackers, their contradictory stances on secrecy and freedom of information, the back-and-forth influence of cyberpunk and science fiction (with some interesting connections to authors William Gibson and Bruce Sterling), and especially how popular views on the criminality of hackers is really an outgrowth of society's latent fears of technological domination.

This could have been a truly fascinating book if Thomas hadn't decided to turn on the professorisms and flog this interesting material to death with tired and soggy theory. Thomas frequently namedrops the classic social theoreticians Foucault, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, an exercise that serves little purpose other than impressing Thomas' fellow professors. He also unleashes windy over-analysis of the texts of outdated movies and magazines, as well as the influential Hacker Manifesto. His attempts to build up his annoying concepts of boy culture and the influence of the body on virtual identity mostly fizzle out (run for your life when you see an author whipping out terms like those), and the book often deteriorates into obtuse and fatuous academic language like the over-analytical "freedom and secrecy were decontextualized to the point of solipsism," and pure useless professorial garbage like "the decomposition and recomposition of discourse." At times this book is surprisingly interesting for an academic cultural study, but remember who wrote it and for whom. [~doomsdayer520~]

I found this to be a remarkable work which does a lot of explain who hackers are and where they came from. While it is true that the book deals quite a bit with the 1990s, it does so from an historical perspective. I'm not sure exactly how history can be called "outdated." I think what he was trying to say was that the movie Hackers influenced a generation of hackers, just as WarGames did a generation earlier. At least that was my reading.

This is definately an academic book, written by an academic, published by an academic press, so you have to expect that it will be over some people's heads. It may have been smarter for the author to rely on more examples and stories and to not probe the issues quite so deeply or try to create a theory about who hackers are or what their cultural significance is in such a hostile, anti-intellectual climate. As for me, the book made me think.

Apparently that is too much work for some people. Not a light read, but "by my lights" not many things worth reading are. I mean since when has a favorable comparison to Henry James been considered an insult?

The book is a practical guide where every topic is covered completely and succinctly. It does not waste your time with fluff and focuses on cutting edge issues related to Web 2.0 security. This book is not meant to be the end-all for web security. As the title states, it is focused on Web 2.0. If you are an experienced security professional and are looking for a book which will get you up to speed on Web 2.0 security, this is the book for you.

Hacking Exposed Web 2.0 is comparable to many of their series, Great information on getting started securing your box, but not without its drawbacks.

I dislike - the thin book, only about 220 useful pages (used to much fatter books). It also often jumps from quite difficult to quite easy often. The difficulty to setting up a test environment, this book would be quite easy for someone who developed all of these environments (from simple HTML and JavaScript to XML and SQL and more) to complete, but it is quite difficult to have these environments readily available to you for testing purposes.

The information is this book is extremely valuable, For a security enthusiast the information gives the reader a great starting point to build on. It has small, short projects (like the rest of the series) that can be completed in reasonable amount of time. It should be noted that this book (once again, like the rest of the series) does require a bit of a commitment, setting up the environment takes time, understanding the text, and doing the proper research will be what makes or breaks the experience for you and what you will gain from it. I would recommend it to anyone with a good understanding of web languages or a strong desire to learn about their security (or lack thereof).

Thanks to McGraw-Hill for my review copy.

Based on my review criteria this book should have easily been a 4 or 5 star book, but I gave it 3 stars for its major flaw. Its major flaw is that it only talks about iSec partner's SecurityQA Toolbar as a tool for testing for the different types of web application vulnerabilities. Only discussing one closed source, for pay tool, that only runs on Windows is really disappointing from a security professional standpoint. I really expected a good snapshot in time on the DIFFERENT tools and techniques for doing web 2.0 auditing. There are tons of "for-pay" and more importantly FREE web application scanners and tools that look for the same vulnerabilities discussed in the book and the fact that they don't mention any other tools or methods is very disappointing.

Now that the above is out of the way...lets get on with the likes and dislikes.

Likes:
-The analysis of the samy worm is excellent. They break the code apart and really analyze what's going on and why it worked at the time.
-The chapter on ActiveX security is excellent. It covers a lot of ground on why ActiveX controls are bad, how to fuzz them and how to defend against them.
-The whole first part of the book on Web 1.0 vulnerabilities is well written, I had just finished XSS attacks and having that background helped a lot with the relevant chapters in HE Web 2.0.

Dislikes:
-The book is short, about 246 pages, that's probably too short for the price for a security book.
-A good chunk of the chapters cover over and over installing and using their SecurityQA Toolbar, I only need it once, if that.
-I think the book stops a bit short of actually exploiting Web 2.0 vulnerabilities. It talks a lot about identifying which 2.0 framework an application was built with and identifying different methods in that application, if debug functionality is enabled, and finding hidden URLs but how I exploit SQL injection issues or XPATH injection or LDAP injection issues IN web 2.0 applications is missing. That was the core problem with web 1.0, its still a valid and dangerous entry point for web 2.0 and should have been covered. Hacking Exposed is generally about exploiting vulnerabilities and not stopping at identifying them which is where the book seems to have stopped.

Overall the authors are obviously very knowledgeable about the subject. One of the other reviewers mentioned that it goes from technically very easy to very difficult even within chapters and I think this is true. The code sample for the examples they give are great and their explanations of web 1.0 and the web 2.0 threats is very well written with good examples. Like I said, had it not been for their fixation with their own tool as the only option we have for web 1.0 and 2.0 testing this would have easily been a 4 star book. For those a bit more interested in web 2.0 I would recommend checking out Shreeraj Shah's Web 2.0 Security and Hacking Web Services books and his website which has free web 2.0 auditing tools.

Hacking Exposed Web 2.0: Web 2.0 Security Secrets and Solutions (Hacking Exposed)

The Hacking Exposed Web 2.0 book has proven to be a fairly huge disappointment for me. After some quality technical books in this series, the publisher has released what amounts to a sales tool for the author's software.

The front cover states "Web 2.0 Security Secrets and Solutions" but the inside of the book hasn't really lived up to that hype. Normally, when it comes to books by McGraw Hill with the Hacking Exposed title, I can expect a decent amount of technical detail on the topic at hand. With this book, it was a bit different. Now, before you think I'm blasting this book entirely, I want to make perfectly clear that there is valid information in this book, but in my opinion, it's pretty basic stuff. If you're a beginner in the world of web hacking, then this book might be worthwhile. However, if you've done much web hacking at all, I think you'll be discouraged at the basic nature of the information included.

The sales pitch starts right in Chapter 1 as the iSec Partners push their Security QA toolbar for web assessments. If you visit their website, they have two separate sections that contain potential software you can download and use. The Products section will allow you to download the trial version of this toolbar, but you have to talk to a sales person to get pricing on the software. But a good deal of the content they discuss in the book is based on this tool.

Now, with that said, there are good points for the book as well. For example, McGraw-Hill sticks to the tried and true format formula that provides readers with an overall Risk Rating for each topic, which is based on the popularity, simplicity, and impact of each vulnerability. Some of the topics in the book do have a better amount of detail on the vulnerability than others. They do a decent job of covering the basic security models in play when a web browser is loaded, even including information on the Flash security models.

All in all, this book isn't awful, but it's certainly not going to give you a lot of information that you couldn't already get online. Because the book is so thin, the actual desk reference value of this book is a bit thin as well. You would do better to purchase a more comprehensive book that you can use as a desk reference later, as you work through your various projects.

I'm still in the middle of the book, and I definitely will skim thru all the remaining pages (just because I paid for it), but I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone looking for serious and in-depth study on web security - the book just doesn't offer that. What it does is a list of possible attack vectors and sometimes offers "solutions" which can help to fight with the attacks. However, the attacks descriptions are shallow, solutions are very short and non-extensive and many of them go as far as telling a user to install NoScript extension for Firefox (huh? Web 2.0 doesn't work with no JavaScript).

There are also quadrillions of links to a security-related site (won't list it here) which offers a toolbar to checks your sites again the most common security problems. I don't have anything against links to useful tools of course, but THAT amount of links just makes this book look like an advertisement of the fore-mentioned site. Am not even talking about page space wasted to re-iterate "go to ...., install ...., click .... in order to test for ....." which usually take 0.5-1 pages. Users who read that sort of books can somehow figure out how to use a toolbar, I believe.

I'm not by any means a security expert, and this book did introduce me into the topic, but it didn't do anything beyond that. I still need to read some other book on the topic, and that book will probably contain the same info as the Hacking Web 2.0 Exposed (i.e. the very basic info on web expoits), so.. I actually just recommend to pass on this book at all, and look for something which covers the topic in greater depth.

Knew the author, used to work at the same place. Nice enough guy, he used to be F.B.I. and T.V.A. (Tennessee Valley Authority for you uninformed (wink)) recently Dave has been lecturing the Arson Circuit [so he's "putting out fires "like the rest of us computer geeks"] The part he's written of the books is a bit radical, mostly buzzwords, bits of history and I think a mistaken misnomer towards policy (if you ask this half if its an offense and can we prosecute you'll get a false positive) but might provide some insite from the thinking of the early 80's when "Hackers" were M.I.T. geniouses so they had to invent some other groups as the scarecrow (see description above), but then again Dave has worked the field so is an interesting perspective but it reads like a "grant supported conference" of course I think if he'd just written a novel/narrative/autobiography it would be more than the $0.02 i'm getting on reselling O'Reilly books (they usually really are good btw, most Oreilly texts were a nessesity for computer administrators (Icove's book is not one though, (unless your either in the biz or a crazed enthusist)) [one quote is "all people have committed offenses, and other people ultimatly detect them". p 35, throw the first stone attitude, everyone else has, so philosophy major he ain't", but probably what is known as the "Other Half" of the book is legal statutes ("laws used to prosecute computer crime" p73 so again this is actually written as the lowest go ahead denominator (invade first, then look up the law afterward) that possibly an agent would like (and the author [whether David Icove or not] attempted) to give to his or herself, but back to the legal part) (this is the part one pores over for years looking for either actual go-ahead or a loophole). O.K. got that straight 1st half addresses "order", 2nd half addresses "Law", reverse it (Law before Order, lest we all be animals [i'm just speaking here as a techocrate]) and you got what I call normalicy. Would have rated it higher, but always look up the law on a current database, as the House like to date it. (only reason it got a two is the buzzwords might have been actually used back in the day)

Well, this book is an exelent scource for computer crime and law, but it sarts off with a bit of easy stuff. I suppose that is needed for some. :-) Nice job again orilley!

This is an example of a gift of white space that is used to sell computer literature and software. But also there's tricks and techniques from the FBI in this white space book. Maybe you can go out and bust a computer user or want too. This book will show you how.

It took me about five months to read. But then again it could be a faster read if your focused only on one book.

Very complete but needs more Canadian law references.

This is a good book for beginers on up. Worth having on your shelf.

This books gives some decent insite into the world of computer forensics if you have never touched on the subject before, but you certainly will not come away with the ability to perform computer forensics on your friends old hard drive. Leave that to the experts...

Helped me to provide my high school students to the introductory world of computer forensics and that was all I needed it to help me with.

A nonsense book. It should have been useful 6-7 years ago but, at the present it doesn't say anything which can help you both to learn computer forenics and to perform your day-by-day analisys.
Buy something other

I highly recommend this book for beginners and experienced forensics experts. It talks about all possible situations you could encounter from a technological and legal stand point. This book really prepares you for how to be ready for the field and explains everything in a really friendly way. The book is a very easy read but is specific and isn't vague like other books I have read. You can literally keep reading and not have to take a break.

Computer Forensics: Principles and Practices is a great teaching tool for forensic investigators of all skill levels. For a beginner, the book takes you through the investigative process from A to Z and doesn't leave out the more advanced and complicated processes of data carving, email reconstruction and mobile device analysis.

For the advanced user, there is plenty of information that is both relevant and useful, some of which you may not have seen before. I appreciated this most because of the specific processes outlined and the tools that were described. I am a big fan of books that can help you apply examples to your own processes, something this book does very well.

Everything from A to Z, this book provides excellent material focusing on process and step-by-step analysis using the latest tools available.

Overview: Give credit to authors Wallace and Mangan: they wear their sympathy on their sleeves. "Sex, Laws, and Cyberspace" is not intended to be an objective review of the state of First Amendment protection on the Net; it is a passionate argument for redefining how we apply the First Amendment to the Internet. This passion is both the book's strength and its weakness, as it will reinforce beliefs but not necessarily win converts. The book's outstanding summary of major events in Internet law will provide researchers with tremendous details in the years to come.

Full text of this review is at: http://www.redstreet.com/readingroom/reviews/sexlaws.htm

The title of the review about sums everything up. It started off very slow and boring and I almost put it down. I was sick, however, and struggled on. The book gets a lot better in later chapters, but since it references the beginning a lot, you have to struggle through the beginning. There's some really good quotes in the last chapter. The use of traditionally offensive issues like online kiddie porn and violent "erotica" to illustrate the issues (in the beginning) was a decent attempt to shock the reader into re-examining digital law from other perspectives, but may backfire or upset some.

As others have noted, though, it is quite dated.

I own but have not read Sex Laws and Cyberspace in its entirety. This is because the book is poorly written and hard to read.

The book deals with cogent questions about types of pornography and legal problems in the theory and practice of censoring it.

However, it appears Wallace and Mangan aimed at length instead of lucidity in each paragraph and chapter. Reading page after page of their rambling narrative is simply too much.

I believe that the book enstilled frightening thoughts in my mind of the dangers available on the Internet. A must read book before you let your child use the information superhighway.

Some works of non-fiction manage to be engaging throughout. Others, like the Taming of Chance, are important but can be tough to read through much of the text. Hacking takes on the history of probability; which he describes as "the philosophical success story of the first half of the 20th century." The taming of chance refers to the way apparently irregular events have been brought under the control of natural or social law.

Hacking takes us through the 19th century intellectual battle between adherents of determinism and probability's champions. The book devolves at times into more of a history of thought than a discussion of the implications of these changes in thinking. In fact, the author admits late in the book, "My chapters have become successively more removed from daily affairs."

He describes chance first as a concept that had no place in reasonable discourse during the Enlightenment. With the development of measures of probability around 1830, chance is condemned by "statistical fatalism" to irrelevance. Finally, with the development of quantum mechanics in 1930, chance becomes the critical element of life with which we are all too familiar.

Along the way, we learn that some proponents of probability helped create the idea that free will existed only in theory (from 1830 until 1930). Thus, criminals are behaving predictably and the degree of their personal responsibility is at issue. Hacking concludes, "we have not made our peace with statistical laws about people. They jostle far too roughly with our ideas about personal responsibility."

While I would not consider this book as light summer reading, it will reveal to the determined reader changes in historical thought with which he is not likely to be previously familiar.

If, somewhere, deep within the tortured bowels of this book, there is a central thesis that could be stated in a few short sentences and comprehended by most educated English-speaking peoples, I have yet to find it. Endless restatement, obfuscated in painfully cultivated strings of verbiage, of trivial fact is used to document an hypothesis that if stated clearly could be supported or refuted in about a page-and-a-half and then likely consigned to the graveyard of such endeavor. The prose is a true caricature of Derrida's; the logic is a laTour de force. Typical of such works, the author begins with a premise and then selectivley seeks textual support. Of course, such an approach can be conveniently utilized to support any premise and if written with sufficient opacity will pass for scholarship and great insight.

The book is an unreadable bloody bore; its value is restricted to its caloric content relative to the market price of a barrel of Texas sweet.

This is a fascinating book, which charts the gradual development of statistical ideas in the nineteenth century, along with associated concepts, such as normalcy, chance, and determinism.

However, a few criticisms are in order. Hacking reports that there was a certain conceptual incoherence surrounding ideas relating to statistics in the 19th century, especially concerning ideas relating to determinism and chance. But I'm not quite sure that Hacking has been able to find the thread out of this confusion, as some confusions appear to remain rather resistant in spite of the narrative, which in general is admiringly clear. Three points will serve as examples:

Eastern and Western: Hacking describes two broad classes of reaction to the development of statistical reasoning; 'Western' (U.K. and France) and 'Eastern' (centred on what was then Prussia) approaches. Western thought, which was largely open to statistical reasoning, is described by Hacking as 'atomistic, individualistic, and liberal'. Eastern thought on the other hand was 'holistic, collectivist, and conservative', and critical of the developing trends of statistics.

Geographical and political issues aside, this characterization almost at once falls apart. For instance, slightly later in the book we are told that statistical methods were resisted in (French) medicine, as medicine was concerned with the individual case, not the average or normal, and hence statistical data was of no use. Immediately after reporting this, Hacking queries, without irony, 'how then could there be a use of statistics in human affairs? In the very institution designed to strip away the individuality of man, namely the court of law'. To add to the confusion, we later find out that Engel, the Prussian apparatchik, and hence 'Eastern' thinker, considered statistical reasoning to be part of a certain mentality he wished to avoid, that of determinism, which denies individual freedom. Likewise, the economist Wagner, Hacking reports, also adhered to this view. In fact there appears to have been a general resistance to statistical methods in the 'East' precisely because the so-called individualistic methods of the statisticians were seen as a threat to the concept of human freedom and individuality.

Durkheim, the French sociologist, whom we are at one point told was 'immersed' in the Western mentality, nevertheless ascribed the functioning of statistical laws to 'collective tendencies', in fact to 'social forces', rather than to the 'underlying little independent causes' of Quetelet, the French pioneer of statistical methodology.

No doubt there was some sort of difference at play here between East and West, but it strikes me that trying to distinguish these two cultures by calling one individualistic and the other collectivist does little to help.

The Title of the book: 'The Taming of Chance', especially if one recalls the title of Hacking's earlier book, 'The Emergence of Probability' which dealt with the preceding era, leads one to think that there are two parts to the development of the ideas mentioned in the book - initially, the emergence of ideas relating to chance and probability, and later their gradual 'taming'. But that would be a mistake. Hacking makes it quite clear that probabilistic and statistical laws were not initially seen to be in conflict with necessity or determinism. Hume, and other enlightenment thinkers, regarded chance as unreal, as merely an illusion caused by lack of knowledge. There was simply no chance around to be tamed, before the nineteenth century. It would appear instead that chance and its 'taming' emerged at the same time - the book then might have been more aptly titled 'The Emergence of Chance'. The idea of 'taming' seems to have slipped in from one of the book's sub-themes, the idea that statistical methods led to greater institutional control of human affairs, or from a certain conception of causality that I shall mention below.

Multiple causality, or causal sets: Quetelet, the French astronomer turned statistician, proposed a theory of 'little independent causes' to explain statistical regularity. The causes of individual cases of, say, suicide, or coin tosses, work independently of each other, but taken as a group, over all cases, they total up in a way predictable by probabilities. As far as Hacking is concerned this explanation 'does not hang together'. Be that as it may, it strikes me that there is an important aspect of Quetelet's purported explanation that deserves attention, and that is the idea that causes are best understood as existing in sets or groups. This idea is reinforced by similar attempts to explain the workings of statistical regularity later mentioned in the book - the holism of Boutroux and Durkheim, as well as the ideas of Peirce and Nietzsche. The latter two, for instance, tried to accommodate probability within causality by claiming that while causality itself may act in a determinate manner, the existence of specific causal laws themselves are a matter of chance. This explanation is not meaningful, it seems to me, unless one brings a prior notion of possibility to play in the existence of particular causal laws - not simply their actuality - as is done with the contemporary notion of possible worlds. To say that laws p, q, and r are possible in certain situations, but only p is actual in this case, is to use the idea of sets or classes of laws which are compossible with certain situations.

There is certainly an ambiguity in the concept of chance; there are at least two ideas involved: chance as opposed to causality, as pure chaos; and chance in consort with causality, 'tamed' chance, so-to-speak, chance that can '[bring] order out of chaos', chance that can support 'laws of chance' (quoted from the book's chapter summaries). Perhaps the idea of causal sets can bring some clarity to a familiar but nevertheless obscure concept, and to help to distinguish between different kinds of indeterminism that are often conflated.

but a mind-opener for those who are ready, an awesomely rewarding book for those who are willing to make the extra effort

If you're highly interested in hacking together wi-fi networks and such, you'll probably enjoy Wireless Hacking Projects for Wi-Fi Enthusiasts by Lee Barken and the SoCalFreeNet.org Wireless Users Group. I personally had hoped for something a little different, however...

Chapter list: A Brief Overview of the Wireless World; SoCalFreeNet.org: Building Large Scale Community Wireless Networks; Securing Our Wireless Community; Wireless Access Points; Wireless Client Access Devices; Wireless Operating Systems; Monitoring Your Network; Low-Cost Commercial Options; Mesh Networking; Antennas; Building Outdoor Enclosures and Antenna Masts; Solar-Powered Access Points and Repeaters; Wireless 802.11 Hacks; Index

OK, to be fair, there's a lot of technical information in this book. SoCalFreeNet.org is a group committed to building community access wireless networks in order to offer free wireless coverage for everyone in the range of the network. They go into great detail on the hardware to use, how to configure it, the reason for setting up an access portal, building a firewall for the network, and so on. If this is your interest or if you're interested in starting this type of a network in your area, I don't think there's another book out there that would help as much.

Having said that, I'd probably be a little less harsh if the book had been titled How To Build A Community Wireless Network Based On The SoCalFreeNet.org Model. Someone who is looking to play around with wi-fi in their own house, build cantennas, or possibly control devices over the wireless network will have to dig hard in the book to find what they are looking for. The information is there, but it seems to be secondary to the primary purpose (or what I perceive it to be), which is to spread wireless access to the masses.

So, depending on what you're looking for, this may or may not be a good match for you. I was expecting something different from the title and cover, and was somewhat disappointed...

Lee Barkens book was a major dissappointment. The overall content lacks the descriptiveness one would expect from a book of its title. The reader is lead down an overly linear path of chaotic instruction, devoid of any explanation as to why the chosen method is presented. Wireless Hacking is lacking of any alternative solutions which might highlight or better suit the readers specific needs.

Left with no wiggle room, the reader is lead to believe that the methods presented are the best and only available, which is frequently false and completely misrepresented.

My advice is, spend your money elsewhere. There are far better resources available than what Lee Barken provides.

This book sets out to educate, inspire and be a resource for building community wireless networks. For me the book lives up to my expectations. When dealing with the elements of building a wireless networks, some topics are difficult to get clear information on. Configuring m0n0wall is a good example. Try looking in the forums!
The step by step guides on specific hardware and specific releases of software may make it difficult to keep the book current but has infinitely more value to me than any attempt at a generic explanation. To illustrate this point, it is a long road to install Cacti as a network monitoring tool. You have to install Apache, PHP, Perl, RRD and Mysql before you can even start. I would never have made it, but Michael Mee's step by step guide made it a snap. Some of the software had been upgraded since the book was written but you could choose the same release as in the book. However, I found that the methodology in the book made it sufficiently clear that I could use the latest release in each case.

The fact that the book has many contributors means that each chapter is written by an expert in that particular field. These people have done it and are sharing it to the best of their ability.

There are many photographs and screen shots to make comprehension easier.

If you are interested in WiFi you should have this book on you bookshelf or closer. The word hacking in the title gives me that same feeling as when I am being followed by a State Cop! However, I suppose that others will feel different.

I hope the contributors and editor will endeavor to keep the book up to date as hardware and software evolves.

I have been wanting to build a community wireless network for a long time now, but digging through google and looking for books turned out to be difficult to find someone else doing something like me, until I found this book. Read the first 30 pages of it in the bookstore and I was hooked, I had to have it. The only problem I see with it is that they seem to do things in a cookie cutter way allowing little flexablity (the 802.11a backhaul is a good idea, but there are other ways than using hardware that is no longer being made and having to do cheap 'hacks' to get things going. I guess thats why it is called wireless 'hacking'. It assumes a good deal of prior knowledge, which for me is great since I am familiar with vi and unix, etc. but a newbie might be a bit confused. They should have made it a bit more friendly for newbies, at times I felt the whole book was somewhat of a hack, like they rushed to throw something together that people could use since nothing else exists like this book. They also seem to focus too much on configuring windows stuff which I find annoying since I use OS X/Linux. Many times it felt like hey were reading my mind, everything I have wanted to do for years, they did. It is a wee bit overpriced though, I would say it's worth $20-25.