BOOK REVIEW: “Ghost in the Wires,” - By Kevin Mitnick, The Godfather of Hacking !

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By Brian Ries, thedailybeast.com / Aug 19, 2011 7:58 AM EDT.

Kevin Mitnick is seen after being released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, Ca., January 21, 2000. , Greg Finley / Getty Images.

Kevin Mitnick is jet-lagged.

The 48-year-old security consultant, once known to America as the world’s most notorious computer hacker, has finally returned home to Las Vegas after a three-week vacation in Spain—his first in 11 years—and there’s no time to reboot.

In town this weekend are 14,000 other hackers, IT professionals, and corporate security specialists (his estimate) attending Def-Con, which he calls “hands down the biggest security conference in the world.”

The Daily Beast caught up with the notorious hacker as he took a break from the action, to get the scoop on his latest book, Ghost in the Wires. Mitnick, who in photos looks like a cross of Jeff Goldblum and Rick Moranis, describes the fast-paced autobiography as "kind of like a Catch Me If You Can,” referring to the 2002 comedy-drama about the fugitive exploits of con artist Frank Abagnale Jr.

It’s a fair comparison.

In the 1990’s, Mitnick went on “a countrywide hacking spree" that made him one of the FBI's most wanted computer criminals. According to a news article at the time, Mitnick "was alleged to have hacked into computers, stolen corporate secrets, scrambled phone networks, broken into the national defense warning system and caused millions of dollars in losses."

“Ghost in the Wires”

By Kevin Mitnick

432 pages. Little, Brown. $25.99.

He was eventually sentenced to 46 months in prison—a portion of which were served in solitary confinement a result of the government’s overblown fears he could whistle nuclear missile launch codes into a phone—and ordered to pay thousands of dollars as reparation.

Today, all seems to be forgiven.

Full Story at,

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/19/kevin-mitnick-on-ghost-in-the-wires-and-the-rise-of-the-hacktivists.html