BKHCKERS.RVW   960415
 
"Hackers", David Bischoff/Rafael Moreu, 1995, 0-06-106375-4, U$4.99/C$5.99
%A   David Bischoff
%A   (screenplay by Rafael Moreu)
%C   10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY  10022-5299
%D   1995
%G   0-06-106375-4
%I   HarperCollins
%O   U$4.99/C$5.99 212-207-7000 fax: 212-207-7433 information@harpercollins.com
%P   184
%T   "Hackers"
 
In the beginning was the movie, and then they decided to make a book out of it. 
The plot line is the usual hacker-meets-girl,-girl-turns-out-to-be-hacker,-
girl-gets-hacker fantasy that never happens in real life because real hackers
would get distracted by an interesting challenge somewhere between events one
and two.  The transition from film to book has not been an easy one for this
work, and you can almost see the calls from jump-cuts from the original
screenplay.  Characterization and development are minimal: the "bad guys" are
the usual evil big government and big corporation, although the heavies seem
more like victims, and the real trouble all seems to come from one thoroughly
nasty techie, who still manages to get away with the loot, scot free.  The
target audience is fairly easy to determine.
 
As far as technical background goes, the film/book is replete with graphical
messages sent to text terminals, viruses that carry lengthy audio and video
data, worms that subvert accounting systems rather than replicating, and a
salami scam.  (Has *anyone* got *any* evidence that a salami scam *ever*
happened?)  There is the usual conflation of crackers, phone phreaks and virus
writers together, the assertion that an elementary school student with a weird
pseudonym wrote the Internet Worm, and a "Da Vinci" virus.
 
The intriguing fact about the book is that valid and quality background
information must have been available to the authors.  The book starts with a
quote from "The New Hacker's Dictionary" (cf. BKNHACKD.RVW) explaining why
"hacker" is the wrong title for this work.  The number of sites hit by the
Internet Worm is closer than that usually given in news reports and the
"greater than/less than" reversal bug is referred to.  Examples of data base
entry errors (and the consequences) have been pulled from the archives of the
RISKS-FORUM Digest.
 
And then they go and disassemble a fragment of object code from an unknown
computer ...
 
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996   BKHCKERS.RVW   960415

======================
DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters
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Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 (800-SPRINGER)