BKWWHACK.RVW   20121009 

"World War Hack", Ethan Bull/Tsubasa Yozora, 2012, 978-0-9833670-8-6
%A   Ethan Bull
%A   Tsubasa Yozora
%C   9400 N. MacArthur Blvd., Suite 124-215, Irving, TX   75063
%D   2012
%E   Gwendolyn Borgen
%G   978-0-9833670-8-6 0-9833670-8-6
%I   Viper Entertainment Inc./Viper Comics
%O   U$7.95 wyatt@worldwarhack.com www.worldwarhack.com
%O  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0983367086/robsladesinterne
  http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0983367086/robsladesinte-21
%O   http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0983367086/robsladesin03-20
%O   Audience n- Tech 1 Writing 1 (see revfaq.htm for explanation)
%P   72 p.
%T   "World War Hack"

Someone (eventually we find out they are backed by the Chinese) has
hacked into the United States military and government control systems. 
Fortunately, despite being in complete control and untraceable, all
they seem to want to do is make one military drone act up.

The US government immediately swings into action, and sponsors a
hacking contest, to try and identify suitably talented young geniuses
(genii?) to find out what is going on.

It's hard to follow what is going on, since the artwork makes it
difficult to differentiate between characters.  There are young people
with bad haircuts, and there are other people with suits.  Some people
are female.  After that, it gets hard to tell who's who.  One of the
hackers is a government agent, another one has a criminal record but
seems to be a son of a suited government agent.

Some of the technical and hacking activity is somewhat realistic, but
other aspects are bizarre, and betray a complete lack of understanding
of basic technology.  For example, at different times a programming
language gets "hacked" (in the sense of breaking into it), and at
another time a government administrator can't tell what computer
language has been used to write a specific program.  In the real world
of programming and hacking neither of these scenarios makes any sense. 
Absent Ken Thompson's famous speech nobody "hacks" a language, and
generally nobody cares what language has been used to write a utility
once it is operating.  (No programmer ever said LISP was a concise
language, and there is no way that even a "skin" on top of LISP would
look like C.)  At another point two devices "piggyback" on the same IP
address, which simply does not work in networking terms.

There are aspects of this story that are realistic.  One is that, if
you are not careful with your systems, someone can penetrate them and
mess with you.  If there are any other useful factors in this story, I
can't think of them offhand.

(As usual, the draft of this review was submitted to the
author/publisher for comment prior to publication.  I often get rude
email in response, sometimes threats of physical harm, and once even a
death threat.  [Yes, really.]  In this case the publisher has
threatened unspecified legal action "to protect the copyright on our
work."  I would be interested to see the publisher's reaction to
counsel explaining the "commentary" aspect of the concept of "fair
use.")

copyright, Robert M. Slade   2012     BKWWHACK.RVW   20121009