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Date: 04 Aug 91 19:54:15 EDT
From: Gordon Meyer <72307.1502@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: File 4--Newsweek review CYBERPUNK

                   "Inside the Head of the Hacker"
             Reviewed by John Schwartz, NEWSWEEK July 29,

((Moderators' note: the following is a excerpt/adaptation from
Schwartz's review.  Interested readers should review the complete text
of the article.))

... [ John ] Markoff's story [ on Morris' Internet worm ] was the
first of a journalistic flood.  But for all the ink spilled over the
Cornell graduate student's case, little insight into his personality
emerged.  Computer-security experts would later try to paint Morris as
a menacing rebel; Abu Nidal at the keyboard.  Some journalists probed
the irony of a computer-security expert's son-turned-security-threat,
ham-handedly coming up with a dark psychological portrait, an Oedipus
Techs.

If you ever wanted a clearer picture of the nerd who brought down the
network, a new book, "Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer
Frontier," delivers him, and the entire Morris family, up in rich
detail. ...

"Cyberpunk" throws a spotlight on two other computer fanatics whose
acts took them over the line of law.  One is Kevin Mitnick, an
obsessive system cracker...  The other, West German Hans Hu\"bner,
attempted to sell information from his Internet trespasses to the
KGB...   Like the Morris story, each is told in a full context that,
while not justifying criminal acts, goes a long way toward explaining
them.

Though readers who know a modem from a Model T have a head start, the
authors offer lucid explanations of just enough technology to make the
stories work, even for the computer illiterate.  If the prose
sometimes seems a bit workmanlike, there's plenty of juicy detail to
keep the narrative moving.  Hafner and Markoff, like the dedicated,
intense cyberpunks they illuminate, appear to have stopped at nothing
to hack their way into the cyberpunk subculture.


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