Emmanuel Goldstein

I find it harder and harder to stay atop my periodical reading. I have limited finances, limited time, and limited shelf space, so I have to find a happy medium among buying, reading, and keeping.

For a while, I read (and once wrote for) 2600, the Hacker Quarterly. To my more sensitive peers, I refer to it as "a computer security magazine," as that is how I read it. The cover proudly declares that it is a "hacker" magazine, and to these peers of mine, "hacker" is unequivocally evil.

This is show more not the case!

A hacker is no more a criminal when it comes to computers than a tinker is a criminal when it comes to machines (and last I checked, the news media doesn't say things like, "The factory was tinked!")

A hacker who has questionable morals and ethics should be referred to as a "malicious hacker," provided they are using their prowess for malicious activities. Another term I tend to avoid due to it's overloaded nature is "cracker" (akin to a "safe cracker," which is not a very secure thin pastry). Just because somebody is good with comptuers, and can sling together a useful computer program in no time, does not make them a criminal.

Likewise, just because a person notices a glaring hole in a financial institution's website, and then tries to tell said institution of their security hole, only to be ignored or reprimanded, they are not a criminal to let the whole world know by publishing their findings in a magazine. Wouldn't you like to know if your financial information was readily available to people with questionable morals or ethics, and that the company you were relying on to keep it safe was doing nothing to fix it?

Well, then, thank a hacker.

Like many issues of 2600, the autumn issue has the good, the bad, and the ugly. Some well-thought out articles, both informative and interesting grace the pages, as do some hand-wavy articles, like one on "hacking music," which doesn't go far enough to actually be really interesting (it felt more like a zen treatment of music: "free your mind of the patterns the forefathers of music laid down!").

As always, the letters section was quite amusing, especially individuals who are trying to build hacker cred via their letters. l.o.l.z.

If you're a mildly technical person and like magazines like Make, or enjoy topics like computer security, or just are ultra paranoid, then 2600 is definitely a magazine for you (though it'll make you even more paranoid at times). show less

Usually I hate glossaries. They're usually simple, insulting, and useless. This book needs one though, given the wide range of time and technical materials. I got it from the library, but due to it being heavily requested and my schedule didn't make it through. I should have paid closer attention to the table of contents before I started and read it non-linearly. I think this book probably should have been a series, not on large tome. At least they should have pulled out the editorials and show more legal battles into a separate book which I would imagine would be useful to a researcher. show less

Nearly 20 years of a very specific part of computing history. If you are also interested in social and legal issues in terms of computer hacking and want to learn the details of famous cases such as the Mitnick case or DeCSS (DVD decryption) case this is a very good reference and a page turner. It also has quite technical bits which is definitely a plus.

Natural intelligence recommendation: If you liked this book then you'll also like Phrack ;-)

A little less interesting than other issues, good but not great.