Hacker Cracker - Book Review

Hacker Cracker
by Ejovi Nuwere and David Chanoff
Harper Collins
2002

By age 21, Nuwere had grown from a precocious child in Brooklyn's embattled Bedford -Stuyvesant neighborhood to a well-established Internet security specialist for a major investment bank.



In between, he served a long stint as a renegade though ultimately benign hacker, an experience that gave him much-needed background for his professional career.

Written with Chanoff, his memoir is an appealing primer to hacker culture matched with the personal story of being raised by an extended family (due to Nuwere's mother's death from AIDS) in an impoverished environment.

Nuwere's adventures in the computing underworld primarily include phishing, or conning Internet users into divulging credit card information; making free phone calls using stolen 800 numbers; and exploring the computer systems of major corporations in order to better understand their intricacies.

Unfortunately, much of the drama is mitigated by the blacking out of the name of the company most seriously hacked by Nuwere, as well as the name of the project in development that he was busted for entering ("We kept going deeper and deeper into [blacked out] until we reached the computers that actually controlled the [blacked out] that was all over the news").

This continues for some pages, making it difficult for readers to maintain interest in this pivotal episode. Superfluous details about Nuwere's high school experiences and martial arts tournaments are not well integrated with the more compelling hacker narrative. Nonetheless, this is an empathetic, revealing account of a new breed of insurgents.

Amazon.com

At the end of the book, Ejovi was working for a major Financial institute out of the Jersey City office. On September 11 (2001), Ejovi was in Manhattan still on his way to work, when the towers fell. The next day when he went to the Jersey City office, the employees had to spend several days hurriedly putting togteher a network of computers and hooking them up to the company intranet and databases. This had to be done because many of the company's networks and databases were lost when the towers fell. He worked for Lehman Brothers. (see below)



One of the hacking groups that Ejovi joined while he was in high school was called
w00w00.
Ejovi attended the High School for Graphic Arts in Manhattan.
The first job Ejovi got out of high school was with TGIX - aka Thaumaturgix. He was at this company for two and a half years.

Video Interview by Ejovi Nuwere

Ejovi's blog - but he does not post too often.

Ejovie now runs his own company - Security Labs. On the website it mentions that he used to work for Lehman brothers out of Jersey City. Lehman Brother's equities e-commerce office, was located on the 40th Floor in One World Trade Center.

Invisible Armies - Book Review

Invisible Armies
By Jon Evans
HarperCollins 2006
Website Trailer

This is a very exciting story. Mostly about how geeks and nerds save the world. By Hacking. Since I love stories about hacking, I started this one with great gusto. Half way into the book, the hacking was fine, but the violence got a bit much so I stopped reading it for a while. But have now been able to finish it.

The story starts off with Danielle (a wealthy upperclass young American woman) is asked by a friend to be a courier - to deliver a passport for an Indian woman who needs a new passport. India has a law that says Indian passports CANNOT be sent outside of the country for any reason. They must stay on the owners person or in the owners possession at all times.

This Indian woman (Jayalitha) worked for a social Justice group called Justice International. They wanted to expose a corrupt company that was illegally creating new medicines and using the people of Kerala in Southern India for non-sanctioned drug trials.

Jaya, was then forced to watch her husband and children die. She was forced to leave India with no passport. When Danielle gets to Jaya's home village, she is captured and told that Jaya is dead. The man captured with her is Laurent, who also works for Justice International. To avoid being tortured, they both escape and end up on the run in India with no papers.

How Danielle is sucked into the life of an activist, one who truely thinks she is helping people, is fascinating. The story moves from India to Paris to London to Los Angeles. And how Danielle gets herself out of activist circles with the help of some hacker friends, is just as thrilling.

Invisible Armies is a Cold War suspense of the modern age, a thriller that looks behind the power of protests and the politics of big business. [Back cover blurb]

A word of warning. These activists are violent. Unexpectedly so. Which is why I had to stop reading for a while. Whether or not they are typical of activist in the real world, I can't say. One has only to look to Greenpeace to find a commonality of sorts.

Even if Greenpeace claims that they are not a violent group, they have been affected by violence. in 1985 the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk in Auckland Harbour. When it was later discovered to have been done by the French Government, it read just like a thriller story. French spies sneaked into New Zealand, planted a bomb and then left as quickly as possible. This bombing occurred because Greenpeace was actively demonstrating against the French Nuclear Bomb testing being done at Muraroa Atoll in the Pacific. This story has also been made into a movie.

Jon Evans has written 2 earlier books - Dark Places and The Blood Price.