You don’t have to be a paranoiac to have enemies, and you don’t need to be an outlaw to want to keep your personal...
A highly useful handbook for how not to be seen—online, anyway.
Think your data and identity are safe because you’ve got an eight-character password that isn’t “God” or “1234”? Guess again, says cybersecurity expert Mitnick (Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker, 2011, etc.). In a world where your smart TV can spy on you and your cellphone can reveal your location to any party with the ability to download tracking software, the odds are that your data is…well, compromised is the least of it. Furthermore, the American government has a rubber stamp for getting at your data, even in the days after Edward Snowden—whom the author mentions at several points—pointed out how much data the government already has. One step in the right direction is to use encryption software such as PGP (“pretty good privacy”) to keep your email secure. However, warns Mitnick after a discussion refreshingly short on technical arcana if still a little daunting, “to become truly invisible in the digital world you will need to do more than encrypt your messages.” Among the other techniques he suggests are using a passphrase instead of a password, made up of information only you can know, behind a virtual private network, encrypted phone calls, and two-factor authorization, all geeky things that Mitnick describes in admirably clear detail. Other tricks: use a reloadable gift card behind an email address used only for that purpose for online shopping, if you must shop online at all. Along the way, Mitnick describes how David Petraeus was caught in electronic flagrante, how Silk Road got taken down, and how he himself got nabbed.
You don’t have to be a paranoiac to have enemies, and you don’t need to be an outlaw to want to keep your personal information personal. Though with more than a whiff of conspiracy theory to it, Mitnick’s book is a much-needed operating manual for the cyberage.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-38050-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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