arnuld
Member
I just finished reading TAKEDOWN by Tsutomu Shimomura and John Markoff. As I promised I am putting a review of it here 
. The book is based on a true story where Shimomura claims that he did catch the Kevin Mitnick himself and he was the center point of this whole cat and mouse run but trust me he was not and I found that out just by reading his book. I have watched both movies titled Takedown and Freedom Downtime and trust me I am writing a review purely out of the experience with his book only and even when I stand against the over-prosecution of Kevin Mitnick, this reviews is totally unbiased and is written only in reference to Shimomura’s book. I have reviewed by writing down the points I noticed while reading the book, so, here we go:
Now I have rubbed the Shimomura and his story well, may be the way looked biased but it is not. It is just the interpretation and feelings I got from book written by himself. In the end, I encourage you to read the book. He is a brilliant security expert, I agree and I also agree that Kevin is also the one, better than him, that fact he tried hard to erase form reader’s mind but he failed. Read his book and then watch Takedown and then Freedom Downtime documentary. A man who does not care or ignores to read about his opponent’s views is the man who does not even understand the fundamentals behind his own views, not my words but they sum up neatly what I want to say. Listen to all:
Tsutomu Shimomura –> Takedown
John Markoff –> Cyberpunk
Bruce Sterling –> The Hacker Crackdown
Jonathan Littman –> The Fugitive Game: being online with Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick –> Art of Deception & Art of Intrusion
Takedown ( the movie)
Freedom Downtime (the documetary)
Listen to the words carefully when girls who acted in movie Takedown say that Shimomura is a man with 4th class mentality. Regarding John Markoff’s book Cyberpunk, Markoff threatened Mitnick that unless he gives his side of story for free, he will take everything as fact, no matter from which resource it comes. Read all and decide yourself. My finding says Mitnick was the best while the worst part is that, his side of story was never told
. The book is based on a true story where Shimomura claims that he did catch the Kevin Mitnick himself and he was the center point of this whole cat and mouse run but trust me he was not and I found that out just by reading his book. I have watched both movies titled Takedown and Freedom Downtime and trust me I am writing a review purely out of the experience with his book only and even when I stand against the over-prosecution of Kevin Mitnick, this reviews is totally unbiased and is written only in reference to Shimomura’s book. I have reviewed by writing down the points I noticed while reading the book, so, here we go:- Kevin cracked the Shimomura’s computer in San Diego Supercomputer Center. Shimoura is the USA’s Top-Security expert and his computer is cracked and he says this: “He must be sophisticated and lucky”. I really don’t understand it, if someone brakes into the USA’s top security-expert’s computer then he is lucky but when I trace him with the help of other security experts then I am the master. “I am the computer expert” attitude keeps on appearing throughout the book.
- From his writings it seems that he wants us to believe that he is the only computer-security expert out there.
- He is listing his academic details and technical achievements while telling us that how much technically-competent he is and he sheds light on this fact of his throughout the whole book without mentioning any details of his opponent, Kevin Mitnick. He talks about Kevin Mitnick in just 8 pages and those also do not say much, just light overviews of things we did not need to know about. Hundreds and hundreds of pages for himself and his progress and achievements but nothing much for his opponent, Now I have to say this guy is full of himself. The book does not tell us anything about Kevin Mitnick, except the list of crimes(as the author says) he did in his teens.
- In the beginning of this post I stated that Shimomura’s was not responsible for catching Kevin Mitnick. Actually, a team of technically competent men is assembled who have access to powerful computers and some of the most expansive hardware. Along with them is also the FBI team, the facilities they provided, some well known UNIX hackers and U.S. Marshal Service, not to mention the consultancy and help of the well known security-experts in the field of networking and computing and then they together compete with an unaware single man carrying an average laptop. Tell me who is going to win ? When it comes to technically-brilliant people, 1 + 1 is always == 11. So we had full team of those folks here, you can figure out yourself what will happen next. I am sure Shimomura could never get to smell Kevin Mitnick’s socks if he could have worked alone but Mitnick worked alone and well. As compared to Shimomura, Bush have done a lot of work himself to lead USA to wars. At least Bush is not claiming that he started anything, it is war on terror. We have found Weapons of Mass Destruction :-0
- At someplace he says: “I began to wonder how good he was” and then after 2 or 3 sentences he calls him ans anklebiter. What I am trying to say he never says this that he himself did anything stupid, he never explains anything about it but when he uses a word like sophisticated for his opponent then after some sentences he surely uses some word to show that his opponent has stupidity as one of his habits. This pattern of his writing keeps on emerging in every chapter.
- The subtitle says: “The pursuit and capture of Kevin Mitnick, America’s most wanted computer outlaw - by the man who did it”
I don’t buy it, he never did it. He did not do much. The book shows that Kevin Mitnick was the victim of an intelligent team of system programmers, SysAdmins, Security Experts, FBI teams and Shimomura and then press helped him a lot. His work behind the capture constitutes only 20% of the story. FBI could have caught Kevin by himself without any help from him. At least now I know how important is to have a Journalist on your side. John Markoff kept on printing on front page that Kevin Mitnick is the biggest threat while everyone in FBI reading his book Cyberpunk to know about the history and exploits of Kevin Mitnick and then Markoff does not even know Mitnick was caught and jailed a long time ago. It also shows that he wrote a book and even wrote articles about a man for whom he did not even care to Google ( oops, sorry, Google did not exist at that time
- Shimomura is networking, networking and networking all the time, to get to the very impressive, intelligent and quite experienced officials whether in government or in private firms. He continued doing it like he did it with the logs, information and backtrace of his Ariel.
- Mitnick somehow cracked into other secured-networks. Okay, well, ..uhmmm….. erm….. when Shimomura back traces the Mitnick’s logs to get the information then he is intelligent security expert but when Mitnick cracks the networks, becomes a root user then he is just lucky … I am sorry but .. cough…cough…. …aye.. I don’t agree.
Now I have rubbed the Shimomura and his story well, may be the way looked biased but it is not. It is just the interpretation and feelings I got from book written by himself. In the end, I encourage you to read the book. He is a brilliant security expert, I agree and I also agree that Kevin is also the one, better than him, that fact he tried hard to erase form reader’s mind but he failed. Read his book and then watch Takedown and then Freedom Downtime documentary. A man who does not care or ignores to read about his opponent’s views is the man who does not even understand the fundamentals behind his own views, not my words but they sum up neatly what I want to say. Listen to all:
Tsutomu Shimomura –> Takedown
John Markoff –> Cyberpunk
Bruce Sterling –> The Hacker Crackdown
Jonathan Littman –> The Fugitive Game: being online with Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick –> Art of Deception & Art of Intrusion
Takedown ( the movie)
Freedom Downtime (the documetary)
Listen to the words carefully when girls who acted in movie Takedown say that Shimomura is a man with 4th class mentality. Regarding John Markoff’s book Cyberpunk, Markoff threatened Mitnick that unless he gives his side of story for free, he will take everything as fact, no matter from which resource it comes. Read all and decide yourself. My finding says Mitnick was the best while the worst part is that, his side of story was never told
