The Hacker's Handbook
Encyclopedia
The Hacker's Handbook is a non-fiction book from the 1980s effectively explaining how computer systems of the period were hacked. It contains candid and personal comments from the book's British author, Hugo Cornwall, a pseudonym of Peter Sommer who is now a Research Fellow in Information Systems Security at the London School of Economics
and frequently appears in the UK courts as an expert on digital evidence and computer forensics as well as media pundit and author on information security topics.
One popular aspect of the book is the salacious printouts of actual hacking attempts (although confidential details, such as passwords, are blacked out).
The first edition, which is the version most easily available for download, was published in 1985 and the last of four editions (edited by Steve Gold) appeared in 1989. In 1990 the UK Parliament
passed the Computer Misuse Act - publication of additional editions would likely have been considered an incitement to commit an offence under that Act.
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
and frequently appears in the UK courts as an expert on digital evidence and computer forensics as well as media pundit and author on information security topics.
One popular aspect of the book is the salacious printouts of actual hacking attempts (although confidential details, such as passwords, are blacked out).
The first edition, which is the version most easily available for download, was published in 1985 and the last of four editions (edited by Steve Gold) appeared in 1989. In 1990 the UK Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
passed the Computer Misuse Act - publication of additional editions would likely have been considered an incitement to commit an offence under that Act.
Further reading
- The full text of this book is available online on textfiles.comTextfiles.comtextfiles.com is a web site run by Jason Scott dedicated to preserving the digital documents that contain the history of the BBS world and various subcultures. The site categorises and stores thousands of ASCII files. It focuses on text files from the 1980s, but also contains some older files and...
.