Rating: 
Summary: Informative, but..,
Review: I found Kevin Mitnicks discussion regarding social engineering to be quite interesting. He concisely describes how giving away seemingly useless bits of company information can have devastating results for private corporations. However, this book did not address any technical apsects of computer hacking, and is really written on a very simplistic level. Overall, not bad. Some of us would prefer something more technical and/or a tale of the life of Kevin Mitnick.
Rating:
Summary: Good read, very interesting, somewhat repetitive.
Review: I was in shock after reading the first couple of chapters. I now have a completely different look on security. After reading this book you will see how easy it really is to get someones password, or get a business's internal phone directory with a phone call or two. This book is a great guide for creating a security policy within your company. After every "story", Mitnick provides his advice on how this was accomplished and what you can do to stop it. The only problem with the book is that Mitnick's solutions to these problems are almost identical in every chapter, just with different wording. Once you understand this, you will probably skip his advice on the last few chapters. Overall a great book though!
Rating: 
Summary: Think differently...
Review: Let's face it. When it comes to computer security, most people are blissfully ignorant of just how exposed they are, for those people....this should be required reading.Some people are acquainted with the concept of 'Social Engineering', if so....this book does an excellent job of showing the mindset and thought process of a social engineer. All done in an entertaining way by relating exploit stories to the reader. You could even use the book to challenge the way that you think by trying to guess what steps might be taken to achieve the social engineer's goal....or devise a policy that could have been put in place to prevent the exploit from working. This type of mental gymnastics is not only entertaining...but can teach you volumes at the same time. If there is one category of people who should not read this book...it would be those who have a heart towards mischief and lack the good sense to know not to act on their desire. For these individuals, this could be a text book for learning how to reserve their own room at a local federal facility! All in all....I highly recommend the book to everyone. And believe me when I say, if YOU don't like it....or if YOU do not find it informative....YOU do know someone who could benefit from having their eyes opened to the world of the social engineer.
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting look at security's weak link
Review: Kevin Mitnick has been arguably the most famous computer hacker out there. His story has been told by others in several books. But here Mitnick is not trying to really share his experiences - rather he calls upon his collection of acquaintances and others he knows to illustrate how people can be engineered. Most of the book is essentially a series of stories of social engineering (getting someone to do what you want without their realizing it) and then some superficial analysis of why it worked. He then tries to synthesize his earlier chapters into a set of practical security precautions, many of which are common sense, and most of which the reader would have already figured out from reading the book. The stories he chooses to share are fairly interesting, both in their daring and setup and in their simplicity. What this book would be best for would be handing it to a corporate manager and allow him or her a wake up call as to security. As we try to work together, have things automated and available on-line and as our organizations grow the catchword is results, even if you have to bend the rules a bit. This is what the social engineer can exploit. Many of the stories skate along the edge of the law, and Mitnick points out when it would cross into illegal. While interesting, after a while the book becomes more tedious in structure and what is being said. Still it is very accessible and would be a great book for someone not so familiar with computers and hacking to see how some of it is done. It should serve as a wake-up call for management as to some of the dangers we face every day. And while most of the stories presented are more in the spirit of curiosity, or fun, or revenge, it would be easy to take them up a notch into activities with serious corporate impact.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!!
Review: This book is an eye opener. The stories are entertaining, yet sometimes frighten that it could really happen. I defiantly recommend this book. The only down side is that he never shows what would happen if the social engineer would fail or make a mistake.
Rating: 
Summary: The Art of Deception ...
Review: Mitnick shows that he is a master of the obvious. Guess what? Untrained users are the weakest links in your company's non existent security policy. The book is a set of long rambling stories about fictitious amateur con artists designed to be thinly veiled as Mitnick's own personal conquests... There isn't anything in this book that would help anyone but the truly clueless and seems to be written for young misguided computer enthusiasts.
Rating:
Summary: WAKE UP call for ANYONE who uses a phone or computer!!
Review: How shocking to learn how easy it is for a person to find out virtually anything about you by asking a few measly innocent questions to the right people. I answer the phone at the auto dealership I work at on occasion, and now I know how careful you must be when speaking with ANYONE. I thought it took months of work to find out a small detail about a person. Nope you just gotta talk your way through a receptionist to get the info you need! Scary!! A good wake up call to anyone who deals with the public to know to watch who you say what to! The endless examples in the book will blow you away...
Rating:
Summary: Information Security
Review: The Art of Deception teaches how we can protect our information from those who enjoy breaking our technology systems only with their own social engineering, and prevent our technical security investment failure. Mitnick could be one of the most famous hacker but confirm the necessity to instruct the human behavior to prevent any intrusion.
Rating:
Summary: very repetitive, very repetitive
Review: ok, kevin, so people are gullible. you can fool them into trusting you, even when they shouldn't. but does it take hundreds of pages to say this? thanks to mr. mitnick, we now have another voice telling us that there are bad people out there that are willing to take advantage of anyone they can to further their own purposes. nothing really revealing or new here, and the book tends to repeat this theme over and over and over. next time you try to drink out of the milk container when noone's looking, just think how you could be exhibiting early signs of a security guru.
Rating:
Summary: Quite trivial
Review: I purchased this book based on several reviews including the few in amazon.com. What a disappointment. The book is a compendum of anecdotal evidence presented as "true stories", all of them of varying degrees of credibility. All the stories can be summed up in two words: identity theft. each story is told twice, once as Dr. Watson would have seen it at first, and once as Mr. Holmes would have explained it. At the end there is a review of what are the "best practices" of security, which is quite superficial to be interesging or valuable. All in all, the Sherlock adventures are a better reading; and a serious approach when drafting a security policy would be more useful than wasting time on reading this book. Get it from the library.
| 
