CYBERPUNK: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier, Revised

Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier is Katie Hafner and John Markoff's 1991 longform journalism account of three hackers from the early years of network-based intrusion: Kevin Mitnick, Hans Heinrich Hubner (Pengo), and Robert T. Morris Jr. (the Morris Worm). The book was substantially updated for the 1995 edition after additional Mitnick events and additional interviews became available.

Hafner and Markoff worked on each of the three cases at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal at the time, and the access shows. The Mitnick chapters are based on direct interviews; the Pengo chapters draw on West German law-enforcement documentation; the Morris chapters benefit from the Cornell University investigation files. The book's framing (three hackers as different facets of the same emerging archetype) is the part that has aged: hindsight has shown Mitnick, Pengo, and Morris had less in common than the cyberpunk framing suggested.

Recommended for readers of internet history, for anyone interested in books like Cyberpunk in the early-hacker-journalism tradition (Steven Levy's Hackers, Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown), and for security professionals curious about how the public mythology of hacking took shape. Four stars and an essential primary source.