Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
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.
Related reads
If you liked CYBERPUNK: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier, Revised
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet
by Katie Hafner
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner 1996 review. The first serious history of ARPANET and the team at BBN that built it, written by reporters who actually talked to the engineers.
Apollo 12: The Nasa Mission Reports, Volume 2
by Robert Godwin
Apollo 12: The NASA Mission Reports, Volume 2 edited by Robert Godwin 2000 review. The primary-source NASA documentation volume on the second crewed lunar landing.
Atomic Habits
by James Clear
The single best book on building good habits. Clear breaks down the science into a practical system anyone can follow - and actually stick with.
Deep Work
by Cal Newport
A wake-up call for knowledge workers everywhere. Newport makes a compelling case that the ability to focus deeply is the superpower of the 21st century.
11/22/63
by Stephen King
11/22/63 by Stephen King 2011 review. An English teacher discovers a portal to 1958 and decides to stop the Kennedy assassination. The single best late-King novel and the rare time-travel book that earns its 849 pages.
Beloved
by Toni Morrison
Beloved by Toni Morrison 1987 review. Sethe, a former slave living in Reconstruction-era Ohio, is haunted by the daughter she killed to save from slavery. Pulitzer Prize 1988 and one of the canonical American novels of the late twentieth century.
More by this author