Steal This Computer Book 3 (2003)
by Wallace Wang

If you're looking for a book that will teach you how to be a hacker, a single source of information to make you the king of the digital underworld, then you're either hopeless, or lazy.

However, if you want a text that will give you some good information to set you on the path of the h4x0r 31337 (hacker elite), then Steal This Computer Book 3 might be just for you, provided you can manage to suffer through some the strangest and most self-contradictory writing ever.

You see, this is the idiot savant of all computer books. It has some great and informative sections on topics including Trojan horses, gaining access to computers and setting up back doors, and setting up your own security systems.æ Unfortunately, to get all of this valuable data, you have to survive some of the most tedious and downright stupid writing this side of a fourth-grade classroom.

Right from the start, you know something is wrong with this author. Instead of just getting to the stuff about hacking, the first quarter of the book is a long, rambling diatribe about civil liberties, censorship, and hate groups. While he does include some good points about censorship, it's nothing original, and it reads like a pamphlet that you might have found in 1960s Berkeley, or can find in 1960 Berkeley, if you're the guy from "Quantum Leap."

There's an interesting section about parental blocking software, but I almost didn't notice because all I could think was, "What the hell is this?" I was honestly dumbfounded by the writing, and it almost caused me to not read the rest of the book.

The rest of the book continues along the same strange path, continually shooting itself in the foot. Early on, the author expresses his dislike of "script kiddies," or people who just use hacking programs without actually understanding the underlying mechanics of what they are doing. This isn't anything special, as almost any hacking text contains similar rhetoric.

What is stupefying is that after every section of the book, the author includes programs that would allow you to accomplish what was discussed in the section … without understanding the underlying mechanics. Not only that, there is an entire appendix of all of these programs, essentially making it the script kiddie's dream.

In any event, you can learn quite a lot from this book, provided you're willing to risk suffering permanent IQ loss.