Hackers may be feared for all they know about computers, but their real power lies in how well they understand the average user. In "Hacker Culture," communications professor Douglas Thomas provides an unusually balanced history of the computer underground and its sensational representation in movies and newspapers. His account starkly shows what hackers have realized all along: Our unease with Kevin Mitnick and his sort actually reflects our discomfort with technology itself.

Hackers know that. As a result, a standard way to break into a system is to impersonate technical support -- and simply ask any user for his or her password. Hackers call it "social engineering," and it vividly illustrates that, as Thomas explains, "the weakest point in any system's security is the people who use it."

But the insight hackers have into our behavior goes even deeper, considering a second method used to get password access. Early on, hackers figured out that most people choose their passwords very poorly, so it made no difference how many billion alpha-numeric combinations were possible if users routinely chose access codes like "sesame" or their favorite hobby or even their own name. A little bit of information goes a long way: By now there are word lists hackers can run, depending on whose account they're after, of everything from "Star Trek" characters to regional geography. "In employing such brute force attacks," Thomas rightly observes, "hackers exploit the cultural and social dimensions that are reflected in the kinds of choices people make in relationship to technology and in the ways in which they domesticate or personalize it."

--San Francisco Chronicle

"Thomas traces the history and origin of hacker culture within mainstream society, the computer industry, and the media. . . . Thomas effectively argues that the popular image of the hacker reflects more the public's anxieties about technology than the reality of hacking. Addressing general audiences in a readable, engaging style, his book would be of interest to students of communication and journalism."

--Library Journal

"Silently navigating the virtual corridors of the global telecom networks, peeking into restricted files and generally causing mischief, hackers are the tricksters of the digital age. But although Hollywood and the publishing industry have long been fascinated by these technosneaks, they've nearly always overestimated hackers' malisious intents and techinical abilities, argues Thomas, a professor at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication. He attempts to set things right, steering a middle course between the alarmists, who perceive hackers as suburban terrorists of the new century, and the apologists, who want to see them as brave revolutionaries against a corporate/government assault on personal liberties. With a real affinity for his subject, Thomas uses hacker publications like 2600 and Phrack for most of his research, instead of the all-too-common procession of online security experts doing their best Chicken Little impersonations. Thomas avoids another trap of this genre by not letting hackers--the publicity-loving, self-aggrandizing ones--spout off at length about their skills and achievements. He presents a sober but sympathetic analysis, maintaining that, more often than not, hackers are simply playing around, testing a system's security to see if it's sound: '[They] see themselves as educators about issues of security, fulfilling the same function as Consumer Reports.' Though Thomas may rely too heavily on that old academic touchstone, Foucault, he has produced an intelligent and approachable book on one of the most widely discussed and least understood subcultures in recent decades."

--Publishers Weekly

"In this highly readable examination of the computer underground, Doug Thomas looks at hacking culture from the inside out. He brings an intellectual's eye to one of the modern age's most compelling topics while acting simultaneously as storyteller, historian and cultural guide par excellence."

- Katie Hafner, author of Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier