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The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security Review by Siraaj Khandkar
One big advertisement brochure for Mitnick's security consulting
Mitnick is indeed a great "social engineer" aka "con artist"... And the only reason I give this book ANY stars is for the credit Mitnick deserves for convincing us to pay for and consume his advertisement. This book is filled with lame and repetitive anecdotes of how some employee got duped into disclosing internal company information, followed by "Mitnick Message" which boils down to: your company needs pen-testing and ALL your employees need security training. And who is better suited to provide the training than the guy that himself wrote the book...? I'm guessing his target audience is clueless management, who he hopes will be scared, impressed and buy his services. And if those of us with a clue that pick-up his book and leave a negative review: WHO CARES? WE ALREADY PAID HIM! :-) So kudos to Mr. Mitnick for being a brilliant salesman! Be warned - you won't find anything here about "CONTROLLING the Human Element of Security", you will only be repeatedly told the obvious: "the Human Element of Security" sucks.
Don't get me wrong, everything Mitnick talks about here is mostly true, but extremely dragged-out, self-serving and does not deserve a book. Had this been a dramatically shorter magazine article, I'd rate it 3.5 stars.