The Art of Deception

Yesterday I went to the library for the first catch of the semester: The Art of Deception.

The Art of Deception is a book written by Kevin Mitnick covering how social engineering can be applied to hacking. Kevin Mitnick was one of the greatest phreakers of all time, attacking big corporations such as Bell. In the book, he explains to actually attack a system as it’s not only about hacking and exploiting code, but also exploiting the human factor.

I have a ton of material to read, but I’ll find time to cover it right away anyway as I plan to take more books this semester than the former. I’m looking into security more and more. Databases (Oracle, MySQL, DB2, Microsoft SQL), networks (Cisco) and security are three of the most marketable technologies of these days. I have (somehow) had a near approach to the first two, but I find the security area the most interesting one.

It’s unavoidable to walk across the security section at the systems engineering section of CEM’s library without peeking a single book. That’s how I originally found a couple of books last semester which originally made me look into security and even consider dedicating my professional life to it.

What I like most of it is that, unlike most of the things I’ve learned, anything new to is different. Real-life encounters are different too, wether it’s about analyzing a system that was attacked to implementing security measures, requirements are very different. It’s something that is particularly similar to programming, which I like very much too.

So I’ll read more about it. I just remembered I really need to learn more about CGI’s, as it’s kind of important when it comes to security.

Book Commitment

I was previously trying to write a new post about books. As a ton of posts, I began to write it with the incorrect attitude, wrote a couple of words, disliked it and trashed it, but kept the idea for later use. This is it.

I’ve always enjoyed reading. Though I’m not much of a heavy reader, I really like reading more than the two (two?) books the average Mexican reads in a year. A curious thing is, after looking into it for a short time, book availability is not that limited in Mexico. There are a number of big bookstores and prices are not that high, compared to the prices abroad. Actually, some books are even cheaper.

Everything gets tricky when it comes to tech books. I’ve always had a hard time looking for programming books here. If they exist, they are usually way of expensive. If they don’t, the only viable alternative is Amazon. Passing over a book from United States to Mexico is not always a guaranteed process. Also, it’s definitely not a cheap process.

ITESM CEM’s library has a pretty rich content on tech, though. While it doesn’t holds exactly a nice collection on literature, it does hold a very good selection of tech manuals and books. Mexico’s best selection of tech manuals and books, to be fair. So, as usual, I’m feeling my time is running out. I feel I’m already twenty and don’t know as much as I could, so I decided to take a book out of that library each two weeks, cover it completely, and return for more.

That’s my commitment. I’ll posting what I read here, as I usually do things better when I feel pressured. Depressing, I know, but that’s just me. Slowly, I’m beginning to take on a more organized approach towards my life. This is just another step to go through.

My selected book for this two weeks is non other than Nineteen Eighty Four, by George Orwell. Some piece of a novel, indeed. The first book I’m using with the nifty magnetic separator I bought at Gandhi for mere $5 MXN.

And it looks nice