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Saturday, December 31, 2011


Little Brother by Cory Doctrow

Little Brother is a fun, adolescent romp through the basics of modern computer security. In Little Brother, some teenaged hackers in San Francisco use a networked of hacked Xboxes to fight an invasion of overzealous Homeland Security goons who are turning the Bay area into a surveillance happy police-state. Sound corny, as if it’s meant for thirteen year old boys? It is.

Little Brother is likely the second or third geekiest book I’ve ever read. But, it does give you a pretty good overview of some basic computer and network security philosophies and techniques. There’s some ‘netspeak dialog (“Being at school on a Friday was teh suck.”) in case you missed out on the wholesale assault on the English language that forums and icanhascheezeburger have mounted. The hero quotes Kerouac to his girlfriend. But then he does get laid, so that’s good I guess.

Fun, silly, highly juvenile “fight the man” romp around the Bay Area through the eyes of an adolescent hacker.

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