Book review: The Fugitive Game

The Fugitive Game - online with Kevin Mitnick

Jonathan Littman
Little, Brown and Company
383 pages
U.S. $23.95
ISBN 0-316-52858-7

Reviewed by Chris Gulker

The Fugitive Game by Jonathan Littman is the first of at least 3 books written on the subject of the events surrounding Kevin Mitnick's arrest in February of 1995. Mitnick's arrest and the efforts of computer security specialist Tsutomu Shimomura to apprehend him were the subject of a highly publicized series of articles by John Markoff in the New York Times in late 1994 and early 1995.

The Fugitive Game is sympathetic to Mitnick's point of view, and suggests that Markoff and Shimimura took advantage of the hype over the Internet to unfairly paint Mitnick as a monster in order to cash in on lucrative book and movie deals.

Mitnick, it should be noted by way of preamble, has been widely villified in the popular media as the personification of the criminal hacker, variously blamed with hacking NORAD, major computer and communication companies, Internet providers, credit card holders et al.

Author Jonathan Littman, a freelance investigative journalist, became a trusted sounding board for Mitnick about a year after after he slipped underground for parole violations late in 1992. The relationship sprung up while Littman worked on a book, as yet unpublished, about the shadowy world of hackers over the edge of legality.

Littman's book contains transcripts of hours of conversations with Mitnick while he lived the gritty, nervous life of a fugitive, juxtaposed with views drawn from prosecutors, federal agents, the media and other hackers. The narrative, while sometimes running to length, nevertheless manages to build to a climax, peaking not at Mitnick's arrest, but the denouement of events afterward..

In Littman's portrait, Mitnick emerges as a sad, lonely kid, whose hardscrabble upbringing is softened only by his ability to learn and master arcane subjects on his own. Starting with Los Angeles County buses, young Mitnick finds comfort in learning how to ride long distances for free. Overwieght, angry and alone, teenaged Mitnick progresses to hacking ham radio, the telephone system and the Internet.

By age 17, Mitnick has been convicted of illegally accessing corporate computers. Before turning 30, Mitnick is a convicted felon and federal fugitive, running from seamy apartment to cheap motel, frequently escaping pursuers by seconds or minutes. While Mitnick does break the law, he doesn't do it for riches, and Littman goes to some lengths to contrast Mitnick with criminals like Justin Peterson (aka Agent Steal) who used their hacker abilities to rip off credit cards, banks, radio stations and more.

Markoff receives a much less sympathetic hearing. Littman proceeds from professing respect to broadly suggesting that Markoff knows that Mitnick is harmless (if annoying), but proceeds nevertheless to paint him as a master criminal, the better to cash in on book and movie deals.

It is true that Markoff's role in the Mitnick affair caused a buzz in press circles early last year (I was still at The Examiner, then - much tittering could be heard in the news room). Markoff was a victim of Mitnick's hacking, and a friend of Shimimura's, facts that the New York Times chose not to reveal as Markoff wrote a series of articles about Mitnick.

A blurry picture of Markoff's role in Mitnick's apprehension has emerged, allowing room for critics like Littman to suggest that Markoff was not a disinterested or, at least, disengaged, observer.

For his part, Markoff has maintained that he behaved ethically as a fast-moving story unrolled, and has characterized Littman's book as a "vendetta". Other critics have raised questions about some of Littman's conclusions and methods. I found that his premise warranted consideration, but never felt the case proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Nevertheless, I found The Fugitive Game interesting, sometimes fascinating reading, particularly when it is describing the oddly skewed lives of obsessive hackers. Mitnick is certainly guilty of something: whether Markoff is guilty as charged is much less clear and must be left to the reader, who will hopefully also read Takedown (as I am doing), the book written from the other side by Shimomura and Markoff.

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