5 comments about EnCase Computer Forensics, includes DVD: The Official EnCE: EnCase Certified Examiner Study Guide.

1. This book was written to help Forensics Technicians achieve the Guidance software's EnCE Certification. Since Encase software comes with a user's guide which is basically printouts of the help from within the program and it is as useless as a priest after a wedding, This "guide" can also be used as a documentation on how to use the Encase forensics software.
   If used for the above purposes, you will get your money's worth, however if you thing you will learn investigative techniques and best way to Forensically archive a digital device This is not the book for you. It is very single minded for example it does not count on criminals using Grub instead of MBR.
   I gave it a 3 star since it did help me pass both phase one and two of Encase certification and awarded me with an official looking certificate which is now hanging in my office.
   Best fishes and Thank you for reading.



2. I used this book as a primary reference for studying for the written portion of the exam and passed with almost a 100%. The written portion of the cert is the easy part by far. You should do the exercises if you want to pass the practical. I thought coverage was quite good. Sure, in a book this long you'll get a few inaccuracies, but what in IT doesn't? I passed the EnCE and felt confident doing so. There really wasn't another choice other than to take the review through Guidance Software - which isn't a bad way to go. The EnCE is a difficult to obtain cert, unlike Access Data's ACE - which is a paper mill cert. Expect to spend 40 hours on the practical in addition to about 3 hours on the written portion. The ACE written and practical in total is maybe 3 hours and the practical is multiple choice.



3. This is a great book, I highly recommend this book to anyone getting into computer forensics. No computer forensic examiner should be without this book.



4. This book is just what I was wanting. I would buy it again if I needed it.



5. I read this book went to take the exam and scored 94. Book and practice test on the CD are great. Highly recommended for EnCE exam prep.

5 comments about The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage.

1. Cliff Stoll's "The Cuckoo's Egg" (TCE) is the best real-life digital incident detection and response book ever written. I know something about this topic; I've written books on the subject and have taught thousands of students since 2000. I've done detection and IR since 1998, starting in the military, then as a consultant and defense contractor, and now as director of IR for a Fortune 5 company. If you're not an incident detector/responder, you're probably going to read TCE as a general enthusiast or maybe an IT professional. You'll like the book. If you're a security professional, you'll love it.
   
   I first read TCE 20 years ago when it was first published, but I was a high school student who couldn't appreciate the content. Now, as an IR team leader, I recognize that Cliff probably shares 25 IR lessons in the first 50 pages! I plan to write a separate article explaining these, and I encourage my team to read the book. I think TCE would form an excellent text for a semester-long course on IR, and I might teach such a course at some point.
   
   TCE is an important book because it is a first-hand account of an intrusion, from the victim's discovery of the event to the prosecution of the offender. Two and a half decades since the events took place, some aspects of intrusions have changed and others have stayed the same. I don't see another author stepping forward to explain all of the personal and professional heartache and obstacles suffered while defending his enterprise against persistent adversaries. Today the threat of a lawsuit and the desire to protect company and professional interests would likely preclude such a story, and probably with good reason!
   
   On a human note, I found Cliff Stoll to possess the single most important characteristic of a good incident responder: he took the intrusion personally, and it made him angry! All the best security professionals I know take compromise personally and react emotionally to the thought of intruders violating their enterprise. Cliff Stoll was effective because he was smart, yes, but he was exceptionally effective because he cared.



2. This book IS required reading for anyone interested in information technology, especially those who are interested or in the security field. I stumbled across it several years after I dropped a IT security course over a summer. It was sitting on my shelf- a book that I forgot to return after dropping the class. From what I remember, I barley put the book down. This book is a captivating read about security back in the day of dial up and send mail. It's a non-fiction story that starts when the author finds a small accounting error on a homegrown computer program at the university he works at. Without giving anything away, he finds out this error is related to something much bigger. Do yourself a favor and pick this book up quickly, I recommend it to all my friends both technical and technically challenged alike.



3. If you like Tech and Computers, this is a great yarn. You get a little computer history (because this book has been around for a while) and a good detective story. Set in Berkeley,Ca. it proves the old adage that an account that doesn't balance by just a few cents may be the tracks of a thief.
   It is written in a very readable, affable style and I couldn't put it down.



4. The smallest clues often elude us. Stoll takes it and runs with it. If you're a governement IT person, you will find it intriguing even more. Couldn't put it down...



5. I remember reading this book way back "in the day." It spawned many hours of tinkering with computer systems as my brother and I attempted to hack each others computers with many creative ideas.

5 comments about From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

1. I read this book in elementary school and remember that I enjoyed it, but reading it again twenty years later, it was both familiar and fresh. This time around I read the 35th anniversary edition and I'm glad the author addressed the discrepancies between reading it upon initial publication in 1967 and reading it in the 21st century in her afterword. Sure, there are aspects of it that are outdated, but the story itself is timeless. I can see how it would engage a child and perhaps instill a curiosity about art or museums or New York. When reading it as a child, I remember envying Claudia's independence and spontaneity, and even now, the sense of adventure was just as prevalent. I love revisiting old favorites, and this book was no exception.



2. Two precocious Manhattan children, Claudia and Jamie, run away and live for weeks in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They investigate the provenance of a mysterious recent acquisition, a small Renaissance statue once owned by an eccentric elderly woman. Eventually they meet her, solve the mystery, and return home.
   
   The Newbery committee swung and missed with this one. The story line itself isn't the problem; it's the execution. The narrative frame has the old woman telling the story to her solicitor. She reports verbatim conversations the children had, supposedly garnered from reminiscences they tape-recorded. But she keeps intruding into the story of Jamie and Claudia to address the solicitor, who is presumably reading the manuscript. A straight narrative with a narrator who stayed in the background would have worked much better.
   
   Mirroring the clumsy frame is the tone-deaf exposition and dialogue. Jamie says "Oh boloney" about every other page and is repeatedly "corrected" by Claudia for his supposedly poor grammar, including the phrase "look up under" (as in "look it up under the other name"). But Jamie does occasionally use incorrect English, in statements like, "You sure know how to nervous a guy." That's the best the author could come up with to portray a boy speaking sloppy English? She makes him sound like English isn't even his native language.
   
   One baffling sentence after another makes its appearance: "They knew ... they would accumulate a lot of hunger" and "[Jamie washed] his mouth but not the eyes of his face." Everyone keeps saying the statue was "sculptured" rather than "sculpted," Claudia says she packed her "petticoats" for running away, and the narrator offers this anachronistic simile: "it was like trying to wrap a loose peck of potatoes into a neat four-cornered package." I know the narrator is an elderly woman, but she lives in the 1960s, not the 1860s. Petticoats and pecks are out of time and out of place here. One line near the end is an unintentionally ironic comment on the text itself: Mrs. Frankweiler says at one point that Claudia sounded "like an actress in a bad play -- unreal."
   
   The drawings are even more unsatisfying than the text. Done by the author, they are rough sketches rather than finished illustrations. The scratchy pencil lines call attention to themselves, so rather than see a whole image, one sees these lines. Faces are elongated and dyspeptic, and postures oddly hunched. The overall effect is creepy; the book's editor should have insisted on a professional illustrator.
   
   This book is appropriate for NO audience. Steer children away from it.



3. My cd's first came and the discs were missing from the box. I wrote the seller and they corrected issue immediately and had new ones sent to me. They came in excellent condition and we have already enjoyed them. Thank you very much for backing your product! Excellent and very prompt service in correcting the problem!



4. Boy, could I relate to this book. I read when I was younger and it was one of those books that I related to. I, like the main character am the only girl with three younger brothers. The main character just wants to get away for awhile, but she can't do it herself. After watching all her brothers carefully she chooses her brother that makes the most money. With a very limited budget the two decide to run away to New York City. Oh, and in a museum. sounds easy enough, eh? It is for them. The main character has been planning for weeks and she has it all figured out. This book was hilarious and one I read in one sitting. I enjoyed every minute of it! I recommend this book to everyone!



5. I decided to feature my all time favorite tween read as today's Tween Tuesday read. Yes, it's an oldie, but it's such a goodie!! I first read this book (or actually listened) in fourth grade. I checked out the cassette tapes from my library and listened to the book every night before bed for the three weeks I had it.
   
   I wanted to be Claudia. I wanted to run away and live in a museum and uncover the truth about an ancient statue. Of course, there was no way this adventure would happen to me in real life. I was terribly painfully shy as a tween, but when it came to books, I could be whoever I wanted. And when I was Claudia, I was adventurous, brave, solving mysteries and hiding in a museum. I could live out the adventure through Claudia and Jamie. That's a very powerful thing for a reader-especially tween readers-and that's one reason this book meant so much to me.
   
   I re-read this book for my children's lit class last year and it had the same charm and adventure that I remembered. Some of the references are outdated for today's reader (Claudia and Jaime get coins from the fountain and eat for very cheap and there's no way a stunt like the one Claudia and Jaime pull off could happen in today's high tech and security filled world) but that can easily be overlooked. I love the fact that while there's a mystery in the story, this isn't a mystery book, so it's accesible to all sorts of readers, even those who don't typically enjoy mysteries. Reader's will be swept away on an adventure and you'll never look at a museum the same way again.

1 comments about Computer Forensics: Hard Disk and Operating Systems (Ec-Council Press Series : Computer Forensics).

1. The book is very well written and I was surprised about its topics. I recommended.

5 comments about Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who are Bringing Down the Internet.

1. Was looking for a great vacation read that would provide some education. Fatal System Error fit the bill. Enjoyed the characters shared and the overview of the good fight they were waging. Hopefully, threats within are taken seriously by current / future U.S. Administrations.



2. I really enjoyed this book, despite the fact that it's not technical at all. It basically threads together several disparate stories that barely overlap. I think this was the most confusing part of the book - I expected the book to be about the man introduced in chapter 1 as a central character. He remains throughout the book, but after the first few chapters and story development, the book takes a sharp unexpected turn into different territory. As it turns out, it all makes sense in the end, and there's a good reason for the author to frame the story like this.
   
   All in all, well done.



3. * I recommend this book for any IT professional who wants to understand why firewalls/load balancers/encryption technology are needed to defend off attacks. The book makes information security exciting by explaining how cybercriminals are tracked down, caught, and eventually tried in court.
   * The book mentions cybercrime syndicates such as shadowcrew, carderplanet, and the Russian Business Network (RBN). All the aforementioned cybercrime syndicates are accessible only through direct contact with someone deep within the criminal organization since the underground forums have collapsed.
   * The two main characters in the book are Andy Crocker and Barret Lyon. Andy Crocker "did the most that an individual in government could do to punish some of the worst of the cyber mafia." (Menn, 226). He set new standards of cooperation between the west and Russia for investigations and prosecutions. This was needed especially by hackers like "King Arthur" who were protected by local politicians and police. King Arthur and various other leaders in cybercrime evaded being caught by bribing government officials.
   * Barret Lyon gained his experience by protecting an online gambling company, which opened up the doors to various other online gaming companies such as "[...]." He became familiar with the criminal underworld that owned these offshore companies. Eventually, he decided to work with the FBI to bring down these criminals.



4. And how it is in real life. for many not to much new but still an exiting book to read.



5. The book paints a very scary world of US criminals operating not very honest online gaming businesses from Costa Rica, and Russian criminals engaged in child porn, extortion and identity theft. They happen to collide with each other when the Russians try to extort the gaming businesses by denial of service attacks, and the US online gaming / criminal figures hire a former hacker / internet security maven to protect them. The episode opens his eyes to the use of the Internet for crime and he seeks to engage law enforcement to stop the criminals but the US agencies are - big surprise - barely interested. A lone figure in the UK grasps the significance and the two of them fly to Russia to engage the law enforcement authorities there (as if) to stop the Russian criminals. They experience little success and considerable personal risk in doing so. Along the way, one learns much of what is known about the degree of penetration of computer viruses, trojans, bots and so on. One is left in a state of extreme distrust of one's computer and very grateful to the author for publicizing this very serious problem.

5 comments about The Skull Ring.

1. Again, Nicholson delivers a fast-paced, gripping read that gets hold of you and doesn't let go. Nicholson is a master storyteller, and his use of simile and metaphor, e.g., "the splintered bones of memories", make the journey into and through his story even more delightful. You just never want it to end!
   Having read several of his books in the past, I know when I read Nicholson, I'm getting my money's worth. His writin is never gratuitious or self-indulgent; he is all about honesty, bringing the truth to his story, whatever that truth might be for each character. This is what makes his characters and their actions come to life. THIS is storytelling at its best.
   Another thing I love about The Skull Ring, is that it had me hooked from page 1. Therefore, I would definitely give this book a five-star rating. 100%!



2. Well thought out plot that keeps you questioning right to the end.
   The characters seem real as find yourself caught in this web of
   who you can and can't trust. A story well told with an ending that
   left me pleased to have read this book.



3. This was a really well written book. Loads of suspense that makes you want to keep turning pages. I'm not sure if I would recommend reading it late at night as it will probably keep you up for a while. Definitely buy this book!



4. When she was four year old, Julia Stone's father disappeared. Now an adult, dark childhood memories continue to haunt her. "...everybody knew that monsters weren't real." Everybody except Julia.
   
   Scott Nicholson's strong and vivid writing draws the reader deep into the story, but it's the writer's deft handling of pace that makes this a winner for me. As the tension ramped up, I often found myself holding my breath. Yet at other times, I couldn't help but smile at the gems of understated humor. The Skull Ring is a chilling, suspense-filled psychological thriller that will stay with me for a long time to come.
   
   Highly recommended. I look forward to reading more from this author.



5. Nicholson has not disapointed me yet. why isnt this guy as well known as king?

1 comments about Criminological Theory (5th Edition).

1. This book provides an excellent general overview of all major Criminological theories. It is great for graduate students needing concise descriptions of the theories, or for undergraduates who are being introduced to the theories for the first time. If you are looking for a lengthy description of only one or two specialized theories I recommend reading the theorists' original works.

5 comments about Mortal Fear.

1. I enjoy good thrillers with some creepiness in them, yet find them very difficult to find. Especially ones that are believable. I took a chance on this Greg Iles book "Mortal Fear" and was not disappointed. To me, the sign of a good book is one where I'm dying to know "who done it?", yet I don't want the book to end because I'm enjoying it so much. That is what I got in this book. The book is a fairly long read, which is fine with me. Character development was very deep, and I found these people in the book to be very interesting and believable. I would highly recommend it.



2. AS WITH THE OTHER GREG ISLES BOOKS I'VE READ YOU REALLY HAVE TO BE PATIENT WHILE HE BUILDS HIS STORY...IT'S AS IF HE'S BUILDING A FIRE STARTING WITH SOME KINDLING HERE AND THERE AND MAYBE THEN SOME DRY GRASS PERHAPS A SPLASH OF GASOLINE A DASH OF GUNPOWDER AND BY ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH HE LIGHTS A BIG WOODEN MATCH AND DROPS IT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT ALL....THE BACKDRAFT PULLS YOU THROUGH THE REST OF THE BOOK...I DONT EVER MISS SLEEP FOR A BOOK...NOT FOR A LONG TIME ANYWAY..I WAS SO AFRAID THAT I HAD TO FINISH IT...MAYBE RED DRAGON WAS THE LAST BOOK THAT I READ THAT WAS THIS COMPELLING..



3. With a little medical mystery, a little computer espionage and a lot of cybersex and murder, Mortal Fear is the ultimate thriller. A serial killer infiltrates Eros. Known by many usernames, he toys with women while trying to achieve a higher purpose. The main character, Harper, is a hero, a villain and a victim, being placed into every possible category during this constant race against time trying to save victim after victim. Harper's personal life, his job and his dalliances on Eros (the sex site he worked for) all come into play during the investigation.
   
   This book is very long, but surprisingly faced paced. I was completely sucked in. The computer aspect of the book is interesting. Although clearly advanced for the time period, I felt a spark of nostalgia reading about how computers and the internet operated over a decade ago.
   
   This is real crazy, mind-blowing stuff. There were lots of disturbing parts, mostly more psychological than gory, although gore certainly had its place too. Mortal Fear is definitely not for those squeamish about sexual crimes and taboos. Sex and high tech are melded to create an exhilarating and terrifying thriller.



4. I could not deal with the fuzzy type interspersed throughout this book. Select a standard type style and stick with it. Italics are OK ocassionally but these eyes rebelled to the point I stopped the book and asked a friend to try it.
   He had the same complaint! Next time I encounter this style I will return the book for a full refund.
   As for the story, I will never know if it was any good.
   Other books I have read by the same author I liked very much.
   That includes Black Cross and Spandau Phoenix; they were great reads.



5. I have read almost all of Greg Isles books. I enjoy the drama and southern spin on adventure and mystery. I'm half way complete " Mortal Fear". It is some what different than the others but still very enjoyable. Book in very good condition.

5 comments about The Hanged Man's Song.

1. It's a shame that John Sanford has chosen not to do more of these. Everything about the characters, their interactions, and adventures are totally unique to action/adventure materials on the market. Everything clicks together to make a great story telling. I was disappointed at the end of each book. Not with the book, but that it had ended. I wasn't ready to stop reading. It was like when your favorite TV show is taken off the air.



2. Most people know Kidd as an artist, but in his secret life he's an industrial spy who steals secrets from high tech firms and sells them to their competition. Kidd's world is shattered when his friend Master Hacker Bobby is murdered and his computer stolen. He's afraid there was something on Bobby's machine that will incriminate him.
   
   Bobby had broken into the files of a government agency created because of the Homeland Security Act. It's supposed to develop sophisticated surveillance techniques to be used against terrorists, however its compiling dossiers on leading politicians and now a psychotic killer has that info and is using it against one politician after another.
   
   Kidd wants to find the killer before the cops, because he wants Bobby's computer. However he'd like to avenge Bobby's death as well and if that means he has to bring down a killer and save the government to do it, well so be it.
   
   Kidd is a refreshingly different kind of protagonist and this is a refreshingly different kind of thriller, well it's a lot like the others in the series before it, but other than that, it's different. In my opinion "The Hanged Man's Song" will make Kidd as popular as Sandford's Lucus Davenport.



3. In the past month I have read all of the Kidd series and truly enjoyed everyone. In one of the Prey series
   Lucas visits Kidd. It goes on to say that Kidd and Luellen are married. I hope that Sanford is not thinking
   about ending the Kidd series with this revelation in the Prey series.
   These books are a fast moving read and very hard to put down once they are started. The computer technology may not be that current but you really don't care.



4. I have been a fan of John Sandford's Prey series for many years, but this was my first book of his outside of that series.
   
   This story centers on a master computer hacker named Kidd and an even more supreme hacker he works with (online only) named Bobby. Bobby has damaging information on major power players in U.S. politics and, when his computer gets stolen, some of this information gets released. A game of cat-and-mouse ensues as Kidd and his friends try to determine who has the computer and how to track it down and get it back. It's not just their loyalty to Bobby that is driving them, but fear that their own identities could be compromised.
   
   For most of its 340 pages, I could not believe this was a John Sandford book. Whereas most of the books in the Prey series had been tense, gripping mysteries with a healthy dose of wit, I had a hard time getting engaged in this Kidd novel. From hearing the story synopsis, it SHOULD have been as tense and gripping as any of the Prey series...but it just wasn't. Until the last 100 pages; THEN, it became the book I'd been expecting all along.
   
   It's not a BAD book...I wouldn't say to anyone (especially a John Sandford fan) "Don't read this." But it just wasn't what I was expecting after years of reading books in his other series.



5. I just finished reading this and I'm not sure how I feel about it. This was my first John Sandford/Kidd book but it probably won't be my last. The characters were interesting, the plot was good and solid, the ending felt plausible and all in all, it was a good, fast read. Now, for the major negative, the language. I don't know why I'm being so critical and sensitive about this all of a sudden but I am. The use of the particular 4-letter "F" word was way too frequent. If you are sensitive about this situation, don't read this book. For me, this turned a really good (almost great) book into a mediocre one. Maybe soon, I'll get over my distaste of the word and just skip over it, and enjoy Sandford, Leonard, DeMille etc. It's a shame that one word would change a book from a 5 star into a 3, but that's the way I feel at the moment. Thanks for listening!

5 comments about Swimsuit.

1. I have only just started reading this book and to say I'm shocked is an understatement! The rape, violence and murder in the opening chapters is chilling and incredibly disturbing, not at all gripping or exciting as most murder mysteries should be. To me, the storyline is sick and twisted, and I don't think I can actually bring myself to finish it. It's left a sour after taste I'm afraid .....



2. I won't retread on much of what I've seen from other reviews, but this book was probably one of the most "un-thrilling" thrillers that I've ever read. The book had 122 chapters and I think that the air was let out of the book by chapter 15 or so. I kept reading imagining that there had to be something more that would take place to bring some level of "WOW", but chapter after chapter left me saying "so what..."
   
   The book had a lot of potential, but one of the biggest points to a suspense book is drawing you in and connecting you with the characters and there was never more than a surface level connection with any of the characters. Additionally, it's safe to say that anything that was supposed to be intense on any level was underwhelming to say the least.
   
   I don't feel that as a reviewer that I should recap the book, but more so share my impression. My impression of this is that it needed to be totally re-done before it saw the light of day. Definitely not the worst book that I've ever read, but certainly a waste of time. Skip it...



3. This book kept my interest throughout even though there were no real events that gave me the "wow" factor. However, the ending of the book was so awful that I actually threw it across the room b/c it was the biggest waste of my time. They set this book up to have a potentially great ending and it failed miserably. There were also far too many unnecessary killings, that I feel the authors just threw them in there to give the book more substance. VERY DISAPPOINTING!



4. This latest book from Patterson was just ok. It was left at my job by a co-worker so I started reading it at work when it was slow. Honestly the first third of the book really didn't reel me in other than the fact that I had nothing else to do at work. By the time I made it to about page 150 I was hooked though. I finished it quickly after that and felt that the pacing and intrigue definitely picked up. Was it his best book? No. Then again, how can he create an amazing book when he has a new one coming out nearly every 2-3 months. People seemed to complain about the violence and while that aspect didn't bother me, it might affect others. If you were to view this book as a movie, it would be rated as a hard R, no doubt. The way I view this book is that there are so many bad movies out there that this definitely surpassed them in terms of the story, it just seems the execution of it could have been altered to make a more engrossing and detailed book. Patterson seems to be focused on pacing rather than detailing which makes it a fun, casual read if this genre interests you. I'm still a huge fan of his though and will continue to check out his newest books.



5. Good beach book? Maybe. The chapters are all very short, so it's easy to get to the end of a chapter, put the book down, and go jump in the water. But if you're squeamish, be forwarned there's lot of nasty gore - snuff sex and more. I did get into the main character enough - a journalist / ex-cop - to want to read to the end of the book to find out what happens, but the end, written as a very short epilogue, is completely unsatisfying. One gets the feeling that the authors were up against some publishing deadline and simply wrapped things up. This won't win any literary awards for sure. If you decide to give it a go, find a used copy in a half-price bookstore. It certainly wasn't worth the full 10 Euro price I paid in an airport bookstore.