| Books |
SO WHO is 'Hugo Cornwall', author of The Hacker's Handbook?
Biographical details given include the astonishing career details of a man who has a First in Mathematics from Oxford, has worked in a 'government supported facility in Gloucestershire' and in the South Atlantic. He is now, apparently, living in, Brecon, mid-Wales.
Those details are spice on the cake as far as selling the book goes, and The Hacker's Handbook is crammed full of information and advice for would be hackers.
With worries about the security of data systems and computer fraud running at fever pitch, Cornwall insists that hackers are not intent on crime as such and states the hacker's aim, 'to boldly pass where no man has hacked before'.
The author is probably correct when he states that more information could be gleaned by judicious phone calls and contacts than ever would be gained by hacking round the networks. In fact, banks and such authorities as Prestel should thank hackers for pointing out the weak spots in their security systems.
The Hacker's Handbook is also a historical work detailing the results of famous hacks, like the Telecom Gold hack. It is an extremely useful handbook for anyone with a modem who wishes to explore a bit further than the pages of Micronet, containing as it does lists of protocols and radio frequencies together with advice from someone who is obviously an expert in network exploration.
Hugo Cornwall has laid down a challenge to his readers: who will be the first to hack his identity? That reminds me, I must contact my friends in mid-Wales.
| Publisher Century Communications Price £3.95 |
Theo Wood
HACKING is a popular topic and it is not unusual to find several books which cover the same subject. What is unusual about this book is that it is called The Hacker's Handbook.
This book is published by Longman, not Century Communications. It is not illegal for two books to have the same title but it can be confusing.
Luckily, the books differ in approach. This book, by Geoff Wheelwright and Ian Scales, deals with only the Spectrum and much of it is concerned with the Micronet information database to which Spectrum owners can connect using a VTX 5000 modem.
It gives an overview of the system. and provides information on Prestel, and Homelink - the home banking database.
For those who are seriously into hacking the authors provide information on the hardware and software which you will need to get into such databases.
Section one shows how modems work and examines terms such as baud rates, parity and duplex.
Section two takes a look at electronic mail and bulletin boards, which can be accessed over a telephone line with a modem and provides a list of British bulletin boards with telephone numbers.
A glossary of terms completes what is a very interesting and practical book. They could have changed the title, though.
| Publisher Longman Price £5.95 |
John Gilbert
AT LAST it's here. The QL Technical Guide, by David Karlin and Tony Tebby, took more than a year to escape from the inner sanctum at Sinclair Research but, due to great public demand - and outrage - those guidelines have seen the light of day.
The neat A5 book, complete with hardy ring binder cover, is a pale imitation of the full QDOS specification which is available to software houses if they shout loud enough but it is certainly worth the wait, and worth its weight in gold. Not only does it cover the utilities available through QDOS but it provides blueprints of the memory map, information on system variables and all the data you need on that nefarious subject, multi-tasking.
Skimming through the 195 pages of text and index gives a good idea of the IQ rating necessary to understand most of the information in the manual. You do not have to be a genius but it does help. The technical manual is not meant for the SuperBASIC programmer. You do need some knowledge of 68000 code and general knowledge of traps and other interrupts. If you have the background the book will give you all you need to know about the internal workings of the QL.
One area that it purposely does not cover, however, is the hardware of the machine. No chip specifications are given and there is not one blueprint hidden within the volume. The authors explain that such design blueprints would be 'giving you a route to build products which rely on non-supported elements in the QL design.' In other words, you might start to use some of those hardware functions within the 68008 which are not supported by the QL.
The book is expensive at £14.95 but there are factors which make it an imperative buy for a machine code programmer. On the QL you should always go through QDOS. Both authors are intimately connected with Sinclair and work on the QDOS operating system. The other reason for purchasing the manual is that it does not hold information back from the reader. If there is something that you need to know about QDOS it is likely to be in the manual.
The QL Technical Guide is a great box of assorted tricks. If you want to perform magic on your QL you should buy it.
| Publisher Sinclair Research Price £14.95 |
John Gilbert