Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw-By the Man Who Did It

That's the classic version at least. Given all of the hype surrounding the capture of Kevin Mitnick (much of it created and sustained by the authors of this book), one would at least expect the version provided by "The Man Who Did It" to be entertaining. But Tsutomu Shimomura's writing (apparently not assisted enough by John Markoff) is somewhat dull. The details of Shimomura's personal life are probed in depth while technical, legal, and ethical questions are brushed over without commentary, such as the supposed proof of Mitnick's involvement in the break-in or Markoff's involvement in the capture. There may be some material of interest to the enthusiast, and those who read Jonathan Littman's The Fugitive Game should at least check out Takedown to see what all of the fuss is about.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

Tsutomu Shimomura is a Moron who Just Wanted Attention, 2006-07-20
Shimomura teamed up to write the most trivial, and boring details in this book about himself, and when he wasn't doing that, he was making up things about Kevin Mitnick. He never met Kevin Mitnick, he never knew Kevin Mitnick, he never had anything to do with Kevin Mitnick other than helping track him down because he was starved for attention and wanted to look like some super computer hero. Almost nothing in this book actually happened, I say almost because the only stuff that did actually happen were the trivial mundane details about Shumomura himself. Don't waste your time reading this sensationalist, tabloidian, garbage.


1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

tedious, self-indulgent subplots,, 2005-12-06
Tedious, self-indulgent subplots. I dont care about Julia. No one cares about Julia. No one cares about where you eat or where you rent a car. These subplots REALLY screw-up the read. But the computer stuff is interesting enough. But somebody, please, toss Julia overboard.


3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Great book, everybody here seems to be starstruck, 2005-04-12
I have The Fugitive and Takedown (this book) sitting in my room now. I borrowed both of them simultaneously. I had only heard of Mitnick before in anecdotes, and I thought it would be interesting to get both viewpoints.

I started reading the Fugitive, but found it to read like a cheap B novel. The story jumped around in some sort of "stylistic" way that made it a bit incomprehensible and not very entertaining. There was a lack of coherence that made you wonder where it wwas going. The author also seemed to think that mentioning a lot of sex and drugs was the only way to keep the reader's attention.

So about 80 pages through, I switched to Takedown, and finished it. I found it to be much better written and very engaging.

All the negative reviews here are due to the fact that a lot of online people worship Mitnick, for some reason. I find him an interesting character, and definitely a skilled con-man. But he's no hero, no invincible genius.

Shimomura can definitely be egotistical depending on your viewpoint, but it didn't bother me. It doesn't get in the way of the story, which was told beautifully and naturally.

The story is engaging enough without having to dress it up in sensationalism. I'll have to go finish the Fugitive now to see if it can redeem itself.


5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

If you want to know Mitnick's story, ask Mitnick., 2005-03-05
Fans of the Kevin Mitnick mythos will have a ball with this book dissecting everything that's wrong here. In the process of tracking Mitnick, Shimomura (and another important name, Markoff, whose relationship with Mitnick would be laughable if it didn't violate every concievable rule of morality) basically took free leave of both the law and personal decency. Mitnick became a "thing", and the two of them pushed that image of Mitnick to cover up the legal mess they would have been in if they'd been tracking some average Joe instead of Kevin Mitnick: The Man, The Myth, The Legend (again, an image which these two men essentially created).

It's amazing to see how egotistical Shimomura is willing to be on the issue, and as noted by others, he shows this off in spades in this book. Shimomura and Markoff boh essentially believe that they are the lone men responsible for the takedown and capture of Mitnick, and that not even the dozens (hundreds?) of security firms and companies who spent millions of their own money tracking Mitnick deserve any credit at all. And in a sense, they are mostly correct- we wouldn't be talking about Mitnick today if Markoff and Shimomura weren't working so desperately hard to make money off of this story.

If you're a fan of Mitnick, skip this book just because you don't want to give this man any royalties. If you're a fan of reading, skip this book because it's core is a mess of egotism. The only real reason to pick this up is if you have an insatiable urge to know every detail of this story that you can possibly get your hands on- in which case, it is another piece to the puzzle.

I reccomend that interested parties check out Mitnick's own books: "Deception..." and "Intrusion...", as well as the fan favorite Jonathan Littman's "Fugitive Game".


5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

My God, What a load of...., 2004-08-24
This book was painful to read. It is poorly written drivel. If you are truly interested in the topic, there are much better books written on Mitnick, Hacking/Phreaking, and/or computer security issues. With every paragraph that Shimomura writes about his love life (and there are plenty of them,) the book, (although calling it that is insulting to other books) continues on a long downward spiral into the absolute load of poop that it is. I feel sorry that paper was wasted to create this mess. I cannot believe I wasted several hours of my life reading this.

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