What I found interesting about his MO when I read Takedown was the idea of social engineering and stringing together scripts. In particular Mitnick was interesting because it was a counter-narrative to the world Stoll portrays in The Cuckoo's Egg, a world where only technical knowledge seemed to matter in relation to technical issues. I suppose I found Mitnick M.O. interesting because it was so much simpler...like the scene in Raiders of the Lost Arch where Jones faces the swordsman [sans violence]. Not that he was my hero or anything. But I never found myself relating Shimomura in the way I did with Stoll. My recollection is that his book felt like a knockoff written with the expectation that I should feel outrage. I didn't.

Stoll was the most interesting character in his book. Mitnick was far and away the most interesting character in Shimomura's book. Stoll was interesting because he was curious. Shimomura was dull because he was just offended. The book did well because Mitnick was interesting, because cloning cell phones was interesting, because breaking into computer systems is interesting...even to people who aren't going to do it.