The classic tell-all memoir and security primer by 1980s computer hacker Bill Landreth, Out of the Inner Circle, is now available as an ebook for the first time.
Landreth had been one of a loose community of teen hackers called The Inner Circle. In 1983, when he was 18, his family’s San Diego home was raided by the FBI. Known as “the Cracker,” he was arrested in 1983 for breaching the GTE Telemail email network, which revealed messages from the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, Coca-Cola and other businesses and government entities. During his hacking days, Landreth was friends with many internet pioneers, including Tom Anderson, who later founded MySpace. Anderson was the last person to see Landreth before he disappeared shortly after the publication of Out of the Inner Circle. Landreth turned up later and has lived on the streets of Southern California on and off in the years since.
The book has been expertly formatted, re-proofread, and revamped with an updated version of the original cover. It also includes a 1989 preface by Bill Landreth himself that reflects on changing times in personal computing, networks, viruses and other security issues. Following the original text is a 2016 interview between Bill and journalist Matt Novak on the effect that these events had on the computer whiz kid later in life.
Out of the Inner A Hacker’s Guide to Computer Security (also The True Story of a Computer Intruder Capable of Cracking the Nation’s Most Secure Computer Systems) was originally published by Mircosoft Press in 1985. It was a best-seller in its genre at the time.
The book is a fascinating window into the world of technology from thirty years ago that still resonates today.