2600 has been reviewed here before, as there's almost always something of interest in it.

That's true for the Spring 2013 edition as well.

One article that may be of use (though not necessarily for the purpose used by the author) is "The Usage of the Assumption Technique in Social Engineering" found on page 51.

Many businesses these days use "phone trees" to minimize the number of people they have to hire. The truth of the matter is that with the possible exception of choosing English or Spanish, what comes next is futility. The system just does not have the answer you're looking for, and, in many cases, these systems are designed to make it difficult to get ahold of a human being.

The course laid out by the author is to determine what assumptions the person you will ultimately get on the phone is making, and take advantage of them.

In the article, the author uses this technique to get about $30.00 of free security hardware. It is easy enough to assume, though, that many people would have reached a certain level of frustration merely trying to ascertain what the right hardware even was, and be quite happy to pay for it-which is the information the author received initially.

A moral, if there is one, is that "hacking" is not always a bad thing. The "hacking spirit" is to figure out how things work, and this is sometimes the only option available to a frustrated consumer.

2600: The Hacker Quarterly

Given the increasing prevalence of cybercrime and related threats, this is a publication well worth being aware of.

It has been around for a long time, and hopefully it will continue to be published. It can be hard to find, but subscriptions are available.

It contains articles submitted by readers. Almost every issue has something quite interesting. In this issue (Autumn 2012) there are interesting articles about computers in prison (yes, prisoners DO have access to them), a cyberattack against a small bank, and some perils of using hotel wifi networks.

Even though the articles vary widely from issue to issue, one more or less constant factor is photographs of pay phones from around the world as well as a listing of hacker meetings!

Cyber Spying: Tracking Your Family's (Sometimes) Secret Online Lives

Cyber Spying, by Ted Fair, Michael Nordfelt, Sandra Ring and Dr. Eric Cole is really all about the subtitle "Tracking Your Family's (Sometimes) Secret Online Lives."

This book serves as an excellent introduction to spying and counterspying on computers.

The vast majority of the techniques described in the book, however, require what the authors honestly refer to as "intimate access" to the machine of potential interest. Some of the techniques described require the installation of additional hardware (keystroke loggers) or software in order to accomplish the task at hand.

If such access cannot be obtained, much of what is in this book is useless.

But, in cases where it is necessary to "spy" on a family member, such as a spouse or child, this book may be for you.

Interestingly, the last section of the book contains a detailed discussion of countermeasures applicable to many of the techniques appearing in the rest of the book!