From wired.com
"....Mitnick"s new book, The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security, as a contributing factor in their decision. Both business and book are designed to help others defend against exactly the sorts of social-engineering scams that put Mitnick behind bars for 4.5 years on charges of computer fraud. The book, which Mitnick co-authored with William Simon, will be released Friday. It focuses on the scams used by so-called social engineers who manage to convince people to reveal sensitive information that can then be used to bypass a system"s security.
Mitnick hopes the book will prove that information can"t be secured simply by barricading it behind firewalls, passwords and data-encryption schemes. Mitnick said that hacking people is "equally as easy" as hacking computers. But he believes that far too much attention is paid to pure cyberthreats, leaving the door wide open for social-engineering attacks."
Apparently, so the story goes the first chapter of the book was removed for some reason before it went to print, yet it got leaked onto a Yahoo! News Group post and has been copied onto his girlfriends site (look below). It does make interesting reading - cites how one man proffited quite alot of his mis-fortunes. However, one (and this author does) must question the moral scrupples of allowing people to proffit of their crimes- as he essentially is doing. One cannot disregard the fact that he did break the law, and as such had to pay his time, just like any other law breaker.
Update- goodness knows whats wrong with me- that story didnt come from slashdot!