Secrets of a Super Hacker

A how-to manual on breaking into computer systems, written under the pseudonym The Knightmare and published by the fringe press Loompanics Unlimited in 1994. It gives step-by-step instructions for social engineering, password theft, and system infiltration from a home computer, aimed at a reader with no prior hacking experience.

The book's core subject is social engineering: talking legitimate users and system administrators into giving up passwords and access. The author calls its variants reverse social engineering, spoofing, and superuser abuse. Further chapters cover screen stealing, hidden data delivery, Trojan horses, trap doors, and dummy accounts. Appendixes explain database and operating-system structure and password-guessing strategy, and close with a glossary of hacking terms. A closing chapter surveys the state and federal computer-crime laws a reader risked breaking by using the techniques described. Gareth Branwyn, an editor associated with the cyberpunk-era magazine Mondo 2000 and later a founding writer at Wired, supplies the introduction; Dan Wend illustrated it.

Loompanics Unlimited, the book's publisher, specialized in manuals on subjects mainstream houses avoided, from lock picking to fake identification. Secrets of a Super Hacker fits that catalog: an early, plainly written primer on hacking methodology rather than a technical security text. Some sources identify the author behind the Knightmare pseudonym as Dennis Fiery, itself understood to be another assumed name rather than the writer's legal identity.