This is a pleasant little book. It is of course based on the current movie by the same name. This reviewer has not seen the movie.
Briefly, the story is of Dade Murphy who, at eleven years of age, is forbidden to use a computer or touch-tone phone until he is eighteen years old. A court imposes this "punishment" after the Secret Service arrests him for spreading a virus that crashes 1,507 computer systems on Wall Street. Seven years later and living in New York with his computer and phone privileges restored, Dade falls in with a group of young people adept at hacking. One of the group accidentally hacks into a super-computer owned by a company called Ellingson Mineral and steals a file. This would be a simple case of hacking except that the company's computer security chief, who calls himself The Plague, his super hacker name, is up to a few accounting tricks. The stolen file could expose The Plague's embezzlement of millions of dollars from the company. He wants the file back. But he also sees a golden opportunity.
The storyline of Hackers is classic Machiavellian intrigue with enough originality to make it truly entertaining. The arch villain, The Plague, eludes justice and wings off to Hong Kong where he can continue his masterful displays of digital manipulation.
Some of the computer hacking stuff in Hackers is out in cyberspace not even waiting the possibility of happening--like hacking into the White House computer and having a neophyte at the other end of a telephone hookup type "echo" so that the hacker can get a password displayed on her screen. Much, much too convoluted since the entire point of hacking is to avoid humans.
However, it is the language that stands out in this book. In fact, in reading the terse, high speed verbalized communication of thought, you become very conscious of the way language is and can be used to establish that most sought after of human vanities--exclusivity. But that's a different subject.