Written by investigative journalist Geoff White, and subtitled “From Viruses to Vote Rigging, How Hacking Went Global” this is another book that I wish I had time to read as I’m fascinated by cybersecurity and hacking (without ever wanting to do it, you understand!). Let me tell you a bit about the book and it’s author, and then you can read an extract below.
White has presented on technology and cybersecurity for many TV programmes; creating the ‘Data Baby Project’ Channel 4 – a made-up online identity used to show how our personal data is used and abused. Watch more about that project here. White also hosted a sell-out live phone hacking show at the Edinburgh Fringe a few years ago! He hosts a Cybercrime Investigations podcast too and has written podcasts for Audible on the subject.
Here’s more about Crime Dot Com from the publisher:
A thrilling, insightful and entertaining account of hacking past and present – a subject that should concern everyone – from a leading voice in the world of cybersecurity.
On 4 May 2000, an email that read ‘kindly check the attached LOVELETTER’ was sent from Philippines. Attached was the first global virus that would go on to paralyse banks, broadcasters and businesses worldwide. The age of Crime Dot Com had begun.
In the first book covering the whole of cybercrime past and present in a digestible way, investigative journalist Geoff White explores the astonishing development of hacking – from its conception in America’s hippy tech community in the 1970s, through its childhood among the ruins of the Eastern Bloc, to its coming of age as the most pervasive threat to our digital world. Drawing a well-informed, intelligent and easy-to-understand picture, he takes his readers inside the workings of real-life cybercrimes, revealing how the tactics employed by high-tech crooks are being harnessed by nation states to target voters, cripple power networks and prepare, even, for cyber-war.
Unmasking the hacker behind the first global virus in history, the Love Bug, whose identity remained hidden for 20 years, the book hit the headlines worldwide earlier this year. One of the most fascinating chapters from the book, where Geoff uncovers how North Korean hackers stole $81m from Bangladesh Bank, is currently being turned into a 10-part BBC podcast.
From Anonymous to the Dark Web, Ashley Madison to the 2016 US Presidential Election, Crime Dot Com is a thrilling, dizzying and terrifying account of hacking, past and present, and of what the future has in store and how we might protect ourselves from it.
I am dying to read this book, I wish my schedule had room. However I can share a pdf with you of the tenth chapter all about the last US presidential election to whet our appetites.
[pdf id=17968]
Crime Dot Com by Geoff White, pub Aug 10th by Reaktion Books, 336 pages. BUY at Amazon UK or Blackwell’s (affiliate links).
