From Anonymous to the Dark Web, a dizzying account of hacking--past,
present, and future.
"Brilliantly researched and written."--Jon Snow, Channel 4 News
"A comprehensive and intelligible account of the elusive world of
hacking and cybercrime over the last two decades. . . . Lively,
insightful, and, often, alarming."--Ewen MacAskill, Guardian
On May 4, 2000, an email that read "kindly check the attached
LOVELETTER" was sent from a computer in the Philippines. Attached was a
virus, the Love Bug, and within days it had been circulated across the
globe, paralyzing banks, broadcasters, and businesses in its wake, and
extending as far as the UK Parliament and, reportedly, the Pentagon. The
outbreak presaged a new era of online mayhem: the age of Crime Dot
Com. In this book, investigative journalist Geoff White charts the
astonishing development of hacking, from its conception in the United
States' hippy tech community in the 1970s, through its childhood among
the ruins of the Eastern Bloc, to its coming of age as one of the most
dangerous and pervasive threats to our connected world. He takes us
inside the workings of real-life cybercrimes, drawing on interviews with
those behind the most devastating hacks and revealing how the tactics
employed by high-tech crooks to make millions are being harnessed by
nation states to target voters, cripple power networks, and even prepare
for cyber-war. From Anonymous to the Dark Web, Ashley Madison to
election rigging, Crime Dot Com is a thrilling, dizzying, and
terrifying account of hacking, past and present, what the future has in
store, and how we might protect ourselves from it.
