CRIME DOT COM BY GEOFF WHITE
Hardback Published By http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
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.
I love reading about cybercrime and what’s been hacked. I first got into computer hackers after reading many years ago the fictional story The Blue Nowhere By Jeffery Deaver.
Crime Dot Com is non-fictional about from viruses to vote rigging and how hacking went global. It’s certainly a well written book being well researched, that had me glued to every word. It’s a certainty a frightening world we live in today with cybercrime.
My own mother was conned out of money with a man claiming he was from BT and that she had to pay some money using her credit card at that precise moment or her line would be disconnected. When my mother gave him her bank card details, the man fraudulently took more money out of my mother’s account and spent it in Sainsbury. He wasn’t from our area, he must have lived far away near the Sainsbury he spent my mothers money. How the man got my mother’s phone number from in another area is beyond me. The man was very efficient with his manner sounding like he really worked for BT, which brings me think that the man may have previously worked from BT and kept telephone numbers of clients to take money from. Or he just may have been very cleaver at convincing people he worked at BT.
At the back of this book there’s further reading reference with other books that I’m quite interested in reading.
How the author Geoff White came about his creation on cybercrime is that he published on his website about the hacking of Talk Talk. After years of investigation he ended up with a heap of information about the incident. The Commissioning Editor from Reaktion Books read Geoff’s website and suggested he write a book on cybercrime and here is the interesting intelligent account of all forms of cybercrime.
Page one from the introduction
There is a reason cybercrime has surged up the news agenda. It’s not just because of society’s growing independence on vulnerable technology. And it’s not just because journalists, politicians and powerful institutions are increasingly targeted by hackers. Cybercrime has boomed thanks to a little-noticed confidence of the world’s most powerful hacker groups. In the years since the turn of the millennium, a cross-pollination of tools and tactics between these shadowy operators have shaped the technological threat we see today, elevating cybercrime to an omnipresent hazard. As our society has moved online, they have begun striking at the critical services on which we all rely; our hospitals, power stations, news media and political processes.
There are three forces driving this new wave of attacks: organized cybercrime gangs, hacktivist movements and nation-state hackers.
Organized crime has been present from almost the earliest days of computer hacking and has now become firmly entrenched, as its members have realized how much safer it is to rob people and institutions virtually, rather than in person. Their tactics run on high-volume low-margin model: if they can steal £5 from a million people the victims might not even notice, but the hackers are still £5 million richer. This has spawned a sophisticated industry that runs its lucrative criminal enterprise like Silicon Valley start-ups. But the gangs indiscriminate attack tools have leaked out, the losses have been far more than simply financial.
About Geoff White
Geoff White is an investigative journalist and one of the UK’s leading technology correspondents. His work has featured in numerous outlets, including the BBC and Channel 4 news, and he is the writer and presenter of the acclaimed podcast The Dark Web.
Bookread2day 