Michelle Slatalla: The Masters of Deception. The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace (1996)
Filed under book | Tags: · hacking, security
The bestselling account of a band of kids from New York who fought an electronic turf war that ranged across some of the nation’s most powerful computer systems.
Publisher HarperPerennial, 1996
ISBN 0060926945, 9780060926946
225 pages
Download (removed on 2013-1-15 upon request of the publisher)
Comment (0)Suelette Dreyfus: Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness, and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier (1997/2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · hacking, security
This book describes the exploits of a group of Australian, American, and British black hat hackers during the late 1980s and early 1990s. * Craig Bowen (nickname), administrator of two important Australian BBS (Pacific Island and Zen) * The Parmaster, an American hacker who avoided capture by the United States Secret Service from July 1989 to November 1991 * Phoenix, Electron and Nom, who were convicted in the first major Australian trial for computer crimes * Pad and Gandalf, the British founders of the notorious 8lgm group * the Australian Mendax and Prime Suspect, who managed to penetrate the DDN, NIC and the Nortel internal network, and the phreaker Trax * Anthrax, another Australian hacker and phreaker.
The book also mentions other hackers who had contacts with the protagonists, among them Erik Bloodaxe of the Legion of Doom and Corrupt of the Masters of Deception. The first chapter of Underground relates the diffusion and reactions of the computer security community to the WANK worm that attacked DEC VMS computers over the DECnet in 1989 and was purportedly coded by a Melbourne hacker. The author made the electronic edition of the book freely available in 2001 at www.underground-book.com. The 2002 documentary In the Realm of the Hackers, directed by Kevin Anderson and centered around Phoenix and Electron, was inspired by this book.
Research by Julian Assange
Publisher Mandarin, a part of Reed Books Australia, 1997
ISBN 1863305955, 9781863305952
Length 475 pages
Literary Freeware: Not for Commercial Use.
Bruce Sterling: The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier (1992–) [EN, ES, CZ]
Filed under book | Tags: · cyberspace, hacker culture, hacking, software, telephone
“The AT&T long-distance network crashes, and millions of calls go unanswered. A computer hacker reprograms a switching station, and calls to a Florida probation office are shunted to a New York phone-sex hotline. An underground computer bulletin board publishes a pilfered BellSouth document on the 911 emergency system, making it available to anyone who dials up. How did so much illicit power reach the hands of an undisciplined few – and what should be done about it?
The book discusses watershed events in the hacker subculture in the early 1990s. The most notable topic covered is Operation Sundevil and the events surrounding the 1987-1990 war on the Legion of Doom network: the raid on Steve Jackson Games, the trial of ‘Knight Lightning’ (one of the original journalists of Phrack), and the subsequent formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The book also profiles the likes of ‘Emmanuel Goldstein’ (publisher of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly), the former Assistant Attorney General of Arizona Gail Thackeray, FLETC instructor Carlton Fitzpatrick, Mitch Kapor, and John Perry Barlow.”
In 1994, Sterling released the book for the Internet with a new afterword.
Publisher Bantam Books, 1992
Literary Freeware: Not for Commercial Use
ISBN 055356370X
323 pages
The Hacker Crackdown (English, 1992/1994, HTML, EPUB, Kindle, TXT)
The Hacker Crackdown (English, audiobook, read by Cory Doctorow, 2008, MP3, OGG)
Le Caza des Hackers. Ley y Desorden en la Frontera Electrónica (Spanish, trans. trans. El Equipo de Traductores de Kriptópolis, 1999, added on 2020-4-13)
Zátah na hackery (Czech, trans. Václav Bárta, 2004, HTML, updated on 2020-4-12)