crime dot com a history of hacking past and present review Duffy the writer

“Brilliantly researched and written” ā€“ Jon Snow, Channel 4 News

Crime Dot Com is a thrilling, insightful and entertaining account of hacking past and present ā€“ a subject that should concern everyone ā€“ 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 the 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 ā€“ 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.

Who is Geoff White author of Crime Dot Com?

Geoff White author of Crime Dot Com

Investigative journalist Geoff White has covered technology for BBC News,
Channel 4 News, Audible, Forbes online and many others. He has written and presented two major podcast series for Audible: Artificial Intelligence: Friend or Foe? and The Dark Web, as well as his own podcast series, Cybercrime Investigations. He is the co-creator of The Secret Life of Your Mobile Phone, a live, interactive phone hacking stage performance which was a sell-out hit at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2017, and has been performed at music festivals, political conferences and for corporate clients.

For Channel 4 News he created the Data Baby project, a unique experiment which used a fictional online identity to expose how our personal data is being used ā€“ and abused ā€“ online.

Twitter: @geoffwhite247

Cybercrime your jam? Check out Duffy’s other reviews and interviews about the dark side of social media.