Ask HN: Recommendations of good cybercrime novels?

Reamde, is a fast paced techno thriller. It's arguably one of his lesser novels but still a ton of fun IMHO.

The premise of the book is that of an online game that is essentially similar to world of warcraft with the difference that the entire point of the game is the in game economy.

This part of the book is pretty well developed and ties in nicely with his other novels that also deal with money, gold, crypto currencies, etc. The crisis in the game is when a group of enterprising chinese hackers deploy a virus that encrypts people's laptops via a bit of ransomware distributed via email. To unlock their computers people are to pay some of the in game gold in a particular area. All goes sideways through a set of rather unlikely coincidences.

There are a lot of other elements being dragged into this including a fair bit of gun wielding by terrorists, russian mafia, and the protagonist and his somewhat libertarian family. This is is not the most innovative plot and it is ultimately a relatively one dimensional plot that is in places a bit cringeworthy.

I still enjoyed this book and have read it multiple times. It's got plenty of side plots, detailed musings, and so on that are typical for Neal Stephenson. If you enjoy that kind of thing, this book is fine but it's no Anathem or Snow Crash.

Title: Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness, and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier

Author(s): Suelette Dreyfuss

Publisher: Mandarin Australia

Year: 1997

ISBN: 9781863305952, 1863305955

>> This book provides a great overview of a number of computer intrusion incidents and links them throught not only the technical nature of the activity but the persons behind them. UNDERGROUND provides an excellent overview of intrustion activities focusing on the UK, Australia, and the United States. It covers the late 80's to the early nineties with stories on incidents such as the WANK Worm outbreak and 8lgm's activities. The stand out attribute of this book is that it examines what happened to the intruders after their activity rather than focusing on the activity itself. It also examines the interrelationships between intruders worldwide giving some insight into how the culture allows for several key persons to be involved in or have siginficant knowledge of many different activities. A must have to include in your library along with other staples such as Cuckoo's Egg, Masters of Deception, Fugitive Game, and Hacker Crackdown. However, like the other books noted, there are apt to be a few points that persons will take exception too with regard to accuracy.

Boy, that's putting it mildly. :)