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Ask HN: Recommendations of good cybercrime novels?

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Re: Ask HN: Recommendations of good cybercrime novels?

#81

Post by pavel_lishin »

anon-anon wrote: post #39
madmax108 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ohh man, for me it was EXACTLY the opposite. Daemon was one of the finest examples of a book in the cybercrime genre. It was one of those "Black Mirror" style entertainment: Take known tech and push it towards dystopia style stories. Daemon was was super-fun, and absolutely un-putdownable (Literally read it in a single sitting IIRC). Almost all the tech (Self driving cars, distributed systems, daemons that can self r…

Completely agree. Everything is possible in it. If there was indeed someone who had a far surpassed genius level of IQ and tech know how, and dedicated hours of their time to developing the stuff with an unlimited budget (which basically is what Matthew Sobol supposedly has) then I could easily understand how a lot of things in that book could become reality. Either way - a fun read and a good book to re-visit. One o…

Looking back on it now, I think the one thing that's really not plausible is the idea that someone could write a system that can anticipate anything that can happen. It was a little too Foundation/Psychohistory for me.

But it was still a fantastic novel, I loved reading it, and will probably re-read it again and again.

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations of good cybercrime novels?

#82

Post by harel »

power wrote: post #65
harel wrote: post #42

Two books come to mind (while excluding the obvious absolute classics like Neuromancer (William Gibson) and Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson): "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. It goes from WW2 to modern time. "Cyberpunk" by Katie Hafner - Read it aeons ago so working from long term memory. 3 real world stories of famous hackers and their "crimes" (Kevin Mitnick, Pengo, Robert Morris).

The last being one of the founders of ycombinator

Didn't know that...

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations of good cybercrime novels?

#83

Post by nbabitskiy »

paulie_a wrote: post #56
GuB-42 wrote: post #51

Takedown by Tsutomo Shimomura That's the story of how Kevin Mitnick got caught. Very controversial so I can't say it's good. I still enjoyed it back then. Note that the question is about novels, and I think it is how you should read the book. I seriously doubt its credibility when it comes to facts.

I never understood the fame of mitnick. He was a loser and not very talented. He is the equivalent of a Kardashian for fame Kevin Paulson at least had some actual skills.

Read his book, if you haven't yet. He's honest, likable guy, always curious (and hungry) to live. He wouldn't have scored high in a coding competition, but it makes his accomplishments only more impressive.

Being "talented" and "winning" looks like a railroad track, interesting life is worth more imho

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations of good cybercrime novels?

#84

Post by jonwinstanley »

brk wrote: post #76
wpietri wrote: post #62

This isn't quite in the category, but John Carreyrou's nonfiction book "Bad Blood", which covered the rise and fall of Theranos, satisfied me in a similar way. There's plenty of crime, although it's really about pretending to be high-tech rather than actually being high tech. For people in tech who love a good fraud story, I highly recommend it.

Just finished this one and really enjoyed it. I will say, it would have been infuriating to read if I didn't already know the story ended with her takedown.

Spoiler alert?

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations of good cybercrime novels?

#85

Post by pavel_lishin »

Dowwie wrote: post #35

"Daemon" or "Kill Decision" by Daniel Suarez "Snow Crash" by Neil Stephenson

I didn't like Kill Decision; the extrapolated premise from "X occurs in nature" to "let's harness it with technology" was just a hair too ridiculous for me.

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations of good cybercrime novels?

#86

Post by TallGuyShort »

jonwinstanley wrote: post #84
brk wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just finished this one and really enjoyed it. I will say, it would have been infuriating to read if I didn't already know the story ended with her takedown.

Spoiler alert?

It's a true story, and one that's discussed in HN comments ad nauseum.

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations of good cybercrime novels?

#89

Post by bougiefever »

eps wrote: post #23
Randin wrote: post #11

Try Daemon and Freedom™ by Daniel Suarez.

Daemon was virtually unreadable. It's a hacker-themed fairtale for computer illiterate, basically. I had a non-techy friend borrow the book and they too couldn't finish it, because it was just way over acceptable believability limits even for them.

These are among my favorite books, and I've read thousands of books. It was written in the 90s or early 2000s, so the tech that was so futuristic now exists everywhere (IoT). You question believability? The tech is so not "just way over acceptable", much of it already exists. If we can suspend our belief to read about aliens, hobbits, magical schools, talking animals, etc., this hardly stretches the imagination at all.

Don't let this guy stop you from reading these awesome books! I recently re-read it, and the first few chapters are pretty tough because it lays out all the tech premises. Stick with it. The plot will keep you engaged, and the storytelling is supurb

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations of good cybercrime novels?

#90

Post by sailfast »

amingilani wrote: post #14

Ghost in the Wire by Kevin Mitnick. I can't believe no one recommended this. The guy literally evaded the FBI using technology.

Second this, and also recommend The Art of Deception which focuses on a combination of social engineering attacks with technology vectors. Not a novel as it's really about actual security, but still worth a note.
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