| Description: |
|
Product Description
For two years a computer break-in artist known only as "Phantom Dialer" seized control of hundreds - perhaps thousands - of computer networks around the world. Frightened network administrators watched helplessly as the intruder methodically slipped into universities, corporations, banks, and military facilities, including top-secret weapons-research sites. Working up to twenty hours a day, Phantom Dialer obsessively broke into one network after another - and no-one knew who he was or what he was after. Was he a spy? Was he laying the groundwork for a single massive theft? As the number of victims mounted, Phantom Dialer became the subject of the first major investigation of the FBI's new computer-crime squad and one of the biggest manhunts in the history of electronic crime. Though it reads like a thriller, AT LARGE is more than just a spellbinding account of one of the stranger episodes of the electronic 1990s. It is also a sharply observed group portrait of the new wired world and an expose of the technical flaws at its very core.
Amazon.com Review
Perhaps the scariest story of insufficient computer security and cybercrime yet is the true tale of Phantom Dialer. He accessed university and military research centers, banks, even the computers that controlled central California's dams. His actions could have put tens of thousands of lives at risk. And what makes it so frightening is that he was not a criminal or computing genius. He was a curious, persistent, and mentally-challenged young man who never truly understood his own actions. So if he could do that, what might a determined terrorist do? Because, as Charles Mann and David Freedman show, advances in the Internet have been making it easier, not harder, for security crackers to go where they're not wanted. The book reads like a techno-thriller--from the discovery of a small cyberbreak-in to the massive manhunt that tracked him down and the troubled birth of the FBI's computer crime squad--complete with all the humor and poignancies of real human events.
|
