DarkMarket
How Hackers Became the New Mafia
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4.1 • 8 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
"This extraordinarily powerful book demonstrates how utterly we lack the shared supranational tools needed to fight cybercrime. Essential reading." --Roberto Saviano, author of Gommorah
The benefits of living in a digital, globalized society are enormous; so too are the dangers. The world has become a law enforcer’s nightmare and every criminal’s dream. We bank online; shop online; date, learn, work and live online. But have the institutions that keep us safe on the streets learned to protect us in the burgeoning digital world? Have we become complacent about our personal security—sharing our thoughts, beliefs and the details of our daily lives with anyone who might care to relieve us of them?
In this fascinating and compelling book, Misha Glenny, author of the international best seller McMafia, explores the three fundamental threats facing us in the twenty-first century: cybercrime, cyberwarfare and cyberindustrial espionage. Governments and the private sector are losing billions of dollars each year fighting an ever-morphing, often invisible and often supersmart new breed of criminal: the hacker.
Glenny has traveled and trawled the world. By exploring the rise and fall of the criminal website DarkMarket he has uncovered the most vivid, alarming and illuminating stories. Whether JiLsi or Matrix, Iceman, Master Splynter or Lord Cyric; whether Detective Sergeant Chris Dawson in Scunthorpe, England, or Agent Keith Mularski in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Glenny has tracked down and interviewed all the players—the criminals, the geeks, the police, the security experts and the victims—and he places everyone and everything in a rich brew of politics, economics and history.
The result is simply unputdownable. DarkMarket is authoritative and completely engrossing. It’s a must-read for everyone who uses a computer: the essential crime book for our times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Investigative reporter Glenny (McMafia) takes readers into the seedy underworld of cybercrime, where nothing is as it seems and whose inhabitants are best known to peers and law enforcement agencies by their aliases: Matrix001, Iceman, Dron, Cha0, JiLsi, and Lord Cyric. With global roots that can be traced to Turkey, Sri Lanka, England, and the Ukraine, among other countries, digital lawlessness perpetrated by an ever-evolving, often-invisible new breed of criminal costs governments and businesses billions every year. But don't go looking for advice on how to protect yourself here. Rather, taking its name from the online forum for cyber criminals that was shut down in 2008 after an FBI agent infiltrated it using an alias, the book explores the rise of three fundamental threats facing computer users in the digital era: cybercrime, cyber industrial espionage, and cyber warfare. Glenny accomplishes the herculean task of converting cryptic and tangled information into short, gripping chapters that often read like a high-tech thriller (complete with a surprise ending). But the alternate universe he uncovers via 200 hours of interviews with the world's military and intelligence communities, police, politicians, lawyers, and the hackers themselves reveals a frightening, all-too-real network of geeky thieves possessing both superiority complexes and inferior consciences.
Customer Reviews
Highly enjoyable; quick read; interesting subject matter and characters
A year or two ago, I read McMafia, Mr. Glenny's previous book that led him to write this. Upon completing McMafia, while still very enjoyable, I felt that he didn't not go into full detail about cybercrime. This book is a great start at remedying that. I still feel that Mr. Glenny's work on this topic isn't complete, especially since he never left North America and Europe and only detailed a couple of sites about one aspect of cybercrime. This is a topic that has not been fully mined and is evolving each and every day, so I fully expect further exciting books as the years pass. And I look forwarded to reading the books mentioned in the acknowledgements (after finishing the ebook that I was disappointed was an additional purchase).
I eagerly anticipate Mr. Glenny's next book, even if it leaves the topic of crime. He writes in the way you would expect to hear a story from a close friend--albeit an English one who uses a few references that fly over your head. He is a man who has seen very interesting and turbulent times, which left him with a different perspective than many others. He always picks interesting topics that haven't been fully exposed in the English speaking world. He is a writer to continue to watch and follow. I look forward to his upcoming work.
The only reason this isn't five stars is because I am paying $15 or $16 for this book and the last chapter/part (an additional ebook, The Hunt for Lord Cyric). The original book was not very long so I consider it very disappointing for the publisher to make it into 2 "ebooks". The author propped the book up to 4 stars. The publisher dragged it down.