At Large: the Strange Case of the World's Biggest Internet Invasion - Hardcover

Mann, Charles C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684824647 ISBN 13: 9780684824642

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1997

Synopsis

Describes how one computer hacker was able to access hundreds of business and government files and explains why the Internet is becoming less secure

About this title

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.

From the Publisher:

AT LARGE is the astonishing, never before-revealed tale of perhaps the biggest and certainly the most disturbing computer attack to date, with ominous implications for the Internet, the digital highway over which much of the nation's business is now conducted.

For two years a computer break-in artist known only as "Phantom Dialer" seized control of hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of computer networks across the country and around the world. Frightened network administrators watched helplessly as the intruder methodically slipped into universities, corporations, banks, federal agencies, 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. Stoop-shouldered, monitor-tanned network administrators; nerdy, antisocial hacker wannabes; egotistical, visionary code jockeys; bureaucracy-bound computer-security agencies -- all were caught up in the alternately frightening and absurd chase for Phantom Dialer. But when FBI agents finally burst into Phantom Dialer's house, they were stunned and dismayed by what they found. The decision was made not to prosecute but instead to keep the story quiet. And so the incident has remained secret, until now.

Though it reads like a thriller, At Large is more than just a spellbinding account of one of the stranger episodes in the electronic America of the l990s. It is also a sharply observed group portrait of the new wired world and an expose of the technological flaws at its very core.

Most of all, At Large is a warning bell for a nation rushing on-line. Even as it carries an ever-increasing amount of financial and personal information, the Internet is growing less, not more, secure. The story of Phantom Dialer demonstrates the vulnerability of the global network: anyone can break in almost anywhere. Indeed, though few recognize it, the massive crime wave has already begun.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0684824647
• ISBN 13: 9780684824642
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 315