Breaking And Entering: The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called "Alien" - Hardcover

Smith, Jeremy N.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0544903218 ISBN 13: 9780544903210

Publisher: Mariner Books, 2019

Synopsis

This taut, true thriller dives into a dark world that touches us all, as seen through the brilliant, breakneck career of an extraordinary hacker—a woman known only as Alien.

When she arrived at MIT in the 1990s, Alien was quickly drawn to the school’s tradition of high-risk physical trespassing: the original “hacking.” Within a year, one of her hallmates was dead and two others were arraigned. Alien’s adventures were only just beginning.

After a stint at the storied, secretive Los Alamos National Laboratory, Alien was recruited by a top cybersecurity firm where she deployed her cache of virtual weapons—and the trespassing and social engineering talents she had developed while “hacking” at MIT. The company tested its clients’ security by every means possible—not just coding, but donning disguises and sneaking past guards and secretaries into the C-suite.

Alien now runs a boutique hacking outfit that caters to some of the world’s biggest and most vulnerable institutions—banks, retailers, government agencies. Her work combines devilish charm, old-school deception, and next generation spycraft. In Breaking and Entering, cybersecurity finally gets the rich, character-driven, fast-paced treatment it deserves. 

About this title

Review

An Amazon Best Book of January 2019: We often hear about the exploits of some of the most infamous cybercriminals--but who are the hackers working against them? In Breaking and Entering we follow the career of one of the good guys, a woman who calls herself “Alien”—a moniker she adopted on her first day at MIT—who now runs her own cybersecurity firm. A risk taker by nature, Alien was drawn to hacking. At MIT, she excelled at tests of physical hacking and became part of a network of young people who wanted to look around corners and invent new methods. Her career path includes work at a top secret facility at Los Alamos, and at cybersecurity firms where she honed her skills at manipulating people as well as code. Through Alien’s eyes, we see how everyday activities, such as visiting a bank, are rife with opportunity for cybercriminals, and how white hat hackers like herself test protocols and find security loopholes before systems can be breached. Alien’s life and experiences have often been dangerous and extreme, making it easy to forget at times that this is a work of nonfiction. Breaking and Entering is an exciting and absorbing read that puts a new face on the secretive world behind our keyboards. --Seira Wilson, Amazon Book Review

From the Author

JEREMY N. SMITH writes regularly for the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Discover, and he and his work have been featured by CNN, NPR News, and Wired, among other outlets. Born and raised in Evanston, Illinois, he is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Montana.
 

Edition details

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0544903218
• ISBN 13: 9780544903210
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304