num_pages: 247
description: A place has been created that has no physical dimensions. It can only be reached with a computer. You can hear it in the hum of a modem or the whistle of a fax machine and see it in the lines on a computer screen but you can never touch it. This place is a network of connections - from microwaves and fiber-optical cables to telephones computers and data banks it is an ethereal web that links every remote corner of the world. It controls the technology that runs our lives managing the flow of information communication and money and it is now riddled with arcane computer viruses overrun by adolescent hackers and disputed in the electronic turf wars of high-tech street gangs. This place is called Cyberspace a technological frontier where the outlaws are sophisticated computer renegades - hackers phreakers and virus writers who know the interconnected electronic networks as well as the engineers and programmers who built them. Using only small personal computers hackers with names like Captain Zap and Acid Phreak or hacker gangs like Rabid and the Legion of Doom can infiltrate the protected and secured computers at the Pentagon NATO or NASA at will. They can roam invisibly through the electronic switches and links of our telephone network and tap into the computers that hold the credit records of all Americans altering data and copying credit card numbers and access codes. They can even hack into the world's largest banking systems and have learned how to transfer funds into their own accounts. In recent years Cyberspace has been invaded by viruses with names like Number of the Beast LoveChild and Michelangelo which can erase data and cause computers to crash. The shadowy creators of these viruses working from obscure places like Bulgaria Indonesia or Thailand have invented scores of pernicious programs that will infect as many as 12 million of the world's 90 million PCs over the next two years. Approaching Zero is the definitive histor
language: English
title: Approaching Zero: The Extraordinary Underworld of Hackers, Phreakers, Virus Writers, and Keyboard Criminals
publisher: Random House