Mafiaboy: A Portrait of the Hacker as a Young Man
In 2000, an unknown hacker brought down the websites of Amazon, CNN, Dell, E*TRADE, eBay, and Yahoo!, inciting panic from Silicon Valley to the White House. The FBI, police, and independent security experts launched a manhunt as President Clinton covened a cyber security summit to discuss how best to protect America’s information infrastructure from future attacks. Then, after hundreds of hours of wiretapping, law enforcement officials executed a 3 a.m. raid and came face-to-face with the most wanted criminal in cyberspace: a fifteen-year-old kid whose username was “Mafiaboy.”Michael Calce was an ordinary kid, hanging out with friends, going to school, playing basketball . . . and working from the PC in his bedroom. Then, suddenly, he became headline news. Despite requests from every major media outlet, he has never spoken publicly about his crimes—until now.In the years since his attacks, Calce has watched the Internet grow less secure, more dangerous, and frighteningly criminal. Average computer users are increasingly the victims of fraud, identity theft, and even extortion. Millions of people stand to lose literally everything. But we can still safeguard ourselves on the Internet; the “Mafiaboy Guide to Protecting Yourself Online”, which closes this riveting book, explains how.Equal parts true-crime thriller and exposé,Mafiaboyis the story of how a teenager’s obsession resulted in one of the biggest Internet attacks ever. It’s also a strident warning about the dire lack of security in today’s online world. It will take you on an electrifying tour of the fast-evolving world of hacking, from the disruptions caused by Calce and his peers to the new frontier  of organized crime in the twenty-first century.