It’s been a few years since I’ve read Hacker Crackdown. It was/is one of the best computer crime books I’ve ever read, Litte Brother is a close second. Inside the book Sterling goes over the details of the biggest computer crime sting operations of all time. I’m not going ot say everyone was guilty to the extent they were prosecuted, but some of the crimes that were prosecuted in this novel helped bring in the computer crime laws we have today (for better or worse).
The first time I read this was in 1995 on a 286 laptop with a 9600 baud modem. I downloaded the book online, Sterling was one of the first mainstream authors to release his work for free online. For someone at the time was reading Phrack and to have something that was professionally published (I’m not knocking Phrack — I loved Phrack) was a completely different experience.
The book covers the history of computer crime before it jumps into the meat of the story. Never does it really feel that the Sterling is pandering to you for anything, instead it teaches you. For anyone interested in computer crime I would highly recommend picking this up. So far I’ve worn through three copies myself.
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