Approaching zero : the extraordinary underworld of hackers, phreakers, virus writers, and keyboard criminals

This books is well-written, interesting and fairly well-researched for anyone who likes this sort of thing. With the pace that technology advances at, particularly with regards to computers, this 15 year old book has become entirely historical. Absolutely none of the events or technologies are relevant to the present day except in the context of history. Nevertheless, if you're looking for background info on hacking, phreaking, viruses and other computer security related matters, it's well worth a read. Most of the information could be found in other books written about the same time as this one, however it's still very readable and does provide a comprehensive, though not particularly detailed, gathering of most of the relevant events over the past 30 years. In that regard it's also a good reference if you want to know how hacking and phreaking started, right from the very beginning. Also, it's a good introduction for the lay person interested in finding out what what hacking and phreaking is, and describes things like basic virus writing, boot sector viruses, executable file-based viruses, basic hacker exploits, the original tone-based phreaking methods, etc... However anyone really interested in this stuff would need to continue on learning through to updated information. It's an old book now; the terminology is quaint both because it's targeted at the lay person and it almost predates the Internet. But does form an important part of the limited literature available which covers that time period. Also, although it suggests that the doom and gloom scenario touted at the time with regards to technology destroying us all is over-hyped (as we can see in hindsight) the book still indulges in jumping on the hype bandwagon itself to some degree. 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