Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks

Shapiro, Scott J. Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks. 2023. 432p. ISBN 9780374601171.

The rise of the Internet facilitated communications and the exchange of information, but it also exposed vulnerabilities in a system not designed with security in mind. Hackers became infamous as they exploited weaknesses and accessed sensitive information. From the leak of Paris Hilton's sex tape to Edward Snowden's exfiltration of millions of NSA documents, and from the graduate student who built the first virus to Russian hackers attempting to influence the 2016 American election, cyber incidents and hackers routinely make the news.

But how is cybersecurity organized? What does it mean when your computer has a virus? How are denial of service attacks executed? Fancy Bear Goes Phishing provides clear explanations to these and more questions as Shapiro reviews five specific incidents that have taken place since the early 1980s, and what lessons we can draw from these to better protect ourselves. Ultimately, Shapiro argues, the current structure of the Internet remains oriented more towards the free flowing of information than the protection of this information, though humans remain the greatest vulnerability. 

Readers interested in computers, in programming, or in exploring what happened behind the scene of some of the world's most famous hacks will thoroughly enjoy Shapiro's incisive and crisp writing style.

The Shallows

Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains. 280p. ISBN 9780393339758.

Anyone who has grown up in the 1980s and early 1990s shake their head at the children of today, who are coming of age in an era where the Internet is ubiquitous. Back in the last decades of the 20th century, it was important to learn phone numbers, memorize dates, state capitals, and learn how to retrieve information in encyclopedias. Now, this information and more is available one keyboard or dictation away. In The Shallows, Carr argues that though this is all wonderful, the Internet is also making us dumber, as we rely on it more and more instead of actually learning information.

The Internet provides access to a wealth of knowledge, but paradoxically it undermines our ability to read deeply, and think about what we read. Neurological studies have demonstrated that our brains are being rewired as we move away from reading books into the more shallow waters of the Internet, leading us away from an ability to concentrate and reflect on what we read and what it all means. Far from being a panacea, the Internet is causing us to become more shallow versions of what we have been. 

Readers who are interested in what the Internet means for human development will appreciate this deep dive into the impacts a worldwide network of computers is having on the human brain, on how we interact with each other, and on how we pursue knowledge.

The Num3rati

Baker, Stephen. The Num3rati. 2008. 244p. ISBN 9780618784608. 

Our world revolves around data. We keep track of the number of steps we take on a daily basis. We record the books we read. We shop online. We follow the news, partake of social media, and perform searches for information as varied as there are people. All of these activities create bits of data that are exploited by companies and algorithms to influence what we view, how we vote, and even the way we live. Data has become an industry, with players like Google and Facebook, but also the U.S. government and countless entities attempting to understand everything about us. Whereas some hope to deliver better products and line their pockets, governments hope to prevent future terrorist acts like September 11, 2001.

Through it all, all of these players are losing sight that as they quantify and turn people into numbers, and as they understand us better than we understand ourselves, we all lose an element of privacy. Numerati, people who control numbers, have infiltrated businesses and governments to devise ever more sophisticated way to analyze and understand human beings, granulating data in such a way that one's preferences can be used to predict what we will do next. As the dawn of the data age turns into morning, the mathematical modeling of our behaviors continues unabated, for better, and for worse.

YouTube and Videos of Everything

Centore, Michael. YouTube and Videos of Everything. Part of the Tech 2.0: World-Changing Entertainment Companies series. 2019. 64p. ISBN 978-1-42224059-5. Available at 384.33 CEN on the library shelves.

The story of YouTube is the story of most wildly successful tech companies: A group of college friends realized there was a need for a service, created a business plan, started a company in a garage, programmed a website, and wrote history. For YouTube, three friends who worked together at PayPal before it was bought by eBay in 1998 reconnected a few years later and discovered they had difficulty sharing videos they had recorded. At the time, each device used a different format that required a different piece of software to decode and play. Creating a service that could handle different formats and display them seamlessly on the Internet would finally facilitate videos online

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim invested their own money and time, and built a company called YouTube, designed to let anyone to post videos online. They released their beta site in May 2005, and immediately it was a success. The expansion of YouTube was accompanied with growing pains, as the founders needed to both figure a way to monetize their site as well as enforce copyright laws. Advertising crept in. By the end of 2006, YouTube was popular enough that Google spent 1.5 billion purchasing it and incorporating it in its suite of services. As it continued to expand, YouTube improved technology and created a whole new type of job, the YouTuber. It also has increased its reach, becoming the 2nd most popular website worldwide, right behind Google but ahead of Facebook.

Cyber Patrol

Cutting, Robert. Cyber Patrol. 2007. 48p. ISBN 978-1-4190-3223-3. Available at GFX CUT on the library shelves.

In the future, Cyber Patrol ensures that the Internet is safe for everyone and remains virus-free. When a new virus begins to infect the Internet, Cyber Patrol attempts to deal with it by sending its nanobots. Unfortunately, this virus, code-named Cyberdoom, is able to neutralize Cyber Patrol’s nanobots. As Cyberdoom spreads on the network, CARI, Cyberspace Android Robotic Intelligence, turns to the only person who can help defeat Cyberdoom.

Mark Lewis is 12, and he is an expert at playing games online. When a new game appears, Mark is more willing to try it, but the game turns out to be an invitation extended by CARI. CARI explains to Mark the challenges that Cyberdoom represents, and Mark agrees to help. Will his mad computing skills be enough to defeat the most advanced virus ever devised?

This graphic novel presents how online networks operate and how viruses can destroy vast sway of information. A timeline of various computing milestones is included. Readers seeking to understand the broad strokes of a computer virus will appreciate this entertaining story.

Eniac: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer

McCartney, Scott. Eniac: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer. 1999. 262p. ISBN 9780802713483. Available at 004.1 MCC on the library shelves.

The dawn of the Information Age can be rightly placed during the Second World War when two individuals, John Mauchly and Presper Eckert, one a physics professor, the other an electrical engineer, got together and proposed a novel way to perform high speed calculations by counting binary signals from electrically powered vacuum tubes. This general purpose computer was the first digital device and exponentially increased the number of calculations that could be processed in any given time frame.

Initially interested in the weather, Mauchly pursued a digital computing device to help him crunch reams of weather data. However, as there were no markets for such a machine, he and Eckert, whom he had met at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Engineering, approached the Army, which was always trying to calculate artillery firing and trajectories tables due to the high demands from the military conflict and offered their revolutionary design. Prior to ENIAC, no calculation were done purely electrically.

Over the course of three years, their small team of engineers developed rat-proofed wiring, soldered over 5 million links, used more than 18,000 vacuum tubes, and built a giant computer weighing over 30 tons. The first device capable of executing if / then calculations, ENIAC came too late for the Second World War, but heralded in the atomic age by providing the calculations for the hydrogen bomb.

The story of ENIAC’s development is well coupled with the personal tragedies of both Mauchly and Eckert, who became computer pioneers, but who ultimately failed to capitalize on their inventions, and who spent the better part of the following thirty years defending themselves against claims by others that they had merely stolen their designs.

McCartney’s book provides a fascinating look into the origins of computers and the cut-throat world of technological advances.

Unfriended

Vail, Rachel. Unfriended. 2014. 282p. ISBN 978-0-670-01307-4. Available at FIC VAI on the library shelves.

Truly and Natasha were best friends in elementary school, but in 7th grade they parted way after Natasha began hanging out with the popular kids. Truly befriended Hazel, and the two of them have been inseparable since. But when, in the middle of eighth grade, Natasha asks Truly to come sit with her and the other popular kids, Truly immediately accepts and walks away from Hazel without a word, leaving her at their lockers.

This betrayal leads Hazel to begin an online campaign to destroy Truly. Meanwhile, Natasha has ulterior motives for inviting Truly over to her table. She wants Truly to work with them on the History Day project, and she knows that Truly will end up doing all of the work. Then her friends will see that Natasha is really nice and takes pity on her old friend Truly.

When her plan backfires, however, Natasha finds herself on the outs with the popular kids, while Truly is fully accepted. Natasha starts her own efforts at destroying Truly. As posts and pictures proliferate and become nastier, the spiral of ill will increasingly descend towards nastiness and will not stop until someone gets hurt.

Told from the perspectives of Truly, Natasha, Brooke, the popular girl at school; Clay, Brooke’s best friend, and Jack, who is secretly enamored with Truly, this is a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when your friends turn on you, and how even innocent conversations become fodder for rumors and remarks.