Ebook Breaking and Entering The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called"Alien" Audible Audio Edition Jeremy N Smith Jonathan Todd Ross Recorded Books Books
Download As PDF : Breaking and Entering The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called"Alien" Audible Audio Edition Jeremy N Smith Jonathan Todd Ross Recorded Books Books
This taut, true thriller takes a deep dive into a dark world that touches us all, as seen through the brilliant, breakneck career of an extraordinary hacker - a woman known only as Alien. Â
When she arrived at MIT in the 1990s, Alien wanted to study aerospace engineering, but she was soon drawn to the school's venerable tradition of high-risk physical trespassing the original "hacking". Within a year, one of her hallmates was dead, two others were on trial, and two had been institutionalized. Alien's adventures were only just beginning.  Â
After a stint at the storied, secretive Los Alamos National Laboratory, Alien was recruited by a top cybersecurity firm where she deployed her large cache of virtual weapons - and the trespassing and social engineering talents she first developed while "hacking" at MIT. The company tested its clients' security by every means possible - not just coding, but donning disguises and sneaking past guards and secretaries into the C-suite. (She once got into the vault of a major bank by posing as its auditor.)Â Â Â
Alien now runs her own boutique hacking outfit that caters to some of the world's biggest and most vulnerable institutions - banks, retailers, government agencies. Her work combines devilish charm, old-school deception, and next generation spycraft.Â
In Breaking and Entering, cybersecurity finally gets the rich, character-driven, pacey treatment it deserves.
Ebook Breaking and Entering The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called"Alien" Audible Audio Edition Jeremy N Smith Jonathan Todd Ross Recorded Books Books
"I originally bought this book under the misunderstanding that it was a fictitious thriller involving a female protagonist hacker called Alien. However, it is more biographical in nature, cataloging Alien's anecdotes and life events. I was open to the biographical style, but personally felt like the book was poorly written on a number of levels. As a female reader, I often found myself rolling my eyes at the author's attempt at relaying Alien's female perspective, which was a thinly veiled male fantasy of the Sexy Cool Tech Girl archetype. As a reader who works in the technology industry, I was underwhelmed with the very short anecdotes of Alien's hacking and penetration-testing. Almost all of these anecdotes were stories of triumph with little to no conflict-- I felt like I was reading a book about a Hacker SuperWoman, which is a cool idea for a graphic novel, but even then the conflict would need to be dialed up a few notches. When any type of conflict would actually occur in the book, the writer would simply move on to the next chapter or neglect the resolution of that conflict. These writing flaws result in surface level characters who feel disingenuous to the reader, consistently predictable hacking executions, and bored, dissatisfied readers."
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Breaking and Entering The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called"Alien" Audible Audio Edition Jeremy N Smith Jonathan Todd Ross Recorded Books Books Reviews :
Breaking and Entering The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called"Alien" Audible Audio Edition Jeremy N Smith Jonathan Todd Ross Recorded Books Books Reviews
- This well-written and interesting book will open your eyes to the computer security risks we all face. Simply put, our banks, retailers, public agencies, power grid, and other essential organizations are more vulnerable than I realized. This is the theme underlying the story of "Alien," a young woman who graduates from MIT, and becomes a high level computer security professional ("White Hat Hacker"), eventually starting her own firm. Since some reviewers seem to question the accuracy of this story, it now known that Alien is indeed a real person Sherri Davidoff, who has given several recent public interviews, and owns/manages a successful computer security company based in Montana.
The first part of the book describes Alien's college years at MIT, where she tries to cope with the pressure cooker atmosphere. She becomes interested in computer science, and discovers her talents in this field. After she graduates, the book becomes much more interesting, as Alien works at a top-secret government job, and then for a cybersecurity firm. For me the highlight of the book involves the actual hacking examples. The author takes the reader behind the scenes to observe how Alien conducted "Red Team" attacks (usually successful) on her clients, including large corporations and public agencies Her team used computer hacking, phishing e-mails, and social engineering to penetrate layers of security protecting sensitive data. The relative ease with which they did this is astonishing and frightening. Often the low-tech attacks were effective and fascinating. In one case, Alien borrows an idea from a Hollywood heist movie to get into the executive offices of a company in daytime without being questioned or searched.
I also like how Alien's story illustrates (without being preachy) how a woman overcomes sexual discrimination (both subtle and overt) to succeed in a male-dominated field. The last part of the book describes how she starts and grows her own business, while using her hacker skills to educate and protect her clients from growing security threats. As a personal comment I'm surprised at the sexist comments from some other reviewers concerning her professional success. My only criticisms of this book are that the section on Alien's college years was too long, and I wanted to hear sometimes directly from Alien herself, instead of always through the author. As a final thought, my vote goes to Lily Collins to play the lead role in the movie... - I came to MIT the year after Alien and lived in the same dorm on a different hall. While I didn't know Alien personally, I knew of her, and I remember many of the events and mindsets in the first parts of this book vividly. It's always fascinating to hear where life takes my fellow MIT alumni and how the experience changes and shapes you. This book was absolutely riveting from cover to cover. I inhaled it on a 9hour flight to Frankfurt. I highly recommend it for a true story of a brilliant person finding herself and changing the world.
- I originally bought this book under the misunderstanding that it was a fictitious thriller involving a female protagonist hacker called Alien. However, it is more biographical in nature, cataloging Alien's anecdotes and life events. I was open to the biographical style, but personally felt like the book was poorly written on a number of levels. As a female reader, I often found myself rolling my eyes at the author's attempt at relaying Alien's female perspective, which was a thinly veiled male fantasy of the Sexy Cool Tech Girl archetype. As a reader who works in the technology industry, I was underwhelmed with the very short anecdotes of Alien's hacking and penetration-testing. Almost all of these anecdotes were stories of triumph with little to no conflict-- I felt like I was reading a book about a Hacker SuperWoman, which is a cool idea for a graphic novel, but even then the conflict would need to be dialed up a few notches. When any type of conflict would actually occur in the book, the writer would simply move on to the next chapter or neglect the resolution of that conflict. These writing flaws result in surface level characters who feel disingenuous to the reader, consistently predictable hacking executions, and bored, dissatisfied readers.
- I liked that this book covered Alien's time at MIT, and it was believable, not varnished over. It talked about adderal & acid, and friends who pushed too far. It was a coming of age story that's rarely told but well told. I liked that it described the Los Alamos work environment and later how she tired of working for other people and started her own business. The book has a little Linux and Unix, but not a lot of Windows techie language. It's enough to give it flavor. There's a lot to like if you want to sample the field. It shows discrimination is similar for women in information technology as well as all fields and how Alien dealt with it. I would have given it five stars except I'm picky about words. Sometimes descriptions of men in Alien's life played on the surface though I doubt many readers will notice.
