Fancy Bear Goes Phishing offers level-headed suggestions to reduce cybercrime, decrease cyber-espionage and mitigate the risks of cyberwar, arguing that we need to move beyond an obsession with technical fixes and focus instead on the outdated and vulnerable upcode that shapes the shoddy downcode we live with now.
Readers who start this book assuming they will be handed a more sweeping conclusion will find that their expectations have been (entertainingly) subverted: In other words, they’ve been hacked.
Shapiro... manages to carve a readable path through the conceptual undergrowth. It’s an impressive achievement ... Shapiro’s account is detailed and fascinating.
Scintillating ... a profound work on the idea of technology, the philosophical underpinning of it, the moral sensitivity we need to deal with fundamental problems and the jurisprudence relevant to it. If you think that books involving discussions of law must be boring, then Shapiro is a good antidote since he is a very humanist and humane writer ... The book is psychologically astute about the motivations of the hackers ... This is erudite, witty and arch.
The title of Scott Shapiro’s lively history is a little too whimsical for my palate but it does advertise his technique of using vivid case studies to dramatise a technically complex subject ... His impish humour and freewheeling erudition suit a world saturated in pop culture ... [Hackers] see it as a game. Shapiro’s achievement is to tell you how it is played.
Overall, this is an engrossing read, although there are parts that are dauntingly technical. Shapiro gives readers plenty to think about the next time they turn on their computers.
Shapiro’s snappy prose manages the extraordinary feat of describing hackers’ intricate coding tactics and the flaws they exploit in a way that is accessible and captivating even to readers who don’t know Python from JavaScript. The result is a fascinating look at the anarchic side of cyberspace.
