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Readers of a certain age might remember the “phone phreaks” of the 1960s and ’70s who deviously manipulated telephone technology in order to make free long distance calls, disclose American Telephone and Telegraph secrets and, in general, drive AT&T crazy.
In retrospect, those characters seem almost ingenuous and amusing, more interested in relishing their naughty exploits than with mayhem. But there’s nothing childlike or amusing about today’s version of phone phreaks: criminals who, for plunder (lots of it) and other more sinister reasons, ruthlessly and zealously inflict havoc on and through cyber networks.
Kevin Poulsen’s new book, Kingpin:
How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground, is a flawed but fraught overview of our current digital underworld, where such vile hoodlums thrive.
