Book details of 'At large: the strange case of the world's biggest internet invasion'

Title	At large: the strange case of the world's biggest internet invasion
Author(s)	David Freedman, Charles Mann
ISBN	0684835584
Language	English
Published	June 1998
Publisher	Touchstone Books

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Back to shelf Computer history/fun

Score:

virtualbookcase.com score: 5.0   Vote for this book

The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'At large: the strange case of the world's biggest internet invasion':

Reviewer Koos van den Hout wrote:
Now somewhat dated, this is a book detailing a huge number of breakins into computers connected to the Internet during the 1990s. When the Internet slowly discovered (the hard way) that it wasn't the friendly, cooperative place it once was anymore. And the Internet (or rather, all the system administrators working on it) discovered that law enforcement had no idea what this Internet was and how to deal with it. But they needed to learn quickly as more and more businesses and valuable information came on-line and became 'connected'. The book details a huge number of breakins and the tracing of the sources of those breakins. It also tells a lot about the people involved from all sides, how they react, how they feel, how they interact with eachother. The hesitation of the system administrators to trust the authorities. The problem the authorities have with dealing with 'breakins' where nothing of value is stolen, only information is copied. The hesitation of certain open sites (such as the free sofware foundation) to actually curb access to outsiders. Having been around on the Internet in those years I recognize some of the stuff, some of the famous names and I know a switch had to be made from mostly open networks to mostly closed networks. A difficult switch. A great book.

Reviewer Koos van den Hout wrote:
Describing a relatively unknown streak of computer attacks occuring over educational parts of the Internet in the US. A very good read.

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