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A review by elliempatten
Cyberspies: The Secret History of Surveillance, Hacking, and Digital Espionage by Gordon Corera
4.0
In Intercept, Corera recounts the history of computers and spies, filling in the blanks between the famous story of Alan Turing and Tommy Flowers at Bletchley Park, and the recent revelations made by Edward Snowden.
For me, this was a tricky book to get into. Within the pages of this book were so many stories, so many names, so many timelines, that at times it was hard to follow, and particularly hard to remember "who's who". In around 400 pages, this book covered huge chunks of computing history in great detail. But I'm glad I read it.
My favourite section was probably the story of the Morris Worm, one of the first worms in the history of computers, a story of how one graduate student's "harmless" intellectual exercise inadvertently became one of the most famous denial of service attacks on the internet. I also enjoyed reading about the creation of public-key cryptography, and the balanced account of the (ongoing) encryption debate.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is sick of conspiracy theories, tabloid articles and scaremongering YouTube videos, and wants to hear a more balanced perspective on the complex relationships between technology, espionage, privacy, security, business and even warfare.
For me, this was a tricky book to get into. Within the pages of this book were so many stories, so many names, so many timelines, that at times it was hard to follow, and particularly hard to remember "who's who". In around 400 pages, this book covered huge chunks of computing history in great detail. But I'm glad I read it.
My favourite section was probably the story of the Morris Worm, one of the first worms in the history of computers, a story of how one graduate student's "harmless" intellectual exercise inadvertently became one of the most famous denial of service attacks on the internet. I also enjoyed reading about the creation of public-key cryptography, and the balanced account of the (ongoing) encryption debate.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is sick of conspiracy theories, tabloid articles and scaremongering YouTube videos, and wants to hear a more balanced perspective on the complex relationships between technology, espionage, privacy, security, business and even warfare.