Ctrl+Alt+Chaos - Joe Tidy ****

Anyone like me with a background in programming is likely to be fascinated (if horrified) by books that present stories of hacking and other destructive work mostly by young males, some of whom have remarkable abilities with code, but use it for unpleasant purposes. I remember reading Clifford Stoll's 1990 book The Cuckoo's Egg about the first ever network worm (the 1988 ARPANet worm, which accidentally did more damage than was intended) - the book is so engraved in my mind I could still remember who the author was decades later.

This is very much in the same vein,  but brings the story into the true internet age. Joe Tidy gives us real insights into the often-teen hacking gangs, many with members from the US and UK, who have caused online chaos and real harm. These attacks seem to have mostly started as pranks, but have moved into financial extortion and attempts to destroy others' lives through doxing, swatting (sending false messages to the police resulting in a SWAT team turning up), and even physical violence (usually between rival gangs).

With a mix of interviews and research, Tidy gives us valuable insights into the mindsets behind and causes of this hacking activity - how teens get into it, how some manage to turn their lives around (often going into cybersecurity), while others become career criminals. Although Tidy covers a number of gangs over around a 30 year period, a thread running through the book is the work of a single Finnish hacker Julius Kivimäki.

Kivimäki's most notorious hack involved blackmailing individuals by threatening to make public their records from a mental health clinic. However, he had been active since the age of 14 with numerous malicious online activities. For years, aided by the lax way that underage hackers have been treated by the law, Kivimäki had escaped punishment and believed himself untouchable. His story has a classic TV documentary feel (Tidy is a TV reporter), which is perhaps the weakest part of the book. It's fine to give us Kivimaki's life story and details of his hacking, but Tidy gives us far too many similar stories of victims and could tell us more about how these hacks were technically achieved and the practical actions that were taken to fight back and to prove Kivimaki's involvement. 

Despite some reservations about the storytelling, this is an extremely useful dive into the impact of hacks and of the character of the person that the book describes as arguably the most hated hacker in history (even other hackers were appalled by his release of mental health data). Though particularly of interest for those with an IT background, we are all at risk from hackers, giving the book a wide potential audience.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all reviews and Brian's online articles or subscribe free here