Fatal System Error

Name: Fatal System Error
ISBN: 1586489070

by Joseph Menn · first published 2010

8mentions

6recommended by

8HN commenters

2010–2021first – last mentioned

75% recommend25% neutral

Why HN recommends it

Narrative non-fiction about the cybercrime and security world, with many vivid war stories, such as DDoS attacks and the people fighting them; good for readers who enjoy infosec history as a story.

Summarised by Claude from recommending comments

Security & Privacy

In this disquieting cyber thriller, Joseph Menn takes readers into the murky hacker underground, traveling the globe from San Francisco to Costa Rica and London to Russia. His guides are California surfer and computer whiz Barrett Lyon and a fearless British high-tech agent. Through these heroes, Menn shows the evolution of cyber-crime from small-time thieving to sophisticated, organized gangs, who began by attacking corporate websites but increasingly steal financial data from consumers and defense secrets from governments. Using unprecedented access to Mob businesses and Russian officials, t

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Mentions per year

What Hacker News says

SoftwareMaven · Jun 27, 2010 · Recommends

I just finished reading Fatal System Error by Joseph Menn (given away at Gartner's Security and Risk Management Summit) that brought this topic up specifically. Good book if you want to get scared about going online ever again. :/ The major problem…
on “White House Proposes Vast Federal Internet Identity Scheme” ↗
roadnottaken · Dec 9, 2010 · Recommends

For anyone interested in this topic, 'Fatal System Error' is a pretty good non-fiction book that tells a LOT of great DDoS war stories: http://www.amazon.com/Fatal-System-Error-Bringing-Internet/d... Good read, IMHO.
on “Ask HN: How would you deal with DDoS?” ↗
thinkmassive · Mar 30, 2021 · Recommends

Some books I recently enjoyed, mostly focused on the infosec aspect but still somewhat on topic: The Kill Chain, by Christian Brose Active Measures, by Thomas Rid Sandworm, by Andy Greenberg Fatal System Error, by Joseph Mann
on “The French armed forces are planning for high-intensity war” ↗
malaya_zemlya · Aug 13, 2018 · Recommends

"Fatal System Error" by Joseph Menn
on “Ask HN: Recommendations of good cybercrime novels?” ↗
makerops · Aug 21, 2014 · Recommends

…series is awesome. I just read "The Director" which was decent. There are a lot of non-fiction books that read the same as a fiction though; Ghost in the Wires, The Art of Intrusion (really fun read), Fatal System Error, and of course if you haven't read Cuckoo's Egg, you should. Reamde by Neal Stephenson is also good.
on “Ask HN: Books Like “Stealing the Network” or “Jeff Aiken Novels”” ↗
qraving · May 27, 2011 · Recommends

…liked Little Brother and Makers by Corey Doctorow); I too, like to break up my technical manuals, with good non-fiction, in no particular order these are some that are in my collection you may like: Fatal System Error Founders at Work Masters of Deception Cuckoo's egg (one of my favs) Art of Social Engineering The Watchmen Hackers: Heroes of the Computer revolution (new one put out by O'reiley) The Art of Intrusion…
on “Ask HN: Reading Non-Fiction” ↗
meowster · Feb 11, 2021 · Mentions

Interesting, though a little odd. It references three books, and gets the titles of two of those books wrong. It appends an "X" at the end of Little Brother and calls Fatal System Error by the wrong title Critical System Error.
on “Teaching Students How to Cheat During the Pandemic” ↗
NelsonMinar · Apr 4, 2013 · Mentions

The main source I've read on DDOS extortion is "Fatal System Error". It's largely about Barrett Lyon's company Prolexic, a company specifically providing DDOS protection for online casinos. But that's just one example, I think there are many more. I have zero specific…
on “Mt. Gox under DDoS attack as bitcoin price surges” ↗